Hi again,

I'm contemplating which speed CF cards to buy for my D800 (get here already!). What would you all say, is the 600x of UDMA 6 enough to sustain the 4 shots/sec in lossless compressed, or will I need the UDMA 7's 1000x? There is quite the price difference...

Granted, I don't see myself shooting a ton of max speed series, but it would be frustrating to have the camera stop early the times I do because I was cheap.

Best,
Mattias

This was on NikonRumors:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-11674-12366

Testing with the D4 and new XQD cards but has the 1000x card speeds also compared to UDMA6 cards. Seems to be about 5-10mb/s from 600x to 1000x in a D4.... so I would say UDMA6 should be good for most anything with the D800...

Chris

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

If you are buying a large card, the speed differences for downloads could be meaningful. The camera has limitations since it has to process and write the image. Write speeds are often slower than download speeds. A fast card full of large files of images or video could be much better if you want fast downloads.

UDMA 6 is probably a pretty good answer - just get a large card. I think 32 GB is a starting point.

There are a lot of options on the second card. You could use an 8 GB Eye-Fi card for medium or small JPEGs, or a 16 GB card for video and large JPEG or overflow NEFs. I don't see a major need for the two cards to have the same features. But the larger file size means you'll need three times the storage of your current cards.


Eric Bowles
Nikonians Team
My Gallery
Workshops

Nikonians membership — my most important photographic investment, after the camera

I think even a slow card will work in the camera . The buffer will store data and load the card at what ever rate it can write . Sure there could be a delay when the buffer is full as it writes . I'm sure the spec is something I will never hit ( 4 fps for 10 seconds ) .

For my mind set, it's a medium format camera in a 35 mm housing . So a lot of tripod shots and live view , not much rapid fire street photography .

Hans K.

My Gallery

Visit my Nikonians gallery. nikonus@nikonians.org