I'll be the first to say that I prefer CF cards over SD, simply because the SD cards feel like potato chips when I handle them and I'm afraid I'll break 'em. Maybe I'll get over it.
Anyhow - I I bought my K10D I with a Sandisk Extreme III 2 gig SD card. While it is fast to write to, it still takes about 20 minutes to dump to my X's Drive II. So having a second card became an imperative. I was in the office supply store today and saw a deal I couldn't refuse - a 2 gig SD card for $25 (after mail in rebates.) It's a Dane-Elec card - not their accelerated card, but their bagain basement model. In a very un-scientific test: - The SanDisk Extreme III is at least twice as fat as the bargain basement card in terms of write times. Once the camera buffer is full, write-time per frame varies; but using DNG RAW files it seemed to write a file a second or less. The inexpensive card took a second or two per frame once the buffer was filled. - After filling the buffer, the it took about 10-15 seconds to write everything to the SanDisk. The Dane-Elec took 30-40 seconds. - The cards took equal time to write to an X's Drive II. Overall - all speeds are much faster than the *ist-D. I think the faster shooting speed will be of benefit for me in a few instances - from time to time I miss a dragonfly shot because the camera is writing to the card - but overall I don't have a need for speed beyond 3 to 5 shots that usually are handled by the camera buffer. Write time to the X's drive is a bigger issue for me - it took a solid 20 minutes to download each card to the X's Drive II. In my past shooting experience, downloading cards was the biggest bottle neck, and I'd want to make sure I had enough flash cards to wait out painfully slow download speeds. At any rate - I'm asking for another Extreme III card for Xmas (unless there is a faster card I should ask for.) - MCC - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mark Cassino Photography Kalamazoo www.markcassino.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
