Hi Mark, Sounds like your X's Drive is the bottlekneck. A number of us have bought Transcend 2 gig cards from New Egg. They sell for less than fifty bucks and are as fast as the Sandisk cards. My cards dowload to my Mac in about two minutes via a firewire card reader. Can't remember the brand name. But twenty minutes is WAY too long. Paul On Dec 3, 2006, at 8:34 PM, Mark Cassino wrote:
> 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 -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
