Compact Flash vs SD

Bayer-Z28 · September 13, 2007

I'm not a DIE HARD Professional Photographer, I just want to take good pictures.. I'm looking at a Nikon D80 to replace my POS Lumix FZ20. This will be my first DSLR camera.

I thought I remember hearing that the SD cards aren't as good as the Compact Flash card.. Something about the processor speed. :scratch

Can someone shed some light on this for me? Thanx..

Art Scott · September 13, 2007

I haven't tried to do a GOOGLE for a comparison but I have noticed that the speeds on SD are getting quite fast....my preference is CF fortheir physical size which relates to ease of handling in extremely cold bitter winter weather and the fact that I would probably lose an SD card faster than I have lost a CF card or 2 but they were found well after being needed............:D

edit: google results below:

Steve Digicams

CORE-SOUND

every thing I found was old but I suspect that if you go to invidual mfg'ers of the cards (Lexar, San Disk, Transcend etc etc) that you will see that the read and write speeds for the Pro or top line cards are really close if not identical..................

Richard · September 13, 2007

Bayer-Z28 wrote:

I'm not a DIE HARD Professional Photographer, I just want to take good pictures.. I'm looking at a Nikon D80 to replace my POS Lumix FZ20. This will be my first DSLR camera.

I thought I remember hearing that the SD cards aren't as good as the Compact Flash card.. Something about the processor speed.

Can someone shed some light on this for me? Thanx..

I think the differences are now pretty minor. There are certainly much more important things to consider when choosing a camera.

Regards,

ziggy53 · September 13, 2007

Bayer-Z28 wrote:

... I'm looking at a Nikon D80 to replace my POS Lumix FZ20. ...

I thought I remember hearing that the SD cards aren't as good as the Compact Flash card.. Something about the processor speed.

Can someone shed some light on this for me? Thanx..

Memory cards have a very small processor section as part of their "controller", which, it (the controller section) turns out, is very key to overall speed in a system.

SD cards were produced after CF (compact flash) and tend to come in two speeds, slow and much faster. The slower cards are usually distinguished by not having a speed designation and very low cost. They can be useful for transferring small amounts of data between computers, but I don't recommend them for camera use (except for casual situations where speed doesn't matter). The faster cards tend to be quite fast indeed and can pretty well match the better CF cards on the market.

CF cards have been around for a very long time and come in a variety of speeds. The fastest CF cards pretty well match the fastest SD cards, at least close enough that it should not matter in most situations.

The only cameras, that I know of, that can use both cards is the Canon 1D MK(x) series of cameras. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) There is a decent test of both card types (using the Canon 1D MKIIN) at:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-8200

Note that particular card types and manufactuers can have a great impact on card speed. Note also that cards over 2 GB tend to run a bit slower than those 2 Gig or less. I have standardized on Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB cards as I believe them to be the best performance/cost relationship that have also been very reliable.

I try not to load the cards past 80 percent full as I found that last bit of card space is both slower to write and where errors may occur (when they did occur). I also try not to erase any images in the field as that leaves "holes" in the FAT (file allocation table) which make it difficult for the card to relay available space to the camera, resulting in occasional loss. I always format the cards prior to use, in the device that they will be used in.

The data for the Nikon D80 is here:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-8531

It appears that the Sandisk Ultra III 2 GB cards are very speedy indeed in this camera, so that would be my recommendation to you.

Bayer-Z28 · September 14, 2007

Sweet! Thanx for the help y'all! I guess it's not as bad as I thought! :ivar

And ziggy, thanx for the recomendation.

photobanks · September 14, 2007

Having a Canon 1D MKII n I use both cards in my camera. I use the Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB (both SD & CF), and have not seem any noticeable difference in speeds, even when continually snapping away!!

Michael

simplykristi · September 17, 2007

I have a SanDisk 4 GB Extreme III SDHC in my new Canon G+. I have a SanDisk 2 GB Ultra CF card in my old Canon G6. There's a definite difference in speed and price. The SDHC is much faster and cheaper than the CF card.

Compact Flash vs SD

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