SD Cards

[rpcrowe]

I heard that Best Buy Stores was having a sale on SD cards, so I looked up the prices for the same cards from B&H in New York City. Sure enough, B&H was less expensive plus, I don't have to pay the approximately 8% California Sales Tax if I purchase from an out of state vendor.

However, I am a little confused over the plethora of types of SD cards that SanDisk offers. Specifically if I would see any significant difference with my Canon 6D Mark II between these two cards...

SanDisk 64GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card, B&H price: $36.52 USD

SanDisk 64GB Extreme UHS-I SDXC Memory Card, B&H price: $28.70 USD

That is not a great difference in price and certainly dirt cheap when compared with the CF Cards I used with my first DSLR, the Canon 10D many moons ago. However if my 6D Mark II cannot make use of the speed of the more expensive card, I will just opt for the cheaper version.

Some differences I noticed but, don't know how significant the differences will be for burst still shooting with occasional video and very occasional 4K video.

Extreme Pro: UHS-1 / V30 / Class 10
Extreme: UHS=1 / V30 / U3 / Class 10 The addition of U3

Extreme Pro: • Max Read Speed: 95 MB/s
• Max Write Speed: 90 MB/s
• Min Write Speed: 30 MB/s

Extreme: • Max Read Speed: 90 MB/s
• Max Write Speed: 40 MB/s
• Min Write Speed: 30 MB/s

The max read speed is 5MB/s faster on the Pro and the max write speed is 50MB/s faster on the Pro. The min write speed is the same for both cards.

Will I see any significant difference in using the Extreme Pro over the Extreme?

This YouTube video seems to suggest that for burst shooting, the Pro may be the way to go...

[Shadowman]

Sometimes the only difference is what your manual states as what's been tested and whether they've been approved by the camera manufacturer, for instance the manual for my D5200 states the camera only supports UHS-1 cards, does that mean my warranty gets voided if I use another type; probably not; but the manual also states that some cards will suddenly stop recording videos if slower cards are used.

[Manfred M]

There are several factors involved:

1. Check your camera manual to see what its maximum write speed is. If it is slower than the card spec, it won't matter as your camera will not be able to push the data out fast enough to make any difference.

2. Cameras write to an internal buffer when shooting and that data is transferred to the card. If you are someone who does a lot of burst shooting, then the write speed might be of some consequence as the faster write speed will clear the buffer more quickly and let you shoot more frames before the buffer is full. If you are like me and rarely shoot enough frames to fill the buffer, then the write speed will also be irrelevant.

3. Video shooting is not terribly resource hungry due to the advanced compression algorithms used by the camera. Full frame images in raw are the most resource intensive shooting you do.

What is often most important to me is the read speed. I don't necessarily want to wait for hours while the day's shooting is downloaded from the card and I generally pay more attention to the read speed than the write speed when I buy cards.

[rpcrowe]

The advertised read speed difference between the Extreme and Extreme Pro is only 95 vs 90 MB/s which is about a 5% difference. The extreme pro costs about 25% more than the non-pro...

I think that I might get one of each which is a King Solomon type decision.

However, the absolute fastest download speed would be from a UHS-II card. The 6D2 cannot use the speed of a UHS-II card when shooting but in downloading with a USB-2 reader, the download time of a UHS-II card appears to be significantly quicker that using a UHS-I card.

I was in the same situation when shooting a 30D and a 40D with UDMA cards. The cameras could not take advantage of UDMA technology but, the downloading using a UDMA capable card reader was quite fast.

OMG: Dummy Me! I have a 64 GB SanDisk Extreme card that came with the 6D2 as part of the B&H goodie bag. Seems like it works just fine. In fact I purchased two 32 GB cards of the same type as extras. However, I think that I might get a 64 GB SanDisk Pro just to compare the two. I think that a total of 192 GB will be plenty for general photography. If I were delving into video and/or taking an extended trip; I might add a couple more 64 GB cards. Whether they be SanDish Extreme or Extreme Pro all depends on how much better (if any) the pro works with my camera.

As Manfred correctly states, what eats up your memory card and what demands a faster memory card is burst shooting in RAW. I do always shoot in RAW and use burst mode quite often but, I don't have a heavy finger on the shutter button when I am shooting in bursts. It is seldom that I shoot in bursts longer than ten or so frames.

[pbourget]

I always buy the fastest. Unless you don't plan on upgrading your camera ever you want the cards to still be useful in your new camera. I do a fair amount of burst shooting of wildlife so write speed is important. Otherwise as others have said, read speed is more important and don't worry about the read speed.

I wish now I had bought UHS-II cards for my last set because my new camera uses UHS-II cards. I can still use the UHS-I cards I have though, just not as fast a write speed. I'll just put in different cards depending on what I am photographing that day.

[chaman]

I honestly think you wont see much of a difference between those two cards.