bk wrote in :

Faster SD card cuts shot-to-shot time

I've tried 3 SD cards in my Pentax Optio 4Si - Belkin efilm, Kingston,
and PQI. The first two appear to be standard (256MB), the PQI is a fast
card (512MB). PQI doesn't claim any particular speed on its packaging,
but i've seen tests (mostly from PDA-land) that show PQI as a fast card.

I did the following test: turn off instant review mode, go into
continuous shot mode, point camera at a plain background, and see how
many shots i get in 1 minute. I subtract two from the "score" because
the 4Si has a two shot buffer, which continues to empty after i release
the shoot button. With continuous mode i don't think it is refocusing
between, but not sure about that.

With the 2 standard cards, i got 12 (14 - 2) shots in a minute, with the
fast PQI card i got 30 shots. Shot to shot times (after first two shots)
of 5 sec w/ standard cards, 2 sec w/ fast card.


This seems like something that is not too much of a big deal on a camera
with a big buffer, but obviously on you camera it makes quite a noticeable
difference.

Maybe anyone with a camera using SD cards that finds the camera too slow to
clear the buffer should try a faster card like the PQI.


--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"