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steve-s
03-14-2006, 01:07 PM
I am going to purchase a new SD card for my FZ5. Does anybody know the spedd of the Card Reader /writer in the camera. It seems foolish buying a highspeed card if it is limited by a slow writer

I can't find anything in the manual or Panasonics web page
genece
03-14-2006, 03:40 PM
You want a card at least 32X as the camera can write at 5mb/s.

Seems kind of foolish nowadays not to get at least 60X.
GabOrcinus
03-14-2006, 05:31 PM
You want a card at least 32X as the camera can write at 5mb/s.

Seems kind of foolish nowadays not to get at least 60X.
I've got a card, but how can I tell exactly what speed is it?

It's a 512mb PQI.
genece
03-14-2006, 07:02 PM
Thats the million dollar question.....but I have a 1 gb PQI card with no markings and its 40X.....so maybe yours is the same......If it writes a burst in 2 seconds its as fast as is needed.
GabOrcinus
03-14-2006, 10:42 PM
Yup, the writing speed is barely noticeable in burst mode. It's with long exposures that it takes a while to write into the card.
genece
03-15-2006, 06:18 AM
The long exposure thing is different, the FZ cameras, in fact most all digital cameras do what is called a "dark frame subtraction" ...which is like taking another exposure (like with the shutter closed) the same length as the original long exposure, to subtract hot pixels from the photo. At least thats my understanding of it.
gwhizkids
03-15-2006, 08:03 AM
Ah, its that dark frame subtraction that's giving me all the trouble with my extended exposure star photos. I wish there were an option to allow PP to handle the hot pixels. Will switching to RAW help or not?
genece
03-15-2006, 08:27 AM
I am not sure ..might be worth a try.
Let us know if it works.
GabOrcinus
03-15-2006, 08:59 AM
The long exposure thing is different, the FZ cameras, in fact most all digital cameras do what is called a "dark frame subtraction" ...which is like taking another exposure (like with the shutter closed) the same length as the original long exposure, to subtract hot pixels from the photo. At least thats my understanding of it.
Thanks for that. All this time I thought it was the card. :)
astro
03-15-2006, 09:18 AM
I've got a card, but how can I tell exactly what speed is it?

It's a 512mb PQI.

Plug the card into your computer with a card reader, and copy a 300MB file or so onto it. Time how long it takes to copy the file. Then use a calculator and divide the file size by the time in seconds.
Then you'll get how many MB/s it copied the file at.
1x speed equates to 150KB/s. So divide the MB/s by 0.15, and you'll get the speed of the card.
rschofield
03-16-2006, 08:27 AM
Plug the card into your computer with a card reader, and copy a 300MB file or so onto it. Time how long it takes to copy the file. Then use a calculator and divide the file size by the time in seconds....

I use a free Windows application named HD_Speed (available here (http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20)) that I use to measure the throughput of my built-in SD card reader, USB 2.0 external devices, internal harddisk, etc. Saves having to do all those calculations. ;)


Dick
bengo
03-20-2006, 01:03 AM
that is good info to go on