How fast is your flash card?

[farnz]

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I shoot raw on my D2 with a standard-speed SD card and experience raw write delay that's been mentioned on this forum before. A faster SD flash card seemed the way to hurry things along so I bought a 2 GB Sandisk Extreme III card, plugged it into the D2 and went looking for likely subjects.

 

I was disappointed because there was no noticeable change in the raw write delay so it got me to thinking that it can only be one of 2 things: the camera's internal write speed has maxxed out below the 20 MB/s offered by the Extreme III (does anyone what the D2's write speed limit is please?), or .... the Extreme III is not giving me the speed that it's supposed to.

 

Now I can guess what you're thinking and, no, I didn't buy the card thru eBay, I bought it through a reputable dealer, it had all the right packaging and inclusions etc, the serial number checked out with Sandisk and there's a proper hologram on the label so I have every reason to believe that's it's a pukka ("genuine" to you good folks in the US of A :-) Extreme III SD card.

 

Even pukka cards can sometimes go faulty so I got to thinking "How can I tell whether my SD card's read and write speed are what they should be?". And then I drew a blank.

 

Can anybody suggest a reliable way of measuring the read and write speeds please?

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[TimF]

I reckon your guess that the camera is the limiting factor here is probably the truth.

 

There is little or no point in buying the fastest cards available for a point & shoot. Maybe the card will show its mettle in an M8 or Panasonic L-1

[dugby]

This topic was covered many times in much detail in the 'old' forum, which unfortunately is no longer accessible.

 

The result is that the D2's internal write speed was optimised somewhere between 40-66x, so a new high speed SD card will not improve your write times.

 

However all is not lost if you buy a Extreme-III (133x) card (or faster). You can reduce your 'shooting down time', as you can get the images off the SD card faster to a digital wallet or computer at the higher read speeds of these newer cards.

 

Yes I do have an Extreme-III 133x 1GB SD in my D2.

[farnz]

Thanks for your replies, Dugby and Tim, and I suspected that the camera might be the limiting factor. (D2=P&S?? Lump in throat; coping but slightly crestfallen. Lower lip trembling and eyes trying to water. ;-)

 

I've done the obvious by filling the card and timing its download to PC but the times, and therefore the speeds, vary with different card readers so it isn't a reliable method because the readers are affecting the result.

 

Still looking for a reasonable method of measurement for quality confirmation purposes if for nothing else :-)

[cboudier]

More trials have been done here : Rob Galbraith DPI: Card-to-Computer

 

BTW, the old forums ARE accessible !

http://www.leica-camera-user.com/digital-forum/announcements.html