SD card speeds - and how fast is needed?

I didn't buy a card with my K10D since I had an oldish unbranded 1Gb card kicking about.

1 and 2 Gb cards are pretty cheap on eBuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/116106, for instance), unlike in the camera shops where they can be ten times that price.

Now, I tested continuous shooting with my old card, and at max res jpeg, it did 40 shots before it started to slow down, and got to 8 in RAW.

Can the camera write the buffer continuously to the faster cards?

And if so, how fast does the card really need to be?

Chris,
Haven't done any scientific tests, but I bought a Lexar 2Gb 133x card for less than £50 from picstop.co.uk
It absolutely flies with the K10D
Matt

My K10D can keep up continuous shooting in JPEG forever with my Dane-Elec 60x card from 7dayshop, so if you're shooting JPG 60x seems to be all you need.

In Raw who knows, I intend to get at least two more 1GB cards before I go on holiday and I think I will make them at least 133x to see if there is any benefit in write time.

My K10D certainly does not like very cheap and nasty cards. It is mind bendingly slow with my original bargain basement 7dayshop card.

When you get a chance could you try the following experiment:

- switch the camera to RAW
- switch it to continous mode
- point it at something bright so that the shutter speed isn't the limiting factor
- hold the button down and count the frames.

I'm interested in whether it can empty the buffer as fast as it can fill it - how many shots will it take in RAW mode before the 3 fps starts to slow down, if it does at all?

As I said, I got to 8 with my plebby old no-name 1 Gb card. Which for most of the time will be way more than I need.

Chris,
FWIW, there is a difference in the RAW buffering comparing PEF and DNG
(Or at least so I've read!)
Will try it later...
Matt

I get 10 frames in PEF raw with my 60x card, then it drops right back to maybe 1FPS if that.

I get 8 with PEF, then it drops back to 1.5 seconds per frame.

With DNG, it's 10, then 3 seconds per frame.

I get 10 frames of PEF, or 12 frames of DNG with the 133x Lexar.
JPG just keeps rolling....
Matt

My Sandisk Extreme III gets 10 or 11 frames (difficult to count that quickly!) of PEF's

Which minimum speed do you recommend for an SD to be used with K20d?

The K20D has an even larger buffer so if you don't shoot more then 14 frames in one go you wouldn't really notice the difference.
You can notice it when reading the card, it simply takes longer.

I use a 8gig class 4 card in my K20 and a 4 gig class 6 in the K200 and by the time I look at the screen after taking the photo it is there, I would recommend any card with a class 6 to be the best,

Thank you guys