Which SDHC card?

Sorry if this has been posted before, but does the SDHC compatible K10 have the technology to take advantage of the Class 6 data transfer speeds of SDHC or is it not necessary to buy anything more than Class 4? This would equated to the Sandisk Ultra II (which I currently use) but I will be buying an HC card for the greater capacity and would but the Extreme III if the K10 could use the speed.

Unfortunately I cannot get this info from the manual.

Years ago, if you asked how much power the engine in a Rolls Royce could produce, the standard answer was "enough".

For me, it's now like that with memory cards. Even the cheap ones are fast enough. They're no longer a limiting factor, except perhaps when downloading, and that's not usually much of a problem.

So, as with hard drives, when buying I just compare the cost per gigabyte, knowing that any difference is unlikely to matter very much.

And I always buy 2GB cards. Larger capacities are likely to cost more per GB, though that may change soon, if it hasn't already.

G

I use the SDHC and the Sandisk II and personally find no noticable difference in the download speed.

The 2Gb size is plenty enough for over 120 RAW images, and I wouldn't want more than that on one disk.

Rather go for a few Sandisk II 2Gb's.

Garry

I'd rather have several smaller cards than one large capacity one.

This is on the prinicipal that if a card should fail (and they do) then fewer images would be lost.

Being a JPEG sort of person (somewhat compressed, sometimes depressed) a 512 MB card will fit niocely onto a CD, also making back-up very simple indeed.

Thats helpful. I bought mt *istD with a 256k Ultra II card which actually cost more that an 8Gb card would now, so memory is relatively cheap!

I am still not clear if its useful having the faster transfer speeds given that a 'standard' 2Gb card now costs about £20.

Thanks for the advice.

Go with Transcend 4GB 150x, if you like high capacity. Although they probably more similiar to the Sandisk Ultra III in terms of speed. I never had a problem with the Transcend cards, despite pulling the card out of the reader and camera at times, without switching off the device first and I use it daily to record in the region of 30-400 images. I got my K10 set to record RAW+JPG (at max quality, min resolution).

They are now just under GBP 50.00 (I paid nearly 80 only a last year)

http://www.mobymemory.com/products/Transcend/Transcend-4GB-Hi-Speed-150X-SD-card...+-Free-SD-MMC-Reader.asp

I follow JR's logic. I use smaller cards.
But I'm also open to change....How many people have had failed cards at 2igs or more? I asked around at a convention recently and nobody personally knew of any person that could confirm that high speed high capacity cards failed more often than lower capacity cards....no one knew anybody that had ANY failures with sandisk or lexar cards in recent years...

so I'm buying a new 4 gig card, but adopting the existing logic of not keeping all my eggs in one basket.
I hope to reap the benifits of both, not having to swap cards at a critical moment, and not having all my images on one card.

wasn't an issue for me until aperture made it possible to incorporate raw files seamlessly into my workflow.

4 Gb SDHC Ultra II card cost me 55 EUR a few months back, they are so cheap now that for my Kenya trip I will take 4GB CFs in my *ist D... just to reduce the critical moments where I have to change cards during a game drive.....

I think 4Gb cards now have the same probability of failure as a 2 Gb....my back up is film...(or is digital the back up to film? )

I don't think this answers Pete the Claret's question....whether it's worthwhile getting a SDHC Class 6 or not... I guess, though, if you are shooting a burst of jpegs with the K10D the camera can keep on going until the card is full, so to me it means if you get the 'better' card the K10D can make good use of it....

I hope I am right...

I don't think anyone is suggesting that bigger cards are more likely to fail; it's just that when they do, you are liable to lose more images. And, they're more expensive.

G

I've gone and ordered a Sandisk Extreme III 4Gb card, but I already have a couple of 1Gb Ultra II cards to fall back on.

I usually transfer the images to my Mac on a daily basis anyway, I just wanted the capacity in case I take a lot of pu=ictures on a given day.

But thanks for all the help and advice, I'll let you know how I get on with the new Camera over the next few weeks.

While were on the subject of SD cards can anyone tell me why both my printers and laptops built in readers wont read the "Inovate" card I got from SRS with the K10D yet they will both read the "ordinary" 2GB sandisk from my son's camera? As for the printer, its not that old that it cant read a 40X Lexar Pro compact flash card.

Is the card dodgy or is there something weird about what readers read which cards?

Sorry for sounding a bit thick

That sounds very odd, as long as the card is working in the camera then I don't see why it shouldn't work elsewhere.

It may have something to do with the file system of the card, but I doubt that is the cause.

Sorry, should have said that my sons Sandisk was formatted in my K10D but was OK

Well SD cards only hold the memory chip and the connectors all the control chips for read/write are in the card reader or device. So all SD cards should work just the same as any other in any device. Unless they have an unsupported file system. Many older devices (cameras, printers, etc) will only read FAT16 and not FAT32. Many new 2GB cards are formatted in FAT32. Stick them in the K10D in card reader mode and see what the file system is on your PC.

for the Pentax *ist DL2 with 1.02 o/s.

Thanks,