SanDisk's 4GB Ultra II SDHC for performance photogs
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Sep 27th 2006 8:34AM
posted Sep 27th 2006 8:34AM
So you've put down an order for a new still or video camera with SDHC slot, eh, now what? Do you pick up a regular ol' 4GB SDHC card from Toshiba, Panasonic, or SanDisk or maybe splurge on a fat Pretec for 8GB or 16GB of storage? Well SanDisk is here to tell ya (and we'll agree) that their new Ultra II SDHC Card is the ideal choice to record smooth video or capture multiple still photographs in rapid succession from that new cam with write speeds of 9 megabytes (MB) per second and read speeds of 10MB/sec. Yeah, it'll cost you $220 for those speeds, but hey, you get a "free" MicroMate SDHC/SD card reader in the kit when these drop next month. So what's it gonna be boy -- performance, capacity or the el-cheapo? Decisions, decisions.
While I am sure this card is sweet for your average point and shoot camera, I've never seen a professional digital back or SLR that uses SD cards. For any photographer interested in getting the most from their camera with a Compact Flash card, use the Sandisk Extreme IV. It's 40 MB/sec awesome. With these cards it's true...you get what you pay for.
Hmmm mayhaps the D80... or try the Pentax K10D both use SD/SDHC (and dont forget the older IST *DS2)
Huh? They already have plain SD cards that record at 20MB/sec!
You can also get SD-to-CF adapters, which would be nice if you have an SLR that used CF and a point and shoot that uses SD; you can use the same cards for both.
The Canon Mark II series has both SD and CF slots. Its great because when either slot runs out, the other slot will take over.
I can see this as starting a trend to use SD cards instead of USB drives, especially since so many computers have card readers. For example, I could save a video from my desktop PC onto the SD card, then plug the card into my Media Center PC and play it directly...less hassle and size than a USB flash drive. But are the speeds faster or slower?
Looks great but it would never fit in most usb ports correctly. The plastic white part is too wide. I had a similiar adapter and had trouble insterting it into some ports.
Does anybody know of a firewire based SD care reader/writer? I know Lex makes one for CF..but I haven't seen one for SD. USB 2.0 readers feel slow to me.
USB 2.0 is actually faster than firewire
Firewire is actualy faster than USB 2.0 don't let the theoretical max sway your judgement ;o)
Does anyone know a source for SDHC readers? Just a reader that will recognize SDHC, not one that comes for "free" with a card.