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I recently posted a question about buying a new memory card for my Canon
S50. I
don't know how to find out the speed that my camera will take. I know the
card I have is a 12X but how and where will I find out if it will take
something faster. I checked out Steve's Digicam and Digital P. Review but
didn't really know the
proper term to look for. Any help on this would be great.

Tass <> wrote:
: I recently posted a question about buying a new memory card for my
: Canon S50. I don't know how to find out the speed that my camera will
: take. I know the card I have is a 12X but how and where will I find
: out if it will take something faster. I checked out Steve's Digicam
: and Digital P. Review but didn't really know the proper term to look
: for. Any help on this would be great.

The term is "Continuous". Dpreview lists your camera as having two modes.
High speed lists at 2 fps (frames per second) to a maximum of 8 images.
Normal speed is listed at 1.5 fps to 8 images. This means that you could
snap 8 images in 4 seconds before the internal buffer is full and the
frame rate slows down. Additional information is listed on the "timing and
performance" page. Under the heading "Continuous mode" shows more
information on how image resolution (and storage format) effect the number
of frames per second and how many frames can be shot before filling the
buffer.

Another heading you might find useful on this page is "File write/Display
and sizes". This shows how long it takes to write a single image from
shutter press to completely saved, at various resolutions.

Combining these two charts you should be able to get an idea of how fast
you can shoot at your chosen resolution. For example it shows that if you
have the camera set at super-fine JPG and High speed Continuous mode you
could shoot 6 images 1.92 fps before the shooting rate drops to one frame
every 1.4 seconds from then on, until you pause long enough for the buffer
to be emptied onto the card. Since this would be the write time for 6
images at the above resolution, you would have to pause 6 x 3.6 sec (21.6
seconds) before the buffer is fully cleared and ready to shoot at the
highest speed again.

Of course these charts are resulting from tests and may vary a bit from
image subject to image subject (a smaller JPG file would take less time to
write than a larger JPG file), and individual camera/equipment
combination. But these numbers will definately give you an indication of
what to expect.

One thing I noticed I didn't spot a listing for how different cards
effected the write speed. So I suspect that the numbers are based on the
maximum write speed of the camera that may be modified if a card has a
slower write speed than the test equipment. I didn't do an exhaustive
search for this info. It may be there but I'll leave it for you to search
for that.

Randy

==========
Randy Berbaum
Champaign, IL

Yes, I think the essense of the question was, "how do I buy a memory
card that lets my camera go as fast as possible, but is not more
expensive than necessary?"

I have searched for the answer, and concluded there's generally no way
to know.