SD card speed.

[Dave A]

Technical question,
In a D7200 shooting RAW in CH mode would I see a difference in write speed between a Lexar Professional 1000X 150mb SD card and a Lexar Professional 2000X 300mb SD card? On paper the second card is faster but in the D7200 could I shoot faster and longer before filling up the buffer? Assuming the buffer would not fill up as fast because writing to the card is faster.

Dave

[John 2]

Dave, the precise answer is - maybe. It's not just down to the card speed. The D7200 engine/buffer/software also has to be fast enough to make the most of the speed advantage of the faster cards. Not sure how that stacks up with the D7200 spec. Where you will see a difference is in read speeds when you upload to your computer which can be useful when you return from holiday with a few hundred RAW images to process. BTW, I think you will find that the speeds you are quoting are read speeds. For Lexar cards, the write speed tends to be quite a bit slower. Sandisk cards exhibit less of a difference.

[Black Pearl]

The buffer is finite so it will fill regardless. If you check the instruction manual or Nikon's support page for your camera you may find that with jpeg files the camera will write to the card fast enough to keep shooting but with raw files its gonna fill and have to wait for the card to catch up. A faster card (might) reduce that wait time by a few seconds so it depends on just how fast you need to shoot.

If you need higher performance then you will have to invest in a pro body - the new D500 for example can shoot 200 NEF's without hitting its buffer limit.

[proseak]

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d7200/11

[Adzman808]

as mentioned above, it's the write speeds that govern the speed in the camera, the manufactures like to quote the read speed (which is usually faster)

More and more bodies are starting to appear with UHS-II SD card support... This leads me to SPECULATE that >100mbs is possibly as good as it gets for UHS-I devices.

IMHO, ultimately, the buffer size is only an issue if you shoot like it like a machine gun, as the amount of time a camera spends refusing to shoot (while it clears its buffer down a bit) is pretty small... and -for me- I don't care if the data transfarer light is on, as long as the camera will continue to shoot, and allow menu access etc, which most of them seem to do these days!

[Dave A]

Thank you all for the insight on this subject.

Dave

[rpcrowe]

I cannot say anything about the D7200 since I am a Canon guy. However, I just want to mention that when I shot using my 30D and 40D DSLR cameras, I never noticed any different between slower cards and faster cards. However shooting with my Canon 7D camera, there is a vast difference between slower and faster cards, especially 800X UDMA capable cards (and there are faster cards available).

I upgraded the firmware of the 7D (to Version 2) which allows a greater number of shots (25) before the buffer fills. I seldom shoot this number of burst shots so I really never notice the buffer being limited.

[Greg Lehey]

In a D7200 shooting RAW in CH mode would I see a difference in write speed between a Lexar Professional 1000X 150mb SD card and a Lexar Professional 2000X 300mb SD card?

This has been discussed before, but I can't find the thread. In any case, read http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/ , which should answer your question.

Greg

[Pegger 3D]

Hi Dave,

i just joined but have been an amateur enthusiast for about 2 years now.

I have a D7100 which is very similar to the D7200. I had to buy a $40 wireless adapter. The 7200 has an internal one.

I have the same issue all D7100 owners have and that is the small buffer.

I have used SD cards for years on computers and other hardware and found that Sandisk is the best.

If you look at enough sites, you will see that their claimed speeds are far closer than any Lexar card.

Also a couple of Lexars crapped out on me in the past.

I was lucky enough to catch a Best Buy sale in January and bought a 16 GB 280 Mb/s Sandisk Extreme Pro for $25.99.

I now use that for my main card and another 32 GB Sandisk 95 Mb/s for second slot backup.

What a difference!!

Before:

RAW 6000 X 4000 CONTINUOUS= 5-6 shots before the buffer lagged.
JPEG 2992 X 3000 CONT=10-12 shots
1/3 crop=15-18 shots

Now:

RAW 6000 X 4000 CONTINUOUS= 10-12 shots before the buffer lags.
JPEG 2992 X 3000 CONT=20-25 shots
1/3 crop=I don't know for sure. I stopped at 35.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on

[Dave A]

Good to know Ed, thanks.

Dave

[Black Pearl]

Hi Dave,

I was lucky enough to catch a Best Buy sale in January and bought a 16 GB 280 Mb/s Sandisk Extreme Pro for $25.99.

I now use that for my main card and another 32 GB Sandisk 95 Mb/s for second slot backup.

What a difference!!

Before:

RAW 6000 X 4000 CONTINUOUS= 5-6 shots before the buffer lagged.
JPEG 2992 X 3000 CONT=10-12 shots
1/3 crop=15-18 shots

Now:

RAW 6000 X 4000 CONTINUOUS= 10-12 shots before the buffer lags.
JPEG 2992 X 3000 CONT=20-25 shots
1/3 crop=I don't know for sure. I stopped at 35.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on

Thats very odd because the D7100 isn't UHS-II compatible so it physically can't take advantage of the newer technology. The buffer capacity for a typical use NEF, Compressed, 14-bit file is 8 frames which doesn't fall within any of your results (?) though if you switch to NEF, Lossless compressed, 14-bit it does drop to 6 frames.

[Pegger 3D]

Well, it says that it doesn't take advantage of UHS-II but you will have to try one to believe it.

Works for me.

[Black Pearl]

Interesting read:

http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/nik...sd-card-tests/

UHS-II cards can be used in the D7100, but they operate at UHS-I speeds in the D7100. Depending on the card, this may be slower than other UHS-I cards. While some UHS-II cards support the fastest UHS-I variant (SDR104 with 104MB/s bus speed), the SanDisk Extreme Pro 280MB/s UHS-II card reverts to 50MB/s bus speed in UHS-I mode. It performed worse than the Extreme Pro 95MB/s UHS-I card and no better than the SanDisk Extreme 45MB/s UHS-I card in the D7100. Other UHS-II cards such as the the Toshiba Exceria Pro UHS-II card performed similarly to the Exceria Type 1 UHS-I card.

[Black Pearl]

Well, it says that it doesn't take advantage of UHS-II but you will have to try one to believe it.

Works for me.

UHS-II cards are physically different to older SD cards, they have a second row of contacts so to gain any benefit from the read/write speeds the camera needs the corresponding cards slot. Very few cameras support these cards (mine does by the way and I do see a difference) but the D7100 isn't one of them.

Could you post a video containing details of the file type used showing the buffer fill rates you've achieved. The gains you've seen are significant and will be of huge interest to anyone shooting with a D7100 as its major downfall is the tiny buffer.

[Pegger 3D]

UHS-II cards are physically different to older SD cards, they have a second row of contacts so to gain any benefit from the read/write speeds the camera needs the corresponding cards slot. Very few cameras support these cards (mine does by the way and I do see a difference) but the D7100 isn't one of them.

Could you post a video containing details of the file type used showing the buffer fill rates you've achieved. The gains you've seen are significant and will be of huge interest to anyone shooting with a D7100 as its major downfall is the tiny buffer.

I'm an amateur and only know what I copied down for information from the tests that I did.

If you want me to do what you ask, please provide me with detailed instructions on how to do that.

Ed

[Pegger 3D]

I'm an amateur and only know what I copied down for information from the tests that I did.

If you want me to do what you ask, please provide me with detailed instructions on how to do that.

Ed

[NorthernFocus]

Dave, the only way the card speed is going to make a difference is if you shoot long enough bursts to fill the buffer memory. Which on the 7200 is a couple dozen frames(I forget exactly) shooting NEF 14bit. Of if you shoot multiple bursts just seconds apart. So if you shoot that way, then theoretically the faster your cards are the better. I shoot a D7200 and and do a LOT of burst shooting on CH setting, NEF files. I'm shooting 95MB/s Sandisk cards and have limited out once or twice thus far in 30k frames or so. Only you can decide the value of your money and where it does the most good.

On edit: I forgot to mention that I do shoot 12bit NEF (as a compromise) to maximize frame rate and buffer capacity.

[Black Pearl]

I'm an amateur and only know what I copied down for information from the tests that I did.

If you want me to do what you ask, please provide me with detailed instructions on how to do that.

Ed

Stick a typical 95MB/s card in your camera, set the file type to NEF, Lossless compressed, 14-bit, switch the AF off, make sure you have it on manual exposure with a reasonably fast shutter speed, put the camera on Continuous High and video (use your mobile the quality doesn't matter) the camera while you're pressing the shutter release to show the number of frames the camera takes before it slows or stops. Now switch to the UHS-II card and do the same. The buffer should according to Nikon fill after 6 frames or a fraction over 1 second and the camera will slow/pause as it writes to the card.

On my camera the buffer fills after 22 raw shots and the camera then slows down - though it still continues to take pictures. I get two advantages with a UHS-II card; the first is that the buffer clear times are faster meaning the camera is back to square one and can rattle off 22 files again if needed, the second though is that once the buffer fills I can still shoot at around 2-3fps for pretty much as long as I need - it just means I can squeeze an extra few shots at the end of the 22 high speed run if I absolutely had to. With the UHS-I cards it drops to around 1fps which I could almost do in film days with my thumb

If you are getting such a large gain by using the UHS-II cards this would be a major step forward for those shooting with a D7100 as it really is the major grumbling point for the camera and is the talk on countless forums since it was launched.

[Adzman808]

Iirc...

The link posted above shows an appropriate improvement in write speeds of about 0.1 second per frame when you use a UHS-II card in a UHS-I device.

The UHS-II cards are currebtly about 2-300% more expensive (for the same capacity) than their UHS-I counterparts

You pays ya money... You makes ya choice!

[NorthernFocus]

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d7200/11

Is the following from the dpreview article a typo or is something amiss? It indicates that the UHS-II card used in a D7200 was actually slower.

All tests conducted with a SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I card, speed class U3. The results were very card dependent, with inferior results using a UHS-II U3 card. Even with the fast UHS-I card we would occasionally get image bursts with significantly fewer images than the specs suggest, before the camera slowed down.