Best SD Card

manhattanboy

Has anyone found anything better than the SanDisk Extreme Pro SD cards to help clear the pitiful buffer on Nikon's consumer cameras?
Has anyone tried the new UHS-II cards and seen if there is even a marginal improvement? I cannot find any data anywhere on the newer cards being tested.
I am looking for something like this, but with the newer cards:



Thanks!

PB_PM

Since no Nikon DSLR's have UHS-II SD card slots, I doubt you'd see any real improvement.

ChasCS

I have been using Lexar Professional SD memory cards, with out any problems.
They deliver fast enough rates for my uses.
Chas

TaoTeJared

That is pretty neat! I have never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately with so many cards out there, even a tester would have to spend $1,000 on cards to test.

Just a FYI note: If you have Active D-Lighting on that will slow your FPS down.

For me I take the average Raw/Jpeg file size from my camera, multiply that by the manufactures FPS to find the speed of the card to get.
D800 w/o grip
4 x 13mb (jpeg) = 52mb
4 x 27 (raw) = 108mb
With grip
6 x 13 = 78mb
6 x 27 = 162mb

It seems most testers find that the cards actually run 80-90% of write stated speed. (Note most manufactures post "read" speeds not write speeds. If you run across this and can not find the write speed, I have found it is usually 60% of the read speed.) I always assume that any card will actually run at 80% of stated speed. So a 95mb will run at 76mb/s.

So by that standard for the camera to perform optimally I would need a card that can do 78mb/s for jpeg or 162mb/s for Raw.

Personally I shoot mostly Sandisk Pro cards, ProMaster Professional, and recently Komputerbay. (All can be found on Amazon and many "speed tests" are in the "images" for the listings.)
The ProMaster Professional is what a local shop sells and they have always said they will take a used card back if it fails or I hate it. 3 years running, and they have not received one back from me. A bit slower than Sandisk Extreeme Pros though, but really not bad. I just won't use them for faster shooting. Price seems to be 60% or Sandisk or Lexar.
Komputerbay is one I found before my trip this last Christmas and I am quite blown away with them - they are faster than my Sandisk Extreeme Pro cards and about 80% cheaper! Their customer service seems to be really good, and they are interested in feedback. In all my years buying stuff from Amazon they are the only company that has kept in touch and wanting to know any issues, opinions or anything else that they could offer. I will say that I had one of their better SD cards not work in an old Canon point and shoot (worked my in D800 fine.) Not sure the issue there, could be the old generation of Canon that is 6 years+ old. I have seen reviews that some duds get through QC but considering the communication they seem to want to have, I would venture they would replace it quickly. If your budget is tight, they are worth a look. I have moved them into my "go to" daily card over the Sandisks.

Vipmediastar_JZ

I usually use Sandisk. At one point i had the lexar pro version if im not mistaken it was a 5 pack deal and 3/5 stopped working. I called lexar and they were willing to replace them but I figured I would stick to Sandisk and didn't want to have future issues. The lever for write and protect was flimsy and the cards later became unreadable. I still have one good card but its just for decoration now.

PB_PM

I have a good mix of mostly Lexar and Sandisk, but also some Patriot, and A-DATA cards, both in SDHC, microSDHC and CF flavours. I haven't had any of them fail in the last 5 years. The only card that ever had corruption problems was a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III 30mb/s edition and that only happened once (It is the oldest card I have, and it is still used in a D700).

Generally speaking most of the brands work without problems 95% of the time, and there are only few companies that actual make memory for these devices anyway; Sandisk, A-DATA, and Panasonic for example.

ChasCS

Nikon used to have their own memory cards, some of the most expensive cards going at the time...

I've trusted and followed this chart, for my D800, as at one point, it seemed pretty accurate.
http://d800.org/nikon-d800-recommended-sd-and-compactflash-media-cards/

I don't know if it's been updated anytime recently.

Chas

ThomasHorton

Perhaps the "best" SD card is the one that makes you slow down a little. :P