High speed SD cards

[iem]

hello,

i thought i posted this earlier, but i don't see it, so i'll try again.

i'm trying to figure out what the benefit is of buying high speed SD cards.

i read the review for the canon s3 is camera and it said to purchase a 60x card because it can take advange of it. what does "take advantage of" mean in terms of the camera?

from what i can tell, the benefit is that you can download the photos and video quicker to your hard drive. is that the primary benefit or are there others, like the photos/video will be saved to the card quicker?

the prices don't seem outrageous. i have two 512 mb sd cards. i don't mind buying a 1 or 2 gb card to use for videos.

is there much of a difference between 80x, 133x and 150x.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

thank you
indera

[pas49ras]

i read the review for the canon s3 is camera and it said to purchase a 60x card because it can take advange of it. what does "take advantage of" mean in terms of the camera?

Flash memory is a lot like the memory in a computer - you can have the fastest memory on the planet, but if you have a computer that isn't designed to run memory at that fast speed, the memory can't operate to its full potential. It's the same situation with devices such as digital cameras— basically, you're only as fast as your interface. If the camera has a slower write speed than your flash card, the card can't operate any faster than the camera's write speed, if you use a 60X flash card in a camera designed to work at 12X speed, you'll be transferring data at the slower 12X speed — the "slowest common denominator." Most of the DSLR's have a faster write speed than most P/S cameras and benefit from a faster speed (>80X ) memory card. Not sure what the S3's write speed is..but it must be close to 60X

12X = 1.8 MB/sec
20X = 3.0 MB/sec
25X = 3.8 MB/sec
30X = 4.5 MB/sec
40X = 6.0 MB/sec
60X = 9.0 MB/sec
66X = 10.0 MB/sec
80X = 12.0 MB/sec
90X = 15.0 MB/sec
133X = 20.0 MB/sec

[iem]

hi pas49ras,

ahhh, that makes a lot of sense.
i went to the store to buy the s3 is today, but they had to order it, so i can't look up the write speed myself. i will post a message in the canon forum to see if someone will look it up for me. that way i can buy/order the card sooner, rather than later,

the only x number i know about the canon, is that its 12x optical zoom.

i don't want to buy memory cards that have a higher speed and cost, if the camera isn't going to use it. you have saved me some money, my credit card and i thank you.

indera




Flash memory is a lot like the memory in a computer - you can have the fastest memory on the planet, but if you have a computer that isn't designed to run memory at that fast speed, the memory can't operate to its full potential. It's the same situation with devices such as digital cameras— basically, you're only as fast as your interface. If the camera has a slower write speed than your flash product, the product can't operate any faster than the camera's write speed, if you use a 40X flash card in a camera designed to work at 12X speed, you'll be transferring data at the slower 12X speed — the "slowest common denominator." Most of the DSLR's have a faster write speed than most P/S cameras and benefit from a faster speed (>80X ) memory card. Not sure what the S3's write speed is..but it must be close to 60X