60D & the SanDisk Extreme® Pro™ SDHC™ UHS-I

Newbie alert!

Is my 60D capable of using the 45MB/s spec on the SanDisk Extreme® Pro™ SDHC™ UHS-I cards? I just splurged for a 16GB and I am not quite sure I'm getting my money's worth in continuous shooting (don't care for video just yet). I get that initial burst of 5.3 and then things start crawling.

Did I get ahead of my camera with this purchase?

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That 45Mb/s spec will only truly be noticeable when you're loading the pictures onto the computer using an external card reader.

I use SanDisk Extreme II CF cards in my 1D and hammer away at 8fps all the time. The buffer of the camera is what slows down your shooting, not the memory card.

And if you shoot in RAW, you will fill up the buffer faster. Try shooting in JPEG.. It should speed up

My 7D only gets 7 shots in before the buffer fills in RAW

TheAnt wrote in post #12163933
That 45Mb/s spec will only truly be noticeable when you're loading the pictures onto the computer using an external card reader.

I don't have an external reader yet, but I have noticed it is twice as fast when downloading from the camera using the supplied USB cable.

TheAnt wrote in post #12163933
I use SanDisk Extreme II CF cards in my 1D and hammer away at 8fps all the time. The buffer of the camera is what slows down your shooting, not the memory card.

I think it'd be logical to say I'd squeeze more shots in if I turned off the jpg images and shot only raw, yes? When the mfg. quotes specs and does not mention raw, or raw+jpg, or jpg only, is it safe to assume they're just talking about fine jpgs?

A5forfighting wrote in post #12164037
My 7D only gets 7 shots in before the buffer fills in RAW

Wow, even with the big bad dual processors?
What size do you keep your jpgs? Smaller sized jpgs are less 'tweakable' with software than fine or super fine, right?

I han do bursts of 30 shots plus in RAW with my 7D at 8fps.....

A5forfighting wrote in post #12164037
And if you shoot in RAW, you will fill up the buffer faster. Try shooting in JPEG.. It should speed up

My 7D only gets 7 shots in before the buffer fills in RAW

You shooting in RAW+JPEG or straight RAW? Canon gives the buffer size as 7 frames in RAW+JPEG with a UDMA card; 15 in straight RAW and 90 or more JPEG Large. Corresponding numbers for the 60D are 7, 16 and 58.

If the 60D is anything like the 7D then card speed has zero impact of the number of shots before the buffer fills. Nor does it affect the frame rate before the buffer fills.

As for the number of files before it fills - that depends solely on how compressible the images are. My Experiments were with the 7D, I have no reason to believe the same principles won't apply to the 60D. Images taken with lots of detail, in sharp focus, at high ISO are poorly compressible and result in large files - only 15(ish) of which can fit in the 7D's buffer. Blurry images with no detail at low ISO are highly compressible with the result that 24(ish) can fit in the buffer.

hollis_f wrote in post #12175093
If the 60D is anything like the 7D then card speed has zero impact of the number of shots before the buffer fills. Nor does it affect the frame rate before the buffer fills.

As for the number of files before it fills - that depends solely on how compressible the images are. My Experiments were with the 7D, I have no reason to believe the same principles won't apply to the 60D. Images taken with lots of detail, in sharp focus, at high ISO are poorly compressible and result in large files - only 15(ish) of which can fit in the 7D's buffer. Blurry images with no detail at low ISO are highly compressible with the result that 24(ish) can fit in the buffer.

Ok, so that explains why my indoor pics (sometimes) take noticeably longer to save (even on the new card). I always try to shoot in the creative zone and dislike the hard flash look (I'm a newbie so I don't have a good external flash or diffusers) and keep the flash off because I figure, why did else I pay for a 6400 ISO camera, right?

Along the same train of thought, when I upgrade my lenses (I got the kit 18-135 and 55-250 in the package), will I be trying to pack even more detail into every pic? Is a fast L lens directly proportional to a fatter image file?

alphamalex wrote in post #12177009
Ok, so that explains why my indoor pics (sometimes) take noticeably longer to save (even on the new card)

That's more likely to be because you have long-exposure noise-reduction turned on.

The 60D can't write faster than 21MB/s to any SD card. SanDisk Ultra 30MB/s cards are slower than that, while SanDisk Extreme UHS-I 45MB/s cards are faster than what 60D can support, so the best buy is the 45MB/s card. I use my 60D with a 95MB/s card, btw. Newer Canon cameras that support UHS-I cards can't write more than 40MB/s to any SD card, so even with a 6D/700D/100D you won't need more than a 45MB/s card. If you need higher writing speed, you should buy a camera with a CompactFlash slot: 50D writes up to 70MB/s to its CompactFlash slot, while 5D Mark III writes up to 100MB/s to its CompactFlash slot (and 21MB/s to its SD card slot).