FZ20 and High speed SD Card’s.

[pwiles1968]

Am looking at picking up an FZ20 this weekend, and will be picking up some extra memory soon already have a spare 256mb card, I was wondering how important card speed is with this camera, I can get high speed cards up to 66x but are they worth the extra money? Anyone tried this camera with high and low speed cards was there much difference?

[Jim Last]

You will really notice the difference if you are using the 'Burst' mode.

I tried it with the 16MB Pana include and there was quite a delay between shots.

Put in one of my Pana 256MB (10ms) and it fired them off very fast in comparison

If you are looking for speed and reliability then I would go with the Pana ones. The 256 and above cards have the fast (10ms) speed, below 256 cards are the slower type.

[abcnubie]

i picked up the panasonic 512 card. The burst mode rocks .
unforutnately panasonic is kind of pricey. I paid 90 for mine at j and r music world.

the sandisk ultra 2 sd 1 gig was going for only ten dollars more at jandr. I heard they are equally as fast if not faster than the panasonics, not sure about the reliability though .

[pwiles1968]

Play are doing some 10Mbps High speed cards 256 for £26, 512 for £40 and 1Gig for £70, has to be worth a try will probably get a 256 for now, allready have a standard 256.

[genece]

I have several cards all of them are the fast version, but a Dane Electric which was marked 10mb/s is the slowest and quite a pain.

From my experience A Lexar 32X and a PQI 66X, Both 1 Gb cards are just slightly faster than the 10mb/s cards in the smaller sizes.
The Kingsmax I have is 512mb and about the same performance as the larger cards.
Check the PQI and kingsmax card here.
Newegg

[Jim Last]

If you are after a 1 GB Card then remember that a huge bonus of having 4 x 256MB SD Cards versus 1 x 1GB is that if it does fail (as quite a number do) you lose a hell of a lot of pics but at 256 your loss of images is reduced. Also you can continue using the other cards immediately and hope that you can recover the data at a later date.

[Jim Last]

Also in respect of size, you could carry 3-5 SD cards in the same space as 1 CF card So there is really no reason why you shouldn't as the size isn't limiting, although the cost would probably mean that 1 x 1GB would equate to 2/3 x 256MB. But at the end of the day it is about covering ur ass because SD Card makers won't.

[pwiles1968]

I agree with the few smaller cards is safer thne 1 large principal, I would have no need for a 1Gig, will probably go for a 256, if I can get a good brand for a similar price then I will pay extra otherwise I will give play a try.

[zookeeper]

I have posted several replies to these same concerns. I have a FZ-20 and tested the cards, the 16MB Pana, a generic 512mb card (1x speed) and my Lexar 256mb 32X (10 mbs read/write). The Pana hesitated a little bit for the first 7-9 frames in continuous shoot mode and then slowed down to less than 1 frame per sec. The generic was slow right from the get-go. The Lexar 32X card cycled as fast as the camera did, over 2 frames per sec in continuous mode for as long as I held my finger down and recorded the last frame almost instantly. The burst mode was as fast as published info and recorded all frames again almost instantly. That's got to be the result of the parallel processing of that new Venus II chip in the camera. IT IS FAST.. Spend extra for the high speed cards, but I think anything faster than 32X-40X (10mbs) may be overkill. The camera becomes the limiter in those cases.

As far as the size of the cards, I firmly believe that several smaller cards is much better and safer than one great BIGGY. You can and will lose a card from time to time (I never have yet - 3 yrs with digital) but I have heard of those who have and have had a hard time sleeping in the doghouse when they got home from the in-laws reunion and found out that ALL the pics on their BIGGY card was trash or unreadable. I would go for several 256mb 32X to 40X cards and be safe. So what if you have to stop-n-swap a couple times: better than sharing bones with Fido........LOL....
You will LUV the FZ-20.......Jerry G..................the Zookeeper

[pwiles1968]

Ok so how fast is Fast, I have the FZ20 and am using current Cheap 256 card untill I get a high speed one. It is running at about 2 frames a second in no limit burst mode (which is what the book quotes), and will load a Tiff to card in around 3 seconds, I can not see I would need much faster than this, or is my cheap card also quick? if so I am ordering another one.