I think I have read that the write speed or buffer capacity of the R-D1 is more the limiting factor than a reasonably fast SD card like SanDisk Ultra II or Extreme II. My guess is that cameras with high frames per second capabilities would tax the write speed of the card much more than the R-D1, but I'm not totally sure of this.
In general I agree with the above. Faster cards than the Sandisk Ultra II or equivalent will not show any improvement in write speed in the R-D1. They will though usually reduce the copy time to your computer when using a card reader.
I do though think you should buy decent quality cards from a known brand rather than the cheapest generic as in my experience they are more prone to errors. Good quality 1 or 2GB cards are not that expensive these days. $25 for a 2Gb Sandisk Ultra II in the UK. I paid $400 for a 96Mb card not that many years ago!
I'm perfectly fine with the 2gb ultra II's, noticed the battery takes a bit longer to drain. Calumetphoto was having a deal awhile back, BOGO $35 for 2 ultra II's, CF or SD... this is the best deal I've seen to date...
Rich Cutlers take on the subject.
High-speed cards
The R-D1 is unable to make use of high-speed SD cards that transfer data quickly: regardless of a card’s speed (cheap ‘standard’ cards versus a Sandisk Extreme III), it takes about 4 seconds to write the data to the card after taking a photo.
However, there is a marked difference in the time needed to download data from the cards to a computer using a USB 2 card reader: downloading 200 MB (~20 raw files) took 40 seconds versus 20 seconds for the standard cards versus the SanDisk.
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