I bought a Panasonic Lumix 14MP camera after my 7MP Sony focus stopped working. The camera needed some memory, so I started looking at all the options.
The Lumix does 720p video, which takes up a lot of space. Shooting video also requires a fairly fast transfer rate, so I started reviewing different card classes.
Class 2 - not fast enough.
Class 4 - maybe fast enough, but that 'possibly not' made me start looking at Class 6 and 10.
Class 10 - definitely fast enough, but way too expensive for what you get. I don't want to spend more on a memory card than I spent on the camera.
Class 6 - looks like the right speed and price-point for what I want.
My (then) fiancee and I were planning a trip to Hawaii, so I anticipated shooting many pictures and videos. 16GB should do.
When I popped the card in the camera, no formatting was needed, and it just worked. Great!
I shot a few pictures and video around the house.
I took the memory card out, put it in the SD card slot in my Dell E6400 laptop.
Copying the files from the card worked at about 15MB - 18MB/sec. Not bad, when the card shows 20MB/sec max speed.
I copied files to the card, and got roughly 12MB - 14MB/sec transfer rate. That's pretty good for writes to flash memory.
With decent transfer rates and the right amount of capacity, we went to Hawaii.
I shot multiple days of pictures and a couple 720p videos, never having to offload anything from the camera to the laptop.
After a week, we went to Kauai. We had a 1 hour helicopter tour scheduled the next day, so I decided to offload everything to the laptop so I could start with an empty memory stick.
During the flight, I switched back and forth between 14MP pictures and full 720p video. The camera was shooting something almost the entire hour, and I ended the flight with approximately ~50 pictures of space left. Nice.
Check out the final video here (view in 720p full screen for the best picture):
[...]
Overall, I am very satisfied with the memory card. It does the job, and I didn't need to spend the extra cash on the class 10 card. 16GB is enough capacity, although I would recommend 2 cards (and 2 batteries) if you are going to shoot 720p video for multiple days. SanDisk Extreme HD Video - Flash memory card - 16 GB - Class 6 - 133x - SDHC
When you're in tune with your photo equipment you can tell when something just feels right. My older Canon point-and-shoot always seemed just a little quicker when using a SanDisk class 4 card. When I ordered my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ40 14.1 MP Digital Camera with 24x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Black) I looked at a lot of SD cards but ended up ordering this class 6 SanDisk Extreme HD. I wanted a class 10 but let's face it, they are really expensive, so I hoped this class 6 would work out. The camera not only shoots 14.1 megapixel HD stills but records 60 fps HD 1080i video as well. After using the camera and card for about a week this card seems a good overall choice.
With this SanDisk class 6 there is no lag whatsoever when shooting in any of the video modes from 30 fps jpeg. to 60 fps 1080i superfine. To verify the quality, I played the video back on a 46" 1080p HD tv and could find no dropouts or jitter. What amazed me is that there was no lag at all even when shooting 220 fps to make a slow motion video. Ok, the card is great for video and should work well for any HD camcorder.
Switching to normal camera mode the card was excellent for rapid shots and didn't hold the camera back when shooting at 14.1 megapixels super fine in any size format including 1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and so on. Note I did say "normal" mode. The Panasonic has several burst modes including 11 fps at 14.1 megapixels with mechanical shutter. Shooting at 11 fps required a couple of seconds for recovery after the last shot. When shooting 60 fps at 3.5 megapixels with the electronic shutter, 10-12 seconds were required to finish writing to the card before another shot could be taken. Was this due to the card or to the camera? I don't know and I don't have the equipment or knowledge to make a factual determination. Realistically how often does anyone but a professional photographer need to shoot at this speed? I may buy a single class 10 card to determine if it is faster in this particular camera.
A couple of days ago I happened on a website that tested a variety of SD card brands and types and a few CF cards as well. Using 11 Canons, 9 Nikons, and 1 Sony DSLR they tested each card in each camera in a variety of ways. Although this particular card wasn't tested a pair of SanDisk Extreme III cards either composed the top 10% for speed or were within the top 10% in each test. The SanDisk cards as a whole seemed to perform better than comparable cards from other manufacturers. Sadly Amazon would not let me post the link to that site in my review even though I tried twice. I think links can be posted in comments so I may ask someone to log in and provide the link in a comment.
SanDisk cards may be more expensive than other brands but they always seem perform better than other cards. In six years of using SD cards I've never experienced a failure with SanDisk. As an additional benefit when buying a SanDisk Extreme or Extreme Pro you get a link and a code to download a free copy of RescuePro software which can help recover images or videos that were accidentally deleted or from a corrupted card. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but at least you have a better chance of recovery than if you don't use it.
If you're serious about your pictures or videos, you need a SanDisk Extreme card.
I've bought two of these now, product is great, as a professional photographer SanDisk always serves me well, these were bought for a new video camera and I expect as much from them as the ones I have for still photography. Service was good and shipping time was excellent. Would certainly buy from them again.... - Hd Video - 16 Gb - Sandisk - Memory Card'
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