Do I gain anything by buying Sandisk Extreme or Extreme Pro?

L

Lor

Well-known member
I'm considering buying one or two cards of Sandisk SDHC. Would I benefit from buying the Extreme or Extreme Pro? Or, is Ultra Class 10 good enough for what I'm shooting with EX1?
 
EX1 records at 35mbps so a Class 10 Extreme should be fine, if you check on the cards data rates the Class 10 can handle bursts upto 45MB/s. 1 Bit is 8 bytes so 45MB/s is 360mbps, it should handle the data rate
 
I´d also get the fastest ones you can afford. I´d rather have a lot of headroom than priding myself of getting away with "cheap, lower rated" cards. Also maybe sometime you might use the cards in a camera or recording device having a higher datarate and you´ll still be fine...
 
Thanks for all the input. My main question was, does the "Ultra Class 10" have plenty of "headroom" for this camera? Do I need to get the "Extreme" or "Extreme Pro" class 10?
 
Lor said:
Thanks for all the input. My main question was, does the "Ultra Class 10" have plenty of "headroom" for this camera? Do I need to get the "Extreme" or "Extreme Pro" class 10?
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35Mbps is nothing on the EX cameras, and so any good basic Class 10 should be more than enough. The only reason to get any of the faster cards will be if you want to offload faster, and then only if you're using a USB3 SDXC card reader into a USB3 port or the Sonnet reader for ExpressCard. A 16GB Sandisk Extreme is $20, so I think that would be the best buy for you. Get a handful of those cards and shoot away.
 
Gary Huff said:
35Mbps is nothing on the EX cameras, and so any good basic Class 10 should be more than enough. The only reason to get any of the faster cards will be if you want to offload faster, and then only if you're using a USB3 SDXC card reader into a USB3 port or the Sonnet reader for ExpressCard. A 16GB Sandisk Extreme is $20, so I think that would be the best buy for you. Get a handful of those cards and shoot away.
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Thank you very much for the explanation. That is very helpful to my decision making.
 
Worth adding Sandisk often give a free year's licence with their higher end cards which is worth I think about £40.
 
P13 said:
Worth adding Sandisk often give a free year's licence with their higher end cards which is worth I think about £40.
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Even outside of that, Sandisk has such a great reputation as well. SD isn't the most reliable of memory card formats, so it always helps to go with the manufacturer that has a reputation for quality.
 
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Gary Huff said:
Even outside of that, Sandisk has such a great reputation as well. SD isn't the most reliable of memory card formats, so it always helps to go with the manufacturer that has a reputation for quality.
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Agreed reliability is key, especially with a camera that doesn’t have dual slots for recording, I should have added the licence they include is for recovery software and it works very well should you accidentally delete a file.[/FONT]
 
P13;1986216811[FONT='inherit' said:
]I should have added the licence they include is for recovery software and it works very well should you accidentally delete a file.[/FONT]
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That's good to know, P13, thanks for expounding on that.
 
Gary Huff said:
Even outside of that, Sandisk has such a great reputation as well. SD isn't the most reliable of memory card formats, so it always helps to go with the manufacturer that has a reputation for quality.
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I have two SanDisk failed on me -- the 16GB Ultra Class 6.
 
I've had two SanDisk cards fail on the simple fact that the 'write protect' slider failed. I asked SanDisk if they'd honour their commitment, and they didn't want to know. Two cards unusable because of a failure of their manufacturing, and the marketing of their 'lifetime guarantee' lead to one cynical customer who will forever harp on about SanDisk not living up to their promises. I bought Transcend from that moment on, and haven't had a problem with them.

Please test every card you buy by loading it into your adaptor, filming a TV screen (running your own DVD in a loop of course - no copyright infringement) so that the codecs have something to chew on. Record for the whole capacity of the card. Check, erase and do it again. If no problems, the card is good. From now on, keep an eye on how long it takes for the card to 'close' a file. Button 'on', then button 'off' and see how long it takes for the little LED to go from red to green. <10 secs? Good. >10 secs? Bad. Throw it away or use it in your family DSLR.

In the last (crumbs!) six years, I've had 3 cards go bad (2x SanDisk 1x Transcend), all spotted before a shoot. I've had 2 adaptors fail on the 'offload' part of the workflow. Kit goes wrong, kit gets unreliable. We test early, test often, and spot the wrogues before they let you down on-site.
 
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