Memory Card choice for Nikon D810?

It's time for me to upgrade my old CF/SD cards as they're just too slow for this camera. There are some insanely fast CF and SD cards now available but I'm wondering what all does the D810 support? There's the extremely expensive CFast 2.0 CF cards with up to 515 mb/s speeds and more affordable SD cards with UHS-II. I don't know what all the D810 supports as far as those formats and if I could even take advantage of that extra speed with the camera body. So, I guess the question is does the D810 support CFast 2.0 or UHS-II to actually take advantage of this? Kind of hard to justify a card that is that expensive if the camera can't use it to it's full potential........I know it would be a lot faster transferring to a PC with those though

The manual will tell you what the camera is compatible with. Sandisk Extreme are good. Extreme Pro are slightly faster but more expensive, not worth it IMHO. Ultra are meant to be just as reliable but not as fast.

The camera will not use the CFast or the SD UHS 2 cards.

The supported cards are on page 487-488 of the manual which can be downloaded here: Nikon D810 Manual

The camera uses SDHC and SDXC UHS-1 and Type I CF cards.

There may be new models that are faster, but recently the fastest type I SDXC card was 95 mb and the fastest CF cards were right at 160 mb. If you need higher speeds, it would be best to use the CF card. Of course if you need backup while shooting you may need to use both.

Thanks guys! Thing I'll go for the Sandisk CF cards....wish they could utilize the CFast! Imagine what'd be possible with those cards

Do you need the buffer cleared super fast? The D810 isn't exactly a sports camera.

I know but my CF cards are about 4 years old and it's always waiting on the card with this camera.

What cards do you have? This website is out of date but can give you some idea of performance, there are probably more up to date sites somewhere.

I have some older transcend and Sandisk cards that I used to use with my old 5D2. Just don't cut it anymore with this body

I recommend these:

http://www.adorama.com​/IDSCFE1264G.html

http://www.adorama.com​/IDSSD64GA46.html


Fast to write and read, and I have never had one fail.

The price is much less expensive than the Pro model and 80% as fast.

It's a great balance between cost and speed.

Best of luck.

Mahalo

tim wrote in post #17749370
.... Ultra are meant to be just as reliable but not as fast.

This is a true statement for CF. But not so for SD card

there are very few cameras in the market that uses CFast. While it is supposed to be a CF replacement, but it has never took off. By replacement, I mean the slot is physically different. A camera that uses CF card, such as D810, won't even fit CFast, vice vesa.

For SD card, although UHS-II is backward compatible with UHS-I, meaning you can put USH-II card into USH-I slot and still function, it won't take advantage of the UHS-II speed. The definitely of UHS-I or II is actually referring to the interface. UHS-I has limited bandwidth of 104MB/s, so as long as one side (slot side or card side) is UHS-I, that is the limit. For D810 which support UHS-I, there is no reason to get UHS-II card at all.