While trying to work out which SD card I should get for a new camera, I came upon these new choices for me:
- SD or SDHC
- Class 2 or Class 4
and of course the size, all the way up to 32Gb
The difference between Class 2 and Class 4…
Class 2 cards are designed for a minimum sustained transfer rate of 2 megabytes per second (MB/s)
Class 10 cards are designed for a minimum sustained transfer rate of 10 megabytes per second (MB/s)
Now that makes sense, so my Class 2 card is a slow one, but cheaper than a class 4.
SD or SDHC ? It seems that SD cards only go up to 4GB. maybe the HC stands for High Capacity, as they go up to 32GB (at least).
SanDisk classes the 32Gb Class 2 card as a “standard” SDHC card, and is under $100.
The SanDisk Extreme 32Gb is a class 10 card but with 30MB/s speed, although with an RRP of $388.99 at the time of writing… ouch.
Amazon: 32Gb SDHC Memory Cards
A Class 10 card with 30MB/s speed really means a minimum of 10MB/sec and a maximum of 30MB/s.
How important is this speed ?
The faster the card is rated then the faster it can save the photo to the card and be ready to take another picture.
The SanDisk Extreme would be a good card to have in some situations, but my Standard class 2 card will do for normal usage.
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