What SD card speed for Lumix TZ3?

[Randy8453]

Hi, folks,
I'm new to this forum, so if I've missed an already posted answer to my question, pls be gentle.
I've got a Panasonic Lumix TZ3. Like it quite a bit, actually. I'm looking to get an additional SD card to take on an extended trip (Australia), and I'm wondering what speed I should shop for. I've done some limited research and understand the SanDisk Ultra II gets 9Mb transfer speed whereas their Extreme III gets around 23Mb speed. I have NO idea what I should get to maximize my camera's efficiency without overdoing it.
Any help out there?

[chum_j]

G-Day Mate I have recently bought The TZ3. I already had the following cards -- IGB Fujifilm with no speed listed so I assume Standard speed -- 1GB Apacer 60X I don't know how many Mb That is but I believe that 133X is roughly 20Mb so 60X should be 9-10 Mb -- 256 MB Sandisk with no speed listed so I assume Standard speed. I have just bought an 2GB Sandisk Extreme III to hopefully solve a problem I am having with the video capture from my TZ3 when I play it on the computer. The problem is slightly jerky video playback on my IBM 2.16 Ghz Centrino pentium mobility T43 with 128 MB ATI FireGL and 1GB Ram. When the new card didn't cure the problem I set about testing all the cards to see if there was any difference in performance. The testing couldn't be done with scientific accuracy and time tests --- only with my observations. Firstly the video problem is not apparent on the TZ3 LCD during playback. Also the different cards made no difference to the video problem on the IBM Laptop nothing between the slowest and the fastest cards. This I am sure of. I also have a Macintosh Powerbook G4 867Mhz with 512 MB Ram. I saved My TZ3 Generated Video to this PB and the .mov Files all played fine. So the video playback is either due to 1 -- Video settings on the IBM ( which I believe are set properly)or 2 -- The Quicktime implementation on the IBM ( Quicktime being an Apple product maybe it doesn't work as well on windows machines) Or 3 -- The Quicktime settings on the IBM ( which I have set for maximum performance so should be good) As a further note --- the manual says that cards of insufficient speed will not function properly and the motion capture will cease when the cards speed is exceeded by the video capture requirements. I Tried to exceed the cards ability and have the capture be terminated with all of the cards mentioned. In the case of the 256 MB card I did a continuous Motion capture from empty card until the card was full. It didn't Fail. ------ I next proceeded to test the different cards with speed of various aspects of still picture capture. The areas I looked at were Shutter Lag, Cycle time shot to shot, Burst mode Capture Times, and Card Format time. Again I relied on My own observation but if there had been a noticeable difference I would have attempted to get accurate times to confirm my observations. The only area I noticed a difference was in formatting the cards where the Extreme III was much faster ( This isn't important to me) Sorry there was another area -- saving photos and movies to the computer in this area there were speed differences but not as much as may expect and the cards performed as their speeds would indicate ( again this didn't mean much to me as there wasn't much saving and nowhere near as much as could be made by using the high speed USB port -- I didn't know My IBM had a low speed USB port). So summing Up --- It appears that all of the cards could handle the Motion capture and there was no noticeable difference. Also the only time saving with still photos was in time of transfer To PC ( possibly 15%) and time to Format (probably 50% a saving of 5 - 10 sec ). There may have been some saving with other still characteristics but not easily noticeable eg the Burst mode high speed performed very similar times for the five shot burst with all of the cards and the time till the next burst may have only varied by 1 second. I hope this of help. Regards Chum -- Australia -- chum_j@yahoo.com

[transparency]

Faster memory cards only make a difference if the camera’s transfer rate is fast enough to allow the memory cards to reach their own speed potential. It used to be the case that compact digital cameras were too slow to benefit from faster memory cards. I haven’t done any testing to see if this has changed, but I’ve seen reviews that report better performance with faster cards. Since the fast memory cards are gettng so cheap, it can’t hurt to buy a faster card. Those pro memory cards also come with file recovery software, in case a card gets corrupted or you accidentally format without saving your images.