How fast should my CF card be?

[toecheese]

I just got a new E-510 and need to get a CF card for it. Fry's has regular old generic brand 60X 2GB card for $35, and Costco offers a 2GB SanDisk Extreme III card for $50 and a 4GB Ultra II card for $55. I'm new to using D-SLRs so I'm not sure what the real speed difference is between these cards, I know that it affects how fast you can shoot but what kind of a real world difference will I see between any of these? And does the speed difference only affect taking multiple shots or will I see a difference in the speed of taking one photo at a time?

Which one would you recommend?

[Greg McCary]

That really depends on how fast you want your pictures to write to the card when you are shooting. You can do pretty good with just a generic card, but if you plan on a lot of fast burst you will need a faster one. If you plan on shooting sports or fast paced action I would get a fast one. For everyday shooting anyone will do. To answer your question the camera will write to a faster card quicker and you have to shoot pretty fast to over load one.
Your card will also write faster to the computer if you get a cheap card reader. In rare cases I have heard of cameras being damaged connecting them straight to the computer. And I also have read of cards dying if your camera battery dies before the upload is complete.
I would also look at the warrenties on the cards. Some of them come with ten year warrenties or better. Out of ten cards I own, I have only ever had one die and it was a generic. It died in mid-use and I never recovered the pictures.

[cruzthepug]

Maybe this will help,

Flash Card Speed Chart
133X=20MB/s

80X=12MB/s

66X=10MB/s

40X=6MB/s

The Sandisk Extreme III is a 20MB/s card and the Ultra is 9MB/s

[Greg McCary]

I am going to move this thread to the Help Forum. It is more about CF cards than Olympus cameras. I think more members will see it there and offer more insite.

[another view]

Writer speed depends on the camera too - with my old Fuji S2 I never saw a noticable difference between 24x and 133x cards, but I don't shoot sports. This site tests speeds, but apparently they haven't tested any Olympus cameras. I wouldn't worry about speed too much - go for the generic...