Help me decipher SD cards!

[psyiko]

I've never owned a good digital camera that used an SD card where I actually cared how fast it wrote and how many RAW images it could hold.

I have a Panasonic GF1 and I was wondering if any users out there could give me some advice on what kind of card to get. I am taking it on a two week trip to India without a laptop so I need a high capacity card so I can keep my images on them without having to download them. What sort of size do you think will be good for that? 32GB is still very expensive so I was thinking of a 16GB or 2x 8GB cards. Also, does the write speed really matter? Will a Class 2 really take a half second to write the image each time?

Thanks!

 

[MartinP]

It could be worth taking multiple smaller cards, rather than one single huge card. That way if there is a card problem you can (maybe) still go on shooting with a different one and try to recover the damaged card when you are home - instead of having no alternative to reformatting the damaged card, and definitively wiping everything you did up to that point....

 

[ampguy]

Class 2s are quite slow

Class 2s are quite slow

I'd go with Class 4 or Class 6, especially if doing any video.

Not sure if the GF1 will benefit from faster cards, but I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a significant increase in performance when using a class 4 or 6 vs a 2.

I've never owned a good digital camera that used an SD card where I actually cared how fast it wrote and how many RAW images it could hold.

I have a Panasonic GF1 and I was wondering if any users out there could give me some advice on what kind of card to get. I am taking it on a two week trip to India without a laptop so I need a high capacity card so I can keep my images on them without having to download them. What sort of size do you think will be good for that? 32GB is still very expensive so I was thinking of a 16GB or 2x 8GB cards. Also, does the write speed really matter? Will a Class 2 really take a half second to write the image each time?

Thanks!

 

[dexdog]

I second the suggestion to use a number of smaller cards as opposed to one larger card. I had a 4GB card fail on me during a tour of Botswana; luckily I did not lose many images, and had a bunch of other cards that I could turn to.

Also, compare the write speed to your camera to the write speed of the card, and choose the closest match

 

[swoop]

The class system is just a suggestion/minimum speed. Most cards perform faster than the class speed rates them. And for all digital cameras the card speeds are kind of a moot point. It's only when you're downloading them to your computer does it really become a factor.

I do notice a difference between sandisk extreme (class 6) and sandisk ultra (class 4) when transferring. But it's not going to kill you to wait an extra 2 minutes.

In general I go for the reputable brands. Sandisk and Kingston. And I buy in relatively small sizes. 4GB cards for both my Leica M9 and Nikon D2x.

 

[biomed]

I have used class 4 cards in my GF1 without any problems. Panasonic reccommends a class 6 card for video recording.

 

[count_zero]

I use a 8GB class 10 for video and bracketing. Otherwise, a 32GB class 4 works fine. The class 10 does seem to save faster when bracketing. The Olympus E500 has been tested to write a 10MB/s sustained, so there is a benefit when going with class 10 (the class rating is how fast it will write).

 

[psyiko]

Thanks! I've decided to get 4x 4GB cards. Video is definitely not a huge concern for me so I think Class 4 should be okay. Thanks for all the great info.