Digital Photography Articles

CF and SD Memory Card Test

Modern cameras have internal buffer memory. Buffer memory stores the photos you just took before they get written to your card. The buffer writes your photos to your card while you are taking more pictures. You do not have to wait for the card, unless you overflow the buffer.

It is next to impossible to overflow the buffer unless you're doing something silly like shooting numerous, continuous 15 shot bursts in uncompressed raw mode.

I've never been able to fill a buffer on any of my cameras, ever. Therefore I don't care about write speed in my camera.

I use both fast and slow cards and have never noticed any differences in shooting.

I do care about download speed. This is how long I need to wait around to get the images into my computer...