compact flash speeds

[jwangelin]

Hi,
Is there really any noticeable difference in read/write speeds of compact flash cards when they get to 10 - 20 mb/sec? I just got a D70 and wonder if at those speeds if they are all just "really fast". I picked up a sandisk ultra 11 4gb (I know that is huge but it was only $5 more than the 2gb). Extreme 111 cards are even faster but come with rescue pro. Do these ramblings make any sense? Am I worrying about too much?

Thanks in advance,
Jon

[epaul6]

I have a D70 and this is my experience. If you shoot in single mode, card speed does not matter. If you are in continuous mode you may notice a slight difference if the card is faster. The D70 will shoot at 3 frames per second in normal jpeg mode for as long as you hold down the shutter button (why you would do that I don't know). The camera has a buffer that is displayed in the view finder in red in the lower right corner. That tells you how many shots you can shoot before the buffer is full. it starts with a small letter r then the number of shots before the buffer is full.

Where you see a difference is when you download shots from a card reader to your computer. Faster cards do download faster.

You may want to check out the digitutor from the Nikon site. Here is the one for the D70. It will tell you all you want to know about your D70. http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d70/index.php

[RonH]

I recently shot secondary camera at a wedding. I purchased a new larger and faster card. When I switched to that card I noticed a difference when I was shooting several pictures in a row. Also if I chose to shoot a burst or bracket it made a difference. I tried it in both RAW and Jpeg. I will only buy 133X as a minimum now.

[lexcell]

Buy the fastest card you can afford. It will allow your camera to perform at it's optimum speed and will download to your computer much faster.