Compact Flash card speeds.

[leemoreau]

Hey everyone I have a question about the speed of memory cards. I only realized now that compact flash cards come in various speeds. I have a 2mp camera and have always used the 64mb card and never needed more. I'm looking to buy the Canon S400 and now I'm noticing that CF comes in different speeds such as 12x, 40x etc. I was just curious, where can I find out what speed the S400 supports? I can't seem to find that anywhere. Or does it not matter? Is there a huge difference in speed between a 12x and 40x CF card? Thanks so much.

[eric s]

Well, support isn't really the right word, but it's close. Cameras usually have a CF card size limit (won't work pass size X), but not a speed limit (won't work past speed X.)

A better word would be utilize. Most consumer grade cameras don't take advantage of the faster cards. The usual statement around here is that it isn't worth buying something faster than about 12-18x.

The situation is that if your camera can't write any faster, it doesn't matter if the CF card can write faster... it doesn't have anything to write.

No one really publishes the write speed of their camera. I wish they did. Also, since there are differences in the internals of different brands of CF card, two cards with the same speed rating won't actually write at the same speed as each other. This is because the internals of one card might better matchup with the needs of the camera. I could go into detail if you care, I've written software drivers for flash memory before.

Eric