memory card question!

[Sendide]

hi there,
can anyone explain to me please what the memory card speed affects?!!
is it only a matter of transferring the pics afferwords (to computer ....) or does it affect the "taking" of the picture by the camera as well ...
thanks in advance

[scottbergerphoto]

This explains it all:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007
Scott

[defordphoto]

It effects both the writing of your photos in the camera (dumping the buffer) and the transfers to your PC. A slow card in your camera will mean that it would take longer for the buffer to empty once you filled it. Your camera could sit in write mode for several seconds while waiting for space to free up. And those seconds will seem like an eternity when there's something you want to shoot!

Don't bother with the WA (Write Accelerated) cards as Canon does not support that. 32x at this time, with these cameras seems to be the sweet spot and paying for more speed than that is pretty much a waste of money.

[lcoleman]

As already said, the card speed affects both transfer in the camera and to the computer. In both cases, however, the card speed alone is not the only thing to consider.

Card to computer transfer:
If you are using a card reader on a USB 1 port to transfer to the computer it will be faster than transferring directly from the camera with any card speed, but USB 1 will be the bottleneck and won’t be able to take full advantage of the faster cards. If you are using a USB 2 port you will notice a HUGE speed increase with the faster cards. If transferring files to your computer quickly is important to you, then you will want to make sure you have a USB 2 reader and port and weigh the price/speed difference when you buy a CF card.

Camera to card transfer:
The link to the Rob Galbraith site in an earlier post is a great resource where you can find CF performance of your particular camera. For an example I will use the 10D. The 10D itself if the bottleneck here and can’t take full advantage of the faster cards, although there is a significant difference between the slowest and fastest cards. If you are shooting large/fine JPEG pictures the slowest cards will take about 3 seconds to transfer 1 picture to the card while the fastest cards will take about 1.5 seconds. If you are shooting RAW the slowest cards will take about 8 seconds for 1 picture while the fastest cards will take about 4 seconds. As you can see, the fastest cards are twice as fast as the slowest cards in actual use in the camera, but not anywhere near the full potential of the fast cards. When you shop for cards you will see that the fast cards show 4x – 40x faster transfer rates than standard cards. Realize that the 10D can’t take advantage of this potential. The biggest thing to consider is how you are going to shoot pictures most of the time. The 10D has a built in buffer that will allow you to shoot 9 pictures in rapid succession regardless of the card you have in the camera. After you shoot 9 pictures then the write speed comes into play. If it is important to be able to shoot the 10th shot 1.5 - 4 seconds faster, then you may want to spend the extra money for faster cards. Most people never fill the buffer and have to wait for it to clear in real life situations. Those that find it very important (shooting sports, etc) probably are shooting a different camera (1D) anyway.

[Sendide]

thanks for the link and trhe explanations , much clearer now.