Sandisk Ultra II or Sandisk Extreme III SDHC?-Nikon D90

[pilotkid]

Hey everyone, I don't often post to the photography forum but am trying to get back into the great world of photography. I have ordered a D90 that should be here in the next couple of days, moving up from a D40x, which is on ebay, btw....$250. Anyways. I have always used Sandisk Extreme III SDHC memory cards but is that over kill? Would I be fine with the Ultra II and save a little money in the mean time? I remember when I first bought my D40x a few years ago from Ritz Camera(big mistake I know!) they talked me into buying their brand SD card. When I went to take pictures and took a bunch in a row the camera would bog down and I'd have to wait for it to write everything to the SD card before I could shoot more pictures. I dont want that to happen again!

Thanks for your advice and time!

 

[ArtandStructure]

For the most part, the only two cases where you will notice a performance difference is when using continuous shooting and when unloading the card into the computer. I do not know if cycling through photos reviewing them in camera is any faster. I have not tested this.

As far as continuous shooting goes, 12MP jpegs may saturate a slower card or even this one, I don't know as I shoot RAW, but RAW can certainly saturate this card and I use the 30MB/s Extreme III. That said I almost never use continuous shooting. I suspect most users do not though it is a matter of personal preference. It is nice to know I have as much bandwidth as I can get though.

On the second matter, the faster the card, the faster it unloads into the computer and this is definitely noticeable to me. It is also of great importance to me to get them off the card and into the computer as fast as possible for several reasons and I happily pay the premium for that ability. The premium isn't much when you consider the time saved over the life of the card and the convenience factor.


All the best,


Jesse Widener
Art and Structure

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

I have a D90 - you can generally fit 9 or so RAW images into the buffer before it fills up. You can figure out by the speed of the card how quickly they get written from the buffer to the storage device. Like the previous poster said, if you are holding the shutter down on hi-speed continuous (4 fps) for sports or wildlife, you'll notice a slowdown with a slower card. This isn't an issue for my type of photography, so I opted for a slower card.

It took me yesterday about a minute to transfer 60 RAW images to my computer with a card reader.

 

[ArtandStructure]

I have a D90 - you can generally fit 9 or so RAW images into the buffer before it fills up. You can figure out by the speed of the card how quickly they get written from the buffer to the storage device...

...It took me yesterday about a minute to transfer 60 RAW images to my computer with a card reader.

For comparison, it took me about 30 seconds to unload the same number of RAWs from my D90 off my Extreme III 30MB/s edition with a card reader.

For continuous shooting...which I rarely use...while the buffer holds about 9 shots in RAW, I can roll off 15 shots at 4fps (the D90 can do 4.5) before the fps slows down.


All the best,

Jesse Widener
Art and Structure

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

I tend to do a lot of sports photography and so I like the faster read/write speeds of the III.

On a camera that already is quite expensive I wouldn't really bother trying to save a few dollars when it is a question of performance. You can get cheaper cards online.

A faster card is a bit like car insurance, you only probably ever use it 1% of the time, but when you do it is worth 100% of the price.

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

I used extreme III's with a Pentax K10D (Nikon D80 equivalent), and the offload times were worth the price, I got 4 GB cards for about $30 each (this was 1.5 years ago). Now I use Extreme IV 45 mb/sec cards in my D700 and those are nice as well. I'd expect you could get the III's cheaper now, I highly recommend them.

SLC

 

[flakes8]

It may make a difference when using video mode, but not sure.

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

It may make a difference when using video mode, but not sure.

Perhaps, interesting thought! Generally SD camcorders ask for higher speed cards, so this would make a lot of sense.

SLC

 

[pilotkid]

Thanks for your responses guys. What I've gathered from this is, if you shoot alot of high speed stuff where you are shooting the max continuous frames per second the you will need a high speed card for sure. If your doing more, single frame stuff then something like the Ultra II is more than enough. I personally enjoy going out to the local international airport and going to the top of the parking garage's and shooting planes coming in for landing and taking off, and am usually on the continuous high setting, allowing me to get the 4.5 frames per second. So I guess from my understanding of whats been said above I need the Extreme III or something like that.
Thanks again for all of your responses, its been very helpful!!!

 

[alphaod]

So I guess from my understanding of whats been said above I need the Extreme III or something like that.

Just think of the Extremes are the best of the pick; they need the best performing chips, even if you don't need the speeds, get them for the increased reliability; that said other good brands to look for are Delkin PRO and Lexar Professsional. I think these latter two are also cheaper in certain retail markets.

 

[Abraxsis]

I think either with the FPS on that camera, the III is obviously going to be a touch faster, but not noticeably so.