What SD card should I get

[Olings]

I've just bought a Pentax Optio 750z and want to upgrade to a bigger sd card than what came with the camera. I'd like it to be quite big, but I don't know how big it can be. This is my first digital camera so I'm a bit green. I hope someone out there will be able to help.

[Terracotta]

well SD seems to be fairly linar in price per MB on 256/512/1GB cards, personally I'd look at 512MB. Looking at the Canon G6 (a 7MP camera) you get about 140~150 photos at top notch JPEG. I've yet to come across a card that didn't work in a camera that wasn't faulty, though I'm not an avid reader of the technical issues surrounding flash media, so I'd tend to go for the cheapest known make unless there's any performence reason.

[davephoto]

Actually, there is a performance reason for getting faster cards: read and write access time. This has a direct bearing on the time it takes to write a card (and before you're ready to take the next picture) and the time it takes to flip through images and scrolling through different parts of a magnified, larger image. Sandisk Ultra II is a very nice card and the price is very reasonable now. I would look to get cards no smaller than 512mb.

Dave
http://gallery.leica-users.org/Imagine

[DanHendrickson]

I just ordered, though won't be allowed to use till Christmas, a Cannon SD300, and know that I need more than the 16 MB SD card that it comes with. I plan on buying a high speed card, but have no basis of comparison between brands. PNY posts the speed for their fast Cards, 5 MB/sec, and I have seen in another post that Panasonic has 10 MB/sec cards. I was hoping some one knew of a site that has done the comparison and could give a link to it.

Thank you

[ReF]

I wouldn't buy the PNY, simpletech, or kingston cards as i have read about many many failures with their cards. PNY seems to be the worst, as they seem to have the most failures and are horrible at honoring their warranty. i'd stick to Lexar or Sandisk. Sandisk Ultra cards are rated at 10mb read and 9mb write, which translates to about 60x speed I believe. The lexar cards have their speed ratings labeled right on the cards. I recall reading somewhere that 8x speed is considered high speed and will meet most people's needs, while the sandisk ultra cards are faster than any camera is capable of reading/writing. Last time i checked, the fastest cams write at around 20x speed, so i guess the lexar 80x cards are extremely overkill huh?

[John_Reed]

I just ordered, though won't be allowed to use till Christmas, a Cannon SD300, and know that I need more than the 16 MB SD card that it comes with. I plan on buying a high speed card, but have no basis of comparison between brands. PNY posts the speed for their fast Cards, 5 MB/sec, and I have seen in another post that Panasonic has 10 MB/sec cards. I was hoping some one knew of a site that has done the comparison and could give a link to it.

Thank you

I have a 1GB PQI card that I use in my FZ10, which seems to be faster even than my Panasonic 256MB card. I haven't heard any complaints about anyone using one of these cards, maybe someone has more info on that?

[JavaDan]

I have several SanDisk UltraII's. No problems so far.

Another really well-rated, high-speed card is the KingMax. They are 10mb/sec and are much cheaper than the SanDisk. Although I don't use Lexar for the camera - I've used them with my GPS without problems.

A good, reputable site to look at for the KingMax is www.newegg.com

Regards.

--Dan

[kornhauser]

Cheapest. Never had a problem with any SD or compact flash.

[lslaback]

I've got the same question (re Sd vs SD Ultra II) with a twist. I too have a Canon SD200 on order for Xmas. While the SD Ultra II has a faster capability my question is - will the SD200 camera utilize that capability? Does it have the capability of storing and reading data faster? I guess the related question is - is the read/write speed of this camera (and others) media limited?
Thanks.
P.S. I read thru many of the postings to see if this was discussed. No luck.
P.P.S. In the great reviews on the dcresource site what media speed version is used to test the cameras?

[spielmanmj]

Just got my SD300 yesterday and bought a PNY 512MB SD card. I am now on hold with tech support at PNY so I thought I would mention this issue to the forum. Don't buy PNY! It works fine for stills but will only give me 19 seconds of video at the default settings. Also, takes a long time to write to the disk.

As soon as some idiot at PNY tech support answers the phone I will let everyone know what they say. Hopefully Best Buy will take it back even though I have used it.

Cheers,

-M