Class 6 vs Class 10 SD cards

[hercules71185]

I know the classes are a bit of a gimmick for the most part. But, as I have learned the class is basically the MB per second the card can write at a sustained rate. Now I'm confused on the maximum rates I'm seeing on some cards vs sustained....
Let's get on with why I'm posting.
I have a Panasonic FZ28. If I shoot in Jpeg I can take a pic and bam ready to take another one. Now when I goto Raw it's slower. It's slow enough where I'm like ok click.. hold on, one second ok... here we go and then it takes the pic. Am I memory card limited or is this my camera? I'd like to start using Jpeg+raw with that the lag would be horrendous. 5 seconds or more. And if you are into photography that is too long.
I'm using a class 6 Trancend now and I noticed they have a new Class 10.

Now my confusion is based on a few things
1) is my camera the factor slowing down the pictures? Raw+jpeg averages about 20mb of information
2)Sustained vs maximum rate memory cards (does maximum mean it can do that speed for short times)
3)Class 10, gimmick or worth it? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820211395

[InspectahACE]

My Canon XTI has a small wait in RAW, but it's not long enough for me to care. I had a kodak a few years back that took a good few seconds to compose itself after shooting a RAW image. I'm no expert but I would assume it's both in your case. I have a very very generic CF card in my XTI (i dont even know the speed) but it only takes a second or 2 shooting RAW. Spose one day Ill have to try a faster card to see the difference..as far as whether class 10 is worth it or not, I'll pass on that as I have no clue.sorry

[FZ1]

I know the classes are a bit of a gimmick for the most part. But, as I have learned the class is basically the MB per second the card can write at a sustained rate. Now I'm confused on the maximum rates I'm seeing on some cards vs sustained....
Let's get on with why I'm posting.
I have a Panasonic FZ28. If I shoot in Jpeg I can take a pic and bam ready to take another one. Now when I goto Raw it's slower. It's slow enough where I'm like ok click.. hold on, one second ok... here we go and then it takes the pic. Am I memory card limited or is this my camera? I'd like to start using Jpeg+raw with that the lag would be horrendous. 5 seconds or more. And if you are into photography that is too long.
I'm using a class 6 Trancend now and I noticed they have a new Class 10.

Now my confusion is based on a few things
1) is my camera the factor slowing down the pictures? Raw+jpeg averages about 20mb of information
2)Sustained vs maximum rate memory cards (does maximum mean it can do that speed for short times)
3)Class 10, gimmick or worth it? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820211395

The slowness when shooting RAW is likely a bottleneck in the camera, not the card. Most if not all digital cameras have a memory buffer to store the images while they are being written to the card. RAW will fill this buffer quickly causing a delay because there is no place to store the next image. Also, different camera models have different write speed capabilities depending on the processor. I don't even think my Canon 50D can write as fast as the CF card is capable of supporting.

On a related note - SD cards will always be slower than CF cards because SD cards have a 9 pin interface rather than a 50 pin interface and thus limited to a 4-bit vs 16-bit data transfer of CF cards and CF cards actually have an onboard controller.

So, the answer to your question about "is it worth it" depends on a few things:
1. Your camera and whether or not it can even exceed the write speed of lesser rated cards.
2. How often you plan on taking continuous/burst pics and how many frames do you need? Single shots are no concern at all.
3. How many pictures you take & file sizes because don't forget that you need to transfer the pics off of the card on to your PC and having a faster read spec will definitely help move those over faster.

[hercules71185]

So to test my camera speed vs memory card speed what would I do?
I'll do this and tell me if I'm in the right direction.
1) Take pictures for 10 seconds
2) Divide total MB by 10
3)find the Mb/sec I'm writing to my card
4)Run HDTune on my memory card and see if the write speed is faster than that...

good?

[hercules71185]

Well, before I even started HD Tune I knew something was up. If I enable burst mode. I can shoot 16 pictures in 9.6ish seconds. Each picture about 3.5mb. The total MB in 9.6 seconds was 56mb. Now when I shoot in Raw. I can shoot 2 pictures in 10 seconds.....Each picture is about 14.5mb.
So I'm assuming it has something to do with the buffer or processor of the camera? Since I can only write half as fast in raw when the files are 5 times as big.

[Kougar]

Hm, I was personally wondering this myself as I might jump for a Canon T1i, and I remember from my first Digital Camera purchase that it was an issue at the time.

My Canon XTI has a small wait in RAW, but it's not long enough for me to care. I had a kodak a few years back that took a good few seconds to compose itself after shooting a RAW image. I'm no expert but I would assume it's both in your case. I have a very very generic CF card in my XTI (i dont even know the speed) but it only takes a second or 2 shooting RAW. Spose one day Ill have to try a faster card to see the difference..as far as whether class 10 is worth it or not, I'll pass on that as I have no clue.sorry

Well, going by the DP Review the Canon XTi can continuously shoot bursts up to 27 JPEG and 10 RAW images.

Well, before I even started HD Tune I knew something was up. If I enable burst mode. I can shoot 16 pictures in 9.6ish seconds. Each picture about 3.5mb. The total MB in 9.6 seconds was 56mb. Now when I shoot in Raw. I can shoot 2 pictures in 10 seconds.....Each picture is about 14.5mb.
So I'm assuming it has something to do with the buffer or processor of the camera? Since I can only write half as fast in raw when the files are 5 times as big.

Since there is such a disparity in file sizes there, I would agree with FZ1 that it sounds like a choke point in the camera itself. It can't clear its buffer of the single 14.5MB photo until it is fully written to the card, and it can't take another 14.5mb image if there is only say for example 8mb of buffer room left. DP Review does mention a few continuous results though if you want to look it over or try them. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/q109sup ... /page7.asp