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Fastest memory card for DP1?

RvN

New member
Hi and greetings from the Netherlands,

I'm new to the forum. Have been reading the forum here and somehow ended I ended up with two new camera's.. :thumbup:

A user GRD and a new DP1 is coming.

For the GRD I saw a post where various Memorycards were tested and a significant difference was measured (even between the fastest cards of the various brands. Lexar SD pro 133 supposedly faster then Sandisk)

So my question is: What memory card should I get for the DP1. What is in your experience the faster card for this camera?

Thanks,

Roel
 

Streetshooter

Subscriber Member
Get the Lexar Professional 133x. It actually writes much faster but they can't say it does....great card...or some what cheaper and just as good...

Efilm Pro SDHC Class 6 by Delkin Devices......
This will probably raise a few eyebrows but don't, do not ever use Sansdisk crapola...

I have many friends that feel the same way after the same thing happened.....

don
 

fordfanjpn

Member
Get the Lexar Professional 133x. It actually writes much faster but they can't say it does....great card...or some what cheaper and just as good...

Efilm Pro SDHC Class 6 by Delkin Devices......
This will probably raise a few eyebrows but don't, do not ever use Sansdisk crapola...

I have many friends that feel the same way after the same thing happened.....

don
Just FYI, the only cards I have ever had any problems with were Lexar's. However, those were CF cards, not SD. I have been using Sandisk Extreme III cards in the GRD2, DP1 and M8 for quite a while with no problems at all. YMMV.

Bill
 

trisberg

New member
I don't think the card speed matters that much in the DP1. There is a significant pause when the camera processes the image and that happens before the red write light starts blinking. During this processing time you see an hourglass on the screen and it is a constant 5s regardless of what card I put in or even without a card.

The time to write to the card card varies from 3s for the fastest card I have (Sandisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition - sorry Shooter) to 4 seconds for an old Simple tech 256MB ProX card.

The total time (processing + writing) was 8-9s. You can take another picture about half a second after the hourglass goes away, as long as you don't need to change any camera settings. So it seems that the DP1 has the ability to process the second image while it's writing the first one - pretty impressive :)

Bottom line, I won't waste money on fast cards for the DP1. Tried the same cards in a Rebel XSi and there was a significant difference in the write speeds between the fastest and slowest card (2-3x faster). The XSi managed over 15 shots to the DP1's 2 in the same amount of time. But we didn't buy the DP1 for its blazing speed, did we :)

-Thomas
 

4season

Well-known member
The time to write to the card card varies from 3s for the fastest card I have (Sandisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition - sorry Shooter) to 4 seconds for an old Simple tech 256MB ProX card.

[stuff deleted]

Bottom line, I won't waste money on fast cards for the DP1.
By coincidence, I had just finished some informal tests, comparing the Lexar Pro 133x (8 gb), Sandisk Extreme III 200x (8 gb), an inexpensive Transcend Class 6 card (8 gb)--and 2 gigabyte SD cards including a Sandisk Extreme III and Transcend 133x. I tested using three different cameras: A Leica M8, a Ricoh GX100, and my Sigma DP1.

To make a long story short, I saw about the same results as Thomas, with the Transcend Class 6 being slowest, the Sandisk Extreme IIIs and Transcend 133x cards being the fastest, and the Lexar Pro seeming just a wee bit slower than the Sandisk Extreme IIIs and Transcend 133x. Like Thomas, I saw about a 1 second difference between the fastest and the slowest cards.

At just under $40 for 8 gigabytes (on sale at Best buy through the 14th of March), I felt the Sandisk Extreme III 30 MB/s Edition was an alright buy.
 

iiiNelson

Well-known member
I bought a SanDisk Extreme III the same week my D-Lux 4 came for $40 from Best Buy. Good card IMO but I've had good luck with SanDisk cards in general since I've used them since I got my Digital Rebel over 6 yrs ago. Thoe CF cards still work well to this day. That said there isn't just one good card and anyone can put out a bad one truthfully. I hardly think the relatively few bad cards out there is a large sample compared to how many cards they actually have out there.
 
S

SimonL

Guest
Don't buy memory cards off eBay or dealers without a solid reputation - there are many, many fakes out there
 

RvN

New member
Thanks guys for the quick and informative responses. I have a Lexar Pro 133 coming. Will test that against the Sandisk Extreme III 30mb/s I use in my G1.

Is there a maximum size of cards you can use for the DP1?

Roel
 

4season

Well-known member
Is there a maximum size of cards you can use for the DP1?
Should be 32 gigabytes, which is the maximum under the SDHC spec. The new, higher-capacity SDXC cards aren't compatible with the DP1 or anything else, right now.
 

Rawfa

Active member
Has anyone tried these faster cards with the DP1? Is there really a noticeable speed difference?
 
J

JCdeR

Guest
I recall hearing that the smaller size of the card the faster it will be, a small sized fast card that is..... sounds logical to me but then I know nothing about these things
 
J

JCdeR

Guest
and the DP will remain slow, perhaps you can achieve a bit faster than utterly slow, but still slow.
Maybe adapt your style instead of your cards....
 
O

Oxide Blu

Guest
I recall hearing that the smaller size of the card the faster it will be, a small sized fast card that is..... sounds logical to me but then I know nothing about these things
It's the difference in the memory cell technology. An SD card is single layer cells, has faster access times, but is limited in the number of memory cells (bits) that will fit on a chip, the X and Y dimensions -- 2gb. Multi-layer cards, SD HC, stacks the bits on top of each other in layers on a single chip, slower access time, lots more bits in the X, the Y, and now a Z dimension -- 4gb, 8gb, ... 32gb, 64gb ...

The diff in access time between the two memory technologies is lost on me and my digital photography. I'm of the impression it was more critical with video, where streaming write or reading over a longer period of time happens. And how the device buffers that reading/writing can make that transparent, too.
 

Rawfa

Active member
I've recently tested 2 different 8gb sd cards and the difference was really noticeable. As soon as I received the DP1 grabbed the first SD card in front of me and headed out the door for shooting. When I first started the DP1 I was like "Jesus, I didn't remember the DP1 to be THIS slow at starting up". I got really frustrated because I REALLY didn't recall the DP1 to be THIS slow. I got home and I saw that I was using a generic ("green memory" is the brand) SD memory card. I then replaced it with a Transcend and the difference was really noticeable. The Transcend is a pretty standard SD card, so I was wondering how faster can it get with these new high speed cards.
 
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