Best SD card for 60D?

<p>What size and style would work best for the 60D since it has the HD video function? I am thinking about purchasing an 8gb, but should I go ahead and get the 16gb?<br>

Thanks.<br>

Michelle</p>

<p>Either would be fine. I typically go for the card with the lowest cost to gigabite ratio.</p>

<p>for hd vid, you may consider a fast card. A lot of MB/s.</p>

<p>How many shots (or how much video) will you intend on taking at any given time?</p>

<p>Also consider that many people prefer to have several smaller cards on the off chance that if one goes bad you don't lose all your data, merely some of it.</p>

<p>Other than that, what Mark said.</p>

<p>I would not recommend going bigger than an 8 Gb card. It might seem tempting to go bigger, but the more data that you have on one card, the greater the odds of loosing it. Smaller cards are going to be a better solution. That way you can rotate them out and lower your risk of lost images.</p>

<p>Well we all have different opinions but i can tel you this you can only get 2 hours of high def movies on , 8 gig memroy stick, so be sure to buy one that has the logo on it , that states <strong><em>high def video </em></strong>and camera, then you will have enough speed, if you watch offfice depot web site they put their memory on sale all the time i just bought a 16 gig stick of lexar platinum 11 memory which is very speedy and 40 dollars lower than normal price and its super quality for 50 bucks , and they have sales contsantly on memory so just keep your eyes open and you will find a good deal, they sell sandisk and lexar all the time, btw lexar has a better reputation for the most part, i have a lot of both and have not seen a major difference except for shooting the eos cameras at burst speed, then its all about the speed and the money, aim for extreme 3 or 4 for the sandisk and just about all the lexar pro version is suitable, remember just because you buy 8 gigs doest not mean you can use the full 8 gigs they are just like any hard drive they have to room to work</p>

>>> I would not recommend going bigger than an 8 Gb card. It might seem tempting to go bigger, but

the more data that you have on one card, the greater the odds of loosing it.

 

I don't see how. I suppose it depends on how you define "losing it." And are considering catastrophic

card failure where everything is lost. But that is so rare. If that were really true, or significant, then

wouldn't one want to stay with a lot of 512 megabyte cards, or smaller - just to be even safer?

 

If you define "it" as one card of several that's physically lost (a card full off images that fell out of your

bag) then the odds of loss are greater than if you used a single card that stays in your camera.

 

If you shoot professionally with $$$ on the line, then using a dual card camera certainly makes sense.

 

I shoot with a 32 GB card and sleep well at night...

<p>I shoot with two 8GB cards and the only drawback to going big is that even at 8GB, I'm a procrastinator and I'll wait untill they're both full to empty them and then its about an hour headache on the computer.</p>

<p>I'd be just as concerned for the speed as I am for the size. Get the faster of the two, even if it's pricier.<br>

For my 10mp non-video cameras I have 2, 4, and 8 gig cards. The notion that you should shoot with smaller cards to minimize your chance of loss is one side of the argument, the other side is that you now have to keep track of which card is where, you might lose one or think that one is empty and try to use it and it's full, or accidental formatting, etc.... With CF cards you have the added danger of bending a pin when inserting the card into the camera and card reader which adds just a bit more chance for something to go wrong, SD cards don't have this problem.<br>

There's a valid argument either way.</p>

<p>Get a high speed card. If the card can't keep up with the video you won't be shooting any video.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>you can only get 2 hours of high def movies on , 8 gig memroy stick</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Where did you find that information? I know that 12 minutes of HD video on 5DII and 7D takes 4GB and I don't think 60D will be any different in that regard. If OP will be shooting in RAW plus HD video, then I think 16GB card is the way to go.</p>

<p>The camera's manual will give an estimate of both how many megabytes per minute you'll be generating in its different video modes (HD video, obviously, will generate more data per unit of time than SD video), how fast the card needs to be for uninterrupted video shooting, and the limits on how long a given clip can be. For my 7D, that's approximately 165 MB/min for SD video and 330 MB/min for HD video, a minimum transfer rate of 8 MB/s (which works out to about 55x, for cards which use that method of expressing speed), and a maximum clip of 4 GB or 29 minutes and 59 seconds, whichever comes first (and, according to the specs, 4 GB always comes first: in about 12 minutes for HD and 24 minutes for SD). I believe the 60D's video specs are identical to the 7D's in all of these areas.</p>

 

<p>Capacity: I'm of the school of thought that it's better to have a number of medium-capacity cards than one high-capacity card. Yes, these cards (assuming you buy legitimate high-quality cards from a reputable retailer; there are tons of scams around so be careful) are very reliable, but things can still go wrong, whether that means the card failing, data corruption taking place (whether from user error or other reason), or a card even getting lost (I know lots of people who lose things that are much bigger and harder to overlook than a little SD card). If a problem befalls one card, I believe it's better for that card to have only some of your photos/videos on it, not all of them. That's my personal opinion.</p>

 

<p>Speed: for video, a card that's faster than what the camera requires offers no benefit while it's in the camera. It won't shoot video any faster, and it won't play back video any faster. 8 MB/s or 55x is all you need for video on a 60D, and while that was a high-speed card 3-4 years ago, it's pretty run-of-the-mill by today's standards. So you don't need a particularly fast card for video. Now, there <em>is</em> one benefit of a faster card for video: it will take less time to download the video files to your computer. That's definitely a benefit, and it's up to you to decide how much extra it's worth paying for a faster card for that purpose. (On the still image side of things, as long as you don't shoot bursts which exceed the camera's buffer, the speed of the card makes no difference at all to shooting; it may speed up chimping, and as with video, it will speed up downloading to your computer.)</p>

<p>I agree with Gary don't put all your data on one card. I like the Sandisk HD SD cards and they seem to load pretty fast, but I may be biased because I used Sandisk CF cards on my 5d and 30d. I didn't realize that my SD card reader wouldn't reader SD HD cards so I ended up having to pick up a cheap reader for under ten bucks at Best Buy, I thought at first something was wrong with the card.</p>

<p>don't be cheap with your cards. for my 60d i picked up a 8gb pny class 10 "20mbps" this card is fine for most shooting but when it comes to even continuous jpeg shooting it just doesn't cut it*im too afraid to see how slow it is with raw). if you even want to touch high speed continuous go for the san disk extreme 30mb/s cards, i am picking up a 16 gb this weekend. for hd video a 15 mbps card is fine. size is not necessarily the most important factor in getting a card its speed that counts. i bought for my new camera two cheap san disk class four 2gb cards to kick around in my bag just in case i ran out of room, it was only about 20 bucks at best buy. in the world of sd cards san disk is king and the new 30mb/s extreme cards are the best out there. though i cant understand why canon would do something so stupid like putting sd in a 18mp camera that can shoot raw at 5 fps, cf can do twice that speed for the same price. anything less than 30mbps will take forever buffering on long exposures or continuous shooting, so go get the good card in a good size and get a few cheap backups just in case. if you can justify spending over a grand on a camera you can justify spending 80 bucks on a card. </p>

<p>don't be cheap with your cards. for my 60d i picked up a 8gb pny class 10 "20mbps" this card is fine for most shooting but when it comes to even continuous jpeg shooting it just doesn't cut it*im too afraid to see how slow it is with raw). if you even want to touch high speed continuous go for the san disk extreme 30mb/s cards, i am picking up a 16 gb this weekend. for hd video a 15 mbps card is fine. size is not necessarily the most important factor in getting a card its speed that counts. i bought for my new camera two cheap san disk class four 2gb cards to kick around in my bag just in case i ran out of room, it was only about 20 bucks at best buy. in the world of sd cards san disk is king and the new 30mb/s extreme cards are the best out there. though i cant understand why canon would do something so stupid like putting sd in a 18mp camera that can shoot raw at 5 fps, cf can do twice that speed for the same price. anything less than 30mbps will take forever buffering on long exposures or continuous shooting, so go get the good card in a good size and get a few cheap backups just in case. if you can justify spending over a grand on a camera you can justify spending 80 bucks on a card. </p>