Compact Flash Questions

[Steve_T]

Looking a purchasing a 1GB card, so I have a few questions.

1) Do you gain an advantage from higher speed compact flash, without using a high end camera (have a coolpix 5700 currently)
2) Who makes the best compact flash?
3) Who sells it the cheapest?

Thanks a lot and merry Chrimbo,

Steve.

[Mad Dave]

7dayshop.com sell 1GB cards for about £50.

[zetec]

I have a coolpix 5700 and use Sandisk Ultra2 CF cards purchased from www.picstop.co.uk .

The faster the card, the quicker you are able to take the next picture especially if you shoot in TIFF or RAW.

[Phil S]

SanDisc Ultra 2 2GB cards were going on fleaBay for under £100 a week or so ago.

Faster cards make a HUGE difference, try and get something advertised as high speed or at least 40x etc.

The Ultra 2's have a write speed of around 10Mb/second and Kingston go upto around 12MB/sec now. You really don't want to be stuck writing a 15Mb image at 1 Mb/sec, especially if you camera has no buffer.

[simpo two]

Lexar Pro WA here (40x as 80x wasn't out when I got it). I wouldn't like to trust cheapo stuff.

However, when it comes to write speeds, perhaps the speed at which the camera can send it to the card is a factor too...?

NB the 'x' speed refers to multiples of 150Kb/sec

[murph7355]

Try www.valuemedia.co.uk

Sandisk are my card of choice, either Ultra II or preferably Extremes.

Lexar make good cards too.

I just bought a Panasonic SD card so will see how that works out.

Fast cards are worth getting. Chances are if you don;t have a card reader right now, any you buy will take advantage of it even if your camera can't.

[Steve_T]

simpo two said:

However, when it comes to write speeds, perhaps the speed at which the camera can send it to the card is a factor too...?

Yes that's what I mean, if the camera can't write to memory above a certain rate, no point having quicker memory.

Thanks for the tips all!

Steve.

[Steve_T]

Found this:

www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp5700/page12.asp

Implication is there's no benefit in having a quicker card in this case, guess it's still worth buying one of the faster cards on quality terms though.