{"id":1462,"date":"2012-08-23T08:31:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/test\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2012-08-23T08:32:26","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T07:32:26","slug":"how-fast-is-your-memory-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/?p=1462","title":{"rendered":"How fast is your memory card?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Card-speeds\"<\/a>The other day whilst I was running a lighting training session one of my students filled up his memory card. Fortunately he\u2019d packed an older spare card so we swapped to that and carried on shooting.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s so unusual about that you may ask. Well, nothing. But what happened next got me thinking.<\/p>\n

He was shooting in RAW+JPG and when we inserted his memory card into my card reader the JPG\u2019s opened fine but every RAW file was corrupted. How could this be? Put simply the memory card couldn\u2019t keep up with the RAW data and the images corrupted.<\/p>\n

The need for speed<\/u><\/strong><\/font>
So how fast a memory card do you need? Well if you\u2019ve using a modern DSLR camera and shooting RAW then there\u2019s a lot data to move. Although pretty much any card from a respectable brand will work just fine, using a faster card means less buffering time and quicker file transfers to your computer.<\/p>\n

As a very rough guide a RAW image is a bit over 1MB per million pixels, so something like my Canon 5D Mk2, which has 22 million pixels, will produce a 25MB file for each RAW image.<\/p>\n

X-Speed vs MB\/S<\/u><\/strong><\/font> 
When buying memory cards you\u2019ll find their speed is listed in one of two ways. It\u2019ll be either Megabytes Per Second (e.g. 30 MB\/S) or X speed ratings (e.g. 100X). This throws up a bit of confusion, which is faster.<\/p>\n

Fortunately there is a formula for converting X speeds to MB\/S.<\/p>\n

One speed is 150 Kilobytes per second (KB\/S), so a 100x speed memory card is 15000KB\/S or the same speed as a 15MB\/S memory card.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So if maths isn\u2019t your strong point you may find this table helpful when comparing cards.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Common X \u2013 Speed<\/strong><\/td>\n\n

Megabytes Per Second MB\/S<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

40x<\/strong><\/td>\n6 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
60x<\/strong><\/td>\n9 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
100x<\/strong><\/td>\n15 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
133x<\/strong><\/td>\n20 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
166x<\/strong><\/td>\n25 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
200x<\/strong><\/td>\n30 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
400x<\/strong><\/td>\n60 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1000x<\/strong><\/td>\n150 MB\/S<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that memory card speeds relate to their write speed not their read speed. Read speeds are often different and usually faster then the write speeds.<\/p>\n

Faster isn\u2019t always better<\/u><\/strong><\/font>
It\u2019s worth noting that simply having a faster card doesn\u2019t mean it will work faster. Camera\u2019s, card readers and computers will all play their part when it comes to speed. If your device isn\u2019t able to work at the fastest speed your card offers, you won\u2019t see the benefit. A prime example of that is using a high speed card in a USB2 card reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day whilst I was running a lighting training session one of my students filled up his memory card. Fortunately he\u2019d packed an older spare card so we swapped to that and carried on shooting. So what\u2019s so unusual about that you may ask. Well, nothing. But what happened next got me thinking. He … Continue reading How fast is your memory card?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1482,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}