Camera speeds

[firehire]

I'm a newb here. I'm just getting into the hobby of photography. My first question has to do with camera speeds. I'm looking at a Canon 30D. I found a good price, but the salesman told me that I would need to get a Ultra High fast CF card to take advantage of the 5f/per second on the Canon. I smelt a rat, so I didn't order anything at this time. I know this is a newb question, but is there any validity to what he told me or do I throw up the BS flag?

[Frog]

Depends on the kind of photos you will be taking.
Are you shooting action/sports? Then you might need the 5 fps ability and a high speed card.
Taking nature shots, portraits, stuff that doesn't move much? Then you'll probably seldom need that 5 frames per second and even if you do once in a while, the camera can handle it without the ultra high speed card if it is only 5 frames and then a pause.
Cards are rated for speed so you should be able to look up cards and their speeds and decide what you need.
Good luck!

[mwfanelli]

I'm a newb here. I'm just getting into the hobby of photography. My first question has to do with camera speeds. I'm looking at a Canon 30D. I found a good price, but the salesman told me that I would need to get a Ultra High fast CF card to take advantage of the 5f/per second on the Canon. I smelt a rat, so I didn't order anything at this time. I know this is a newb question, but is there any validity to what he told me or do I throw up the BS flag?

Fatser cards do not automatically lead to faster writes. Your camera is the limiting factor in how fast images get written to the card. Go to the performance database site

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/mul...e.asp?cid=6007

and look up the 30D and the memory cards it has been tested with. Don't buy a card faster than the camera can use.

[another view]

Two different things going on here - when you shoot, the image goes to the buffer and then is written to the memory card. Once the buffer is full, you won't be able to shoot until it has written the images to the card but it's unlikely that you'll have this problem unless you have a fast camera with a small buffer and a slow card. The buffer (which is inside the camera and not upgradeable) will be sized to handle the intended use of the camera. Newer is usually always better in this respect and I wouldn't worry about any problems with a 30D.

If you shoot a bunch of pictures at a high resolution (full-size RAW for example) as fast as the camera will go, eventually you will run out of buffer space. The fast CF cards will lessen the "down time" while the buffer writes to the card, that's all. They may eliminate the downtime too just because they write fast enough to keep up with heavy shooting. FWIW, I don't shoot sports often and when I do I usually try to time my shots rather than shooting as many frames as possible and hoping I got it right. I've never filled the buffer in my camera and use (by current standards) relatively slow cards.

[livin4lax09]

Fatser cards do not automatically lead to faster writes. Your camera is the limiting factor in how fast images get written to the card. Go to the performance database site

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/mul...e.asp?cid=6007

and look up the 30D and the memory cards it has been tested with. Don't buy a card faster than the camera can use.

this is the truth. I had a regular CF from Sandisk and a ultra II card when I had my drebel, and there was no difference at all between the write times. It was only when I bought my 1d that I saw the ultra II recorded about 5x as fast.