I enjoy photography as a hobby but in addition to photography as a form of art, I am also interested in more technical aspects of equipment. I was looking for comparisons of memory cards for recent camera models. Such as, what's the fastest card in ____ camera? I often read the answer, "buy SanDisk or Lexar." But I wasn't satisfied with that. I couldn't find much up-to-date information so I dove head first into testing cameras myself.
Putting 10,000 shutter actuations on a brand new D750 does seem kind of ridiculous, but it seems like I did every test imaginable to compare memory card performance in the D750. You can see the results here: Nikon D750 SD card comparison
And I guess you might say the answer in this case was, "just buy the SanDisk."
Interesting test - thanks for doing that. I happen to be looking for SD cards for my D7100 and D810, and this may help me figure out where to put my money.
The way I shoot means that the file transfer rate for off loading the data will be a bigger concern to me, but running into buffer limits did crop up from time in my other cameras. I haven't had the D7100 and D810 long enough to know what issues I will have with those cameras.
nice write up..the most compelling thing I learned was the SD 60 mbs performed virtually identical to the $10 more SD 80 mbs, as well and significantly better than the similarly priced SD 45 mbs cards...I have been using the 45's, and they perform very well for my application but if I had known then what I know now it would have been a no brainer to go with the 60's..thanks!
As always the companies just toot the read speeds. Fine for card to computer but write speeds are more important... Sandisk Extreme Pro SD 95mb are the best right now. The Lexar 600x Pro SD are 45/mb write which is poor for a pro card.
DaveOls wrote:
Is that Toshiba really $ 149 or did you mistakenly put a 1 in front of the price?
Yes, the Toshiba Exceria Pro price is roughly correct. Almost all prices update automatically daily via Amazon, although that particular card isn't available at Amazon so that price was from eBay. It's a UHS-II card. The closest comparison would be SanDisk Extreme Pro 280MB/s UHS-II card. You need a UHS-II capable camera or card reader to get the most out of these.
Kell wrote:
nice write up..the most compelling thing I learned was the SD 60 mbs performed virtually identical to the $10 more SD 80 mbs, as well and significantly better than the similarly priced SD 45 mbs cards...I have been using the 45's, and they perform very well for my application but if I had known then what I know now it would have been a no brainer to go with the 60's..thanks!
I've used the 45's for a long time also. The Extreme 60MB/s was released only about a month ago. I measued the Extreme 80MB/s ("Extreme Plus") read speed at ~95mb/s. Whereas the Extreme 60MB/s card was ~75MB/s read. It seems SanDisk is labeling these with a conservative read speed.
It is faster only in a UHS-II capable device. It mesured 240MB/s read speed in the UHS-II card reader. But it's not faster at UHS-I speed. That particular card is limited to below 50MB/s in UHS-I devices because it doesn't support SDR104 mode. The Extreme Pro 95mb/s is going to be faster in UHS-I cameras.
i have always like Komputerbay on amazon. wish that was tested. I have never had a problem with my sandisk cards. only 1 problem ever with lexar, and a few problems with transcend. my 32 gb komputerbay cf card has been going strong for a couple years now in my d700
Joseph Marney wrote:
Of course. Right after I order 2 Lexar. :-P
I have about 6 of the 32GB Lexar 600x from when they were on sale for about $17 each. I think I will buy just 1 of the Sandisk 95 Mbs cards, for the #1 slot in my D7100. That thing is so buffer limed, it would definitely be worth it!
pecos wrote:
I enjoy photography as a hobby but in addition to photography as a form of art, I am also interested in more technical aspects of equipment. I was looking for comparisons of memory cards for recent camera models. Such as, what's the fastest card in ____ camera? I often read the answer, "buy SanDisk or Lexar." But I wasn't satisfied with that. I couldn't find much up-to-date information so I dove head first into testing cameras myself.
Putting 10,000 shutter actuations on a brand new D750 does seem kind of ridiculous, but it seems like I did every test imaginable to compare memory card performance in the D750. You can see the results here: Nikon D750 SD card comparison
And I guess you might say the answer in this case was, "just buy the SanDisk."...Show more →
Just found your site today (through something else), nice stuff.
FWIW, it is fairly frustrating that you use uncompressed raws for some cameras (and do not state raw size for those who are too lazy to calculate it), and use compressed raws for others.
Do you know why your throughput rate on the D750 is so low? I would expect in a 30 second test you would hit ~1.9 frames/second transferred (57) plus the base buffer of ~15 leading to a total in the 72ish range. In comparison the D600 hitting 50 seems crazy given the much slower peak transfer rate and use of uncompressed raws.
SloPhoto wrote:
Just found your site today (through something else), nice stuff.
FWIW, it is fairly frustrating that you use uncompressed raws for some cameras (and do not state raw size for those who are too lazy to calculate it), and use compressed raws for others.
Do you know why your throughput rate on the D750 is so low? I would expect in a 30 second test you would hit ~1.9 frames/second transferred (57) plus the base buffer of ~15 leading to a total in the 72ish range. In comparison the D600 hitting 50 seems crazy given the much slower peak transfer rate and use of uncompressed raws. ...Show more →
Actually the D600 was also lossless compressed, that camera doesn't do uncompressed RAW. I updated the page with the correction and included the average file sizes, which came out slightly smaller at 35.2MB RAW. Thanks for pointing that out.
It is difficult to make even comparisons between different cameras on continuous shooting tests. There are many factors that affect frames in 30 seconds. With enough testing would be possible to extrapolate based only on knowing a write speed and the camera behavior (write delay, fps, when it decides the buffer is full for a given image size/setting). Then I could tell you about how many images you could get in any mode, and even let you choose the file size and shooting time. I think I have enough data on the D750 to do this (including for several different image settings). The file size is a big factor, and that depends on the subject you are shooting. In this test I had mainly focused on showing the difference between cards, but I can see this sort of data could be useful in other ways.
From what I can tell the buffer size is about the same between the D600 and D750, the difference is in write speed where the D750 is slightly faster.
SloPhoto wrote:
I would expect in a 30 second test you would hit ~1.9 frames/second transferred (57) plus the base buffer of ~15 leading to a total in the 72ish range.
Close, except the lower frame rate is only for the remainder of the time not the full 30 seconds.
The fastest card (SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s 32GB) averaged something like this:
36.7MB RAW (14-bit lossless compressed):
14 shots at ~6 fps for 2.33 seconds
52 shots at 1.88 fps for 27.67 seconds
Total: 66 shots in 30 seconds
I ran the test using the same settings but different test scene and the numbers increased due to smaller file size. Except this was a 15 second run.
29.5MB RAW (14-bit lossless compressed):
16 shots at ~6fps for 2.70 seconds
27 shots at 2.2 fps for 12.3 seconds
Total: 43 shots in 15 seconds; but it would be ~76 in 30 seconds.
So just changing the scene slightly is going to affect the results. SD cards are also not perfectly consistent in write speed. On longer runs this can cause a frame or two lower result.
The Samsung Electronics 32GB PRO SDHC Upto 90MB/s Class 10 Memory Card (MB-SG32D/AM) was the best value at close to half the price of the sandisk. Thx for the effort, appreciate it.
