Can someone explain the differences among SDHC SD Cards?

[johnsy]

Can someone lead us trough marketing hype and explain differences among SDHC SD cards? Now they seem differ in speed and class? Lexar markets 133x speed, Sandisk 15 Mb/s and so on. WHAT speed is enough to capture video for example? I am waiting my Canon PowerShot SD780IS12 to arrive. Thinking about 16Gb card. Had good experience with Sandisk (took more than 10 thousand pictures with 2 CF cards). Lexar gave me error messages but these were old times, might be now they improved. Also all these new brands offering cheap cards are they worth to consider?

 

[wywern209]

just go on wikipedia and check it out. you want a fast class 6 card i think for video capture. and for Hd videos, get a 32gb card.

 

[baypharm]

Be careful what you read on Wikipedia - take it with a grain of salt - like anything else you read on the net. I have found so many errors on a wide variety of subjects that I stopped using it. The lines are blurring between fact and fiction. On to your question. Any class 6 SDHC card will give you optimum performance. Avoid class 4 cards for motion media work.

 

[Courtaj]

Class 4 is fine for a buncha consumer grade camcorders. Just go with whatever the manual says, and weigh up how much you want to spend against expected reliability.

By the way, even Sandisk cards fail. Personally, I've given up shelling out that much in favour of frequent backups and prayers.

 

[Chris7]

...By the way, even Sandisk cards fail. Personally, I've given up shelling out that much in favour of frequent backups and prayers.

How often have you had SDHC cards fail?

I just had one fail myself. Sandisk Class 4. Not sure if it was the card, or something I did when downloading from my HF100 (I suspect the latter, but no way to tell). I was really surprised, because I thought flash media is said to be incredibly reliable in general.

Maybe flash media is reliable on the pro cards (e.g. P2) and not so reliable for SDHC?