Looking for new SD card

Hi guys I am looking for a couple of new SD cars for my Nikon 5100 and I what to buy quality cards, I am thinking of the Sandisk range.

But I am confused about the different speeds and class, I see some are class1, some class 3 ?

someone told me to go for the sandisk extreme range that a good idea

What do you guy use please

I use the extreme, but honestly you want the fastest transfer either way if you can afford it.

I've got a sandisk extreme 16GB 60mb/s from tescos on offer at £10, works fine in my D7100.

if you have a local Tesco's its worth calling in.

Thanks for the excellent advice guys

Yes we have a Tesco local to us I will have a look.

What are the numbers I should look for to make sure it is a fast card

I see there is Extreme, extreme plus, extreme pro ?

This is the 1 I got from tescos, which will work just fine in your camera,

The most prominent numbers are the Read and Write speeds of the card. The higher the numbers the faster the card can manipulate data. The Read speed indicates how fast the card can move data from the card to, say, your computer. The Write speed indicates how fast the card can take data from, say, your camera's buffer and write it to the card. The second number is the more critical of the two, for most of us I assume, but manufacturers will frequently make the faster Read speed the most prominent on the packaging; it's not deceptive, you just need to know what you're looking at.

"Class" as in "Class 3" or "Class 10" is also an indicator of speed but it's more complicated to explain. Simply put, there's no reason NOT to have a Class 10/UHS-1 compatible card these days; that's pretty much the standard and I don't recommend you drop below it.

For what it's worth, I've found great success with Samsung PRO SD cards. Very fast, perfectly reliable and very affordable.
....

I like the Extreme Pro 95 mb/s cards. I shoot bursts with wildlife, and get a little better performance with a faster card. If you seldom shoot more than a frame at a time, the speed issue isn't such a big deal.

Thanks guys for the advice I am a little worried that I might buy a fake as I expect there are a lot about

The one in the camera at the moment is a sandisk extreme 45MB/s its the only one have at the moment as all my others have been lost in a house move

sam49 said:

Thanks guys for the advice I am a little worried that I might buy a fake as I expect there are a lot about

The one in the camera at the moment is a sandisk extreme 45MB/s its the only one have at the moment as all my others have been lost in a house move

Click to expand...

Buy from a reputable source and you should be fine.

For the paranoid there free testers available that will determine if your a card isn't performing up to spec'.
....

Horoscope Fish said:

Buy from a reputable source and you should be fine.
For the paranoid there free testers available that will determine if your a card isn't performing up to spec'.....

Click to expand...

I was looking for this. I buy generally on the internet, some have been e-bay, some amazon. Cheap is first priority, then I look at speed.

My latest Kingston U3 90 MByte/s write 80 MByte/s read:

Warning: Only 30611 of 30612 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 20.0 MByte/s
Reading speed: 1.07 MByte/s => I had a better result on an other computer
H2testw v1.4

=> very disappointed
----------------------------------------------------------------
Lexar 1000X UHSII


Warning: Only 32000 of 60063 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 22.6 MByte/s
Reading speed: 32.6 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
----------------------------------------------------------------
Lexar 600X UHSI micro

Warning: Only 10000 of 30531 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 19.8 MByte/s
Reading speed: 32.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

=> convinced I`m doing something wrong in the testing. Speed is generally not blocking in photography at the moment, but I try to get what I pay for.

Vincent said:

I was looking for this. I buy generally on the internet, some have been e-bay, some amazon. Cheap is first priority, then I look at speed.

My latest Kingston U3 90 MByte/s write 80 MByte/s read:

Warning: Only 30611 of 30612 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 20.0 MByte/s
Reading speed: 1.07 MByte/s => I had a better result on an other computer
H2testw v1.4

=> very disappointed
----------------------------------------------------------------
Lexar 1000X UHSII


Warning: Only 32000 of 60063 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 22.6 MByte/s
Reading speed: 32.6 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
----------------------------------------------------------------
Lexar 600X UHSI micro

Warning: Only 10000 of 30531 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 19.8 MByte/s
Reading speed: 32.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

=> convinced I`m doing something wrong in the testing. Speed is generally not blocking in photography at the moment, but I try to get what I pay for.

Click to expand...

It's possible the problem lies with the hardware you're using to test the cards. Are you a card reader you plug into a USB port? If so, it could be the card reader. It could also be the USB port, USB 3.0 will transfer much faster than a USB 2.0 port, for instance.

Of those three cards the first one, the Kingston, looks extremely suspect to me.

Horoscope Fish said:

It's possible the problem lies with the hardware you're using to test the cards. Are you a card reader you plug into a USB port? If so, it could be the card reader. It could also be the USB port, USB 3.0 will transfer much faster than a USB 2.0 port, for instance.

Of those three cards the first one, the Kingston, looks extremely suspect to me.

Click to expand...

I do believe indeed the standard hardware is limited. I think of buying a Kingston FCR-HS4

So next test, I had an external reader from a colleague an old EMTEC USB1, it is about 4% slower then the internal readers.

Since I had enough from buying on the internet and did not find the Kingston in shops (Lexar Pro at 40-80 EUR you do find), I ended up buying a USB3 stick from HAMA supporting UHS-II.
Results (testing speed only):

Lexar 64GB UHSII 1000X

Warning: Only 30000 of 60063 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 64.8 MByte/s
Reading speed: 95.1 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
-----------------------------------------------------

Kingston 32GB U3 90/80 MByte/s

Warning: Only 30000 of 30612 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 68.7 MByte/s
Reading speed: 69.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4
------------------------------------------------------

Micro Lexar 32GB UHSI 600X (did 3 tests to reach this, issue with adapter?, this is the best on the internal reader)

Warning: Only 3000 of 30531 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 19.5 MByte/s
Reading speed: 32.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4


=> Lexar 64GB UHSII 1000X; the card I have seems fast, but slower then I expected, putting it on the reader.
=> Kingston 32GB U3 90/80 MByte/s; think I got the real stuff, but my reader is still not the most (even if sufficient) performant
=> Micro Lexar 32GB UHSI 600X ; think this is not according to the specs I bought, but it works good enough. Probably going into my drone soon.