I need a SD card for a Samsung PL60 camera.
1. How big does it have to be? I'm sure that 200 shots will be loads and loads and loads - a far cry from being limited to 36 on a roll of film... I'm guessing that 8GB will be all I ever need and more.
2. What "class"? looking at mymemory.co.uk there is a large difference in price.
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M, depends. :-) Does the manual not say how many shots you can record on a given sized card? It will depend upon how many Mp the sensor has and how you record.
For instance I'm using a 4GB Sandisk Extreme 3 in a Nikon D60, 10Mp, recorded as largest, fine JPEGs I'll get 500 photos on it.
As for class, I have failed to make any sense of that. I think it's marketing. For a compact you won't need a very fast card but given that my card only cost £20 and it's 30MB/sec there's no harm in buying a faster one.
Many people suggest using 2 * 4 rather than 1 * 8 since if anything should go wrong you have less to lose.
Just don't change it in the street as I have seen done, with card being dropped ;-(
JH
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>> Does the manual not say how many shots you can record on
>> a given sized card?
If you have transferred any to your PC, you should be able to see what sort of size each picture is. Eg. ones I have taken recently vary between 1 and 1.5Mb, so I can fit well over 2000 of them on my 4Gb cards.
However, video can eat up memory - do you intend taking any? If so, try experimenting to see what sort of size files it generates.
My £50 digital tells me how many more pictures or the amount of video I can take at the current resolution etc, so you should be able to empty your current card, see what it says, and multiply accordingly.
>> As for class, I have failed to make any sense of that. I think it's
>> marketing.
I think it might make a difference when taking video, as the camera has to be able to store the video data on the card at the rate it is being generated. Not sure it can do that with a high resolution and/or frame rate with a 'slow' card? Also means you can transfer the data off the card onto your PC quicker, not that that's usually very important.
>> Many people suggest using 2 * 4 rather than 1 * 8 since if anything
>> should go wrong you have less to lose.
I bought 2 class 4 4Gb micro-SDHC cards with adapters from a seller on Amazon for under £7 each. I chose micro rather than normal SD so I've got the option of using them in my mobile phone.
Last edited by: Focus on Tue 11 May 10 at 13:24
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Focus,
if you go to the mymemory web site, select sdhc, 4GB you will see, adjacent to one another;
Sandisk Extreme 3 30MB/sec class 6
Sandisk Extreme 3 20MB/sec class 6
Sandisk Extreme 30MB/sec class 10
So "class" is no help in determining speed I'm afraid and I still don't know what it signifies, if indeed anything.
Still, at least sandisk have the decency to put a speed on their cards rather than many who rate them as (e.g.) 133*. 133* what? It's not a very honest way of publishing the speed.
JH
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>> So "class" is no help in determining speed I'm afraid and I still don't know
>> what it signifies, if indeed anything.
It should be, according to this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#Speed_Class_Rating
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Thanks Focus. The 30MB/sec etc figures are no doubt best speeds, so the class sets a lower bound, minimum speed. Useful. Though I'd still prefer to see actual, meaningful units.
I had no idea that the "*" ratings were based on ye olde CD drive. How quaint. Arcane. Useless. You may as well calibrate a speedometer in "Model Ts".
JH
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It'll take an 8GB SD card, so use that. I'd guess you could take about 3,000 pictures on that card. Get a fast one, I use SanDisk Ext. III - it helps speed of picture taking in "bursts", and is far better for 30FPS video.
Do not forget to back up your pictures straight after you've taken them.
Find some easy way of cataloguing and annotating the images!
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>> and is far better for 30FPS video.
Isn't it binary ie. it works (can transfer quick enough) or it doesn't?
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you need the cheapest 4gb card you can find. Dont worry about class. As long as the pictures get sucked off the card on a regular basis, you dont need to get complex about it. Speed is not a factor unless you are recording HD video or instant multiple shots at maximum detail.
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>> Speed is not a factor unless you are recording HD
>> video or instant multiple shots at maximum detail.
I've just dug out a video taken recently - it's 19s long and the AVI file is 22Mb. So the minimum SDHC class 2 speed of 2Mb/s should be ok as Zero says, although I'm not sure I'd trust a class 1 if there are such things.
EDIT: video is 640x400 @ 30fps I think - cheap digital
Last edited by: Focus on Tue 11 May 10 at 15:47
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I always use SanDisk memory cards and you can find information about their capabilities at:
www.sandisk.co.uk/products/productdisplay.aspx?catid=1003
Those using both RAW/.jpeg files for digital photographs will obviously reduce the number of shots per memory card.
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>> you need the cheapest 4gb card you can find. (..) Speed is not a factor
>> unless you are recording HD video or instant multiple shots at maximum detail.
My Aldicamera would not take 30FPS on a cheap card. With a good one, it will, and speed in "burst" mode is far better shot-to-shot. There's little point in not buying a "good" card, but instead under-utilising the capabilities of your camera to save a few £ with the cheap card. There're also benefits in buying a decent card - free recovery S/W, for instance.
Last edited by: FotheringtonTomas on Tue 11 May 10 at 20:41
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you cant "underutilise" an Aldi camera.
and free recovery softwre is as worthy as its price.
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It's quite a good camera, actually, for a P&S, however that's beside the point re. cards (except that the point I made about "burst" and video is quite valid). Free S/W from Sandisk worked on a colleague's card, so I'm not complaining about the few quid extra the card cost over the cheap POS that you recommend.
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well if you saved money on the card, you would have more money to buy the car you cant afford.
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Ah. Well, now yer torkin'. The money I saved would enable me to buy a "new" car twice as expensive as the last! At least!
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I don't understand why people buy unknown brand cameras when you can buy a "proper" brand, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Fuji etc, at a very reasonable price. And you get what you pay for.
As for cards, I bought a 4GB card to replace a 2GB but I also moved from Sandisk Ultra (10MB/sec?) to an Extreme (30MB/sec). It makes little difference to the number of photos I can take before the buffer fills. What does make a BIG difference is turning off the fancy features, the D Lighting. Do that and it takes shots until i get bored or the card fills, the former comes first, on either card.
If you want recovery software Recuva from the excellent ccleaner people works a treat. If you've paid for recovery software, you've been had.
JH
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 12 May 10 at 09:44
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>> I don't understand why people buy unknown brand cameras when you can buy a "proper"
>> brand, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Fuji etc, at a very reasonable price.
In this case, the money I paid would not have bought one of the above with similar spec. The quality of this particular one is good - it might or might not be true for all sold by that shop, though.
There was also the matter of the free 3-year warranty, and the bits 'n' bobs that came with it. It was a "Traveler DC-8600", FWIW. Getting a bit old now, but still useful.
>> And you get what you pay for.
Up to a point. "Big names" do sometimes come out with guff, though.
>> As for cards, I bought a 4GB card to replace a 2GB but I also
>> moved from Sandisk Ultra (10MB/sec?) to an Extreme (30MB/sec). It makes
>> little difference to the number of photos I can take before the buffer fills.
What buffer? In-camera memory? That could be the bottleneck.
>> What does make a BIG
>> difference is turning off the fancy features, the D Lighting. Do that and it takes
>> shots until i get bored or the card fills, the former comes first, on either
>> card.
If your pictures take more storage space, you'll fill the card with fewer of them - nothing to do with the I/O capabilities of the card, just the capacity.
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>> I don't understand why people buy unknown brand cameras when you can buy a "proper"
>> brand, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Fuji etc, at a very reasonable price. And you get what
>> you pay for.
I suspect the technology and the lenses are all made in the same factory in China, whatever the brand. For £50, it's about the same price as having a couple of 36 shot rolls developed. Samsung is a very reputable brand elsewhere in the electronics world; with a digital camera the key is the electronics, not the camera, surely.
It would be different if I were buying a DSLR, but this is something that will sit in a pocket with a bunch of keys. And in any event, who ever blows up photographs to anything like the resolution that 10 Mpixels will do - when in any event the compact lens runs out of resolution at 3Mpixels.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Wed 12 May 10 at 12:26
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Samsung are very much mainstream. They clearly have ambitions to become not just mainstream but even premium in many areas (e.g. tvs). the days when you could only get them from Currys and they were junk are long gone. I just wish they'd write their manuals is English English rather than Korean English :-)
Personally I'd rather have a Pentax Optio E70L for £49 than a brand name I've never heard of. The latter might be ok. Then again it might not be. Pentax have a name to live up to and a reputation to lose. But it would never do for us all to be the same. I guess that's how Samsung emerged.
:-)
JH
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>> Personally I'd rather have a Pentax Optio E70L for £49 than a brand name I've
>> never heard of.
Ah, but that machine is a known POS. A different one has a major chance of being better!
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each to his own FT :-) we must give the marketing departments a headache :-)
JH
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>> you need the cheapest 4gb card you can find. >>
Noooooooooooooo
Get a top brand, Lexar or Sandisk.
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SDHC - what class? - Tooslow
