What's the difference between cheap SDHC cards and HiSpeed o

[Sjoerd]

Hello,

What the difference besides the price between 8 or 16 Gig SDHC Hi speed or class 6 etc. cards and 8 or 16 Gig cards which are much cheaper?

Has it o do which recording photo's and movies to the card or/and downloading the files to a computer?

I want to use the card in a pentax w60 or panasonic LX3. I make often movies with it and also photo's off course (but not in a quick serie) mostly snapshots. I don't care about downloading times (i like to drink coffee).

So do I need a fast and expensive SDHC card?

[JimC]

Welcome to the forums.

All larger Secure Digital cards like that should be SDHC. It's just a matter of how fast they are. As inexpensive as memory cards are anymore (check vendors like http://www.newegg.com for examples), I'd get a fast Class 6 SDHC card if budget permits (capable of sustaining a 6MB/Second write speed), as some cameras may have problems recording higher quality video to a slower card.

See this page for information on the differences between different types of memory cards:

Flash Memory types - Secure Digital Cards

[Mahgie]

OMG, so why do the camera companies try to sell this stuff for hundreds?. Thanks for the link Jim, that was going to be my next question on my buying list and here it was answered.

So a: RiDATA Lightning 16GB Secure Digital (SD) Class 6 High-Capacity(SDHC) Flash Card Model SDHCR16G-LIG6 - will go with a camera like the sony alpha 350?

Do people usually like to go with a couple smaller cards, or one big one?

Thanks,

Maggie

[JimC]

Mahgie wrote:

So a: RiDATA Lightning 16GB Secure Digital (SD) Class 6 High-Capacity(SDHC) Flash Card Model SDHCR16G-LIG6 - will go with a camera like the sony alpha 350?

No. That's a Secure Digital card, which is a different type of memory card compared to what the Sony A350 uses.

The A350 uses CompactFlash memory cards, which are physically larger than Secure Digital Cards. ;-)

Do people usually like to go with a couple smaller cards, or one big one?

Flash Memory Prices have been dropping pretty fast, with larger and larger cards available at a good price point. That's the way technology works (larger and faster flash memory cards, hard disk drives, etc., for better prices as time passes). So, I think more people are starting to buy larger cards now. You'll still want to have a spare, just in case anything goes wrong with one (corruption, etc.).

But, larger cards are definitely more affordable now than they were not too long ago. For example, I bought a 16GB 133x Transcend CompactFlash Card for my Sony A700 less than a year ago, that's now selling for around 1/3 the price I paid for it then. It's down to under $50 delivered now at newegg.com (and it's got a lifetime warranty, as you can see on it's packaging if you look at the photos in the listing).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820208337

[Sjoerd]

That's helpful but i'm still curious what's the difference between a class 2, 4 or 6 card in relation to my pentax w60 camera. I mean, with a class 2 or 4 card, can I make HDvideo? as to the card is full?

Another question, my pentax w60 accepts a 8 gig class 6, does it mean it also can take a class 4 32 gig card (and still records hdvideo etc.)?

[Mahgie]

Well I will be corrected if I'm wrong. But my understanding is the speed in which the card takes information. So the gig is how much info the card will take and the class is how fast. It won't speed up the camera itself, but if you have a card slower than the camera it may slow the camera or cause errors.

Class 2 cards will transfer data at 2MB/s, Class 4 cards at 5MB/s and Class 6 cards have a transfer rate of 20MB/s ( I think thats right ). So you want to find out how fast your camera writes its info and get a card at least that fast for opt performance.

Hope that helps :G

Maggie