Digital Storage media like SD cards that claim to be Ultra Fast, does it make a difference?

or are the regular ones fine. I thought it was the cameras capability, not the storage media. Thanks!

Digital Storage media like SD cards that claim to be Ultra Fast, does it make a difference?
It only matters for uploading to your computer. The speed of the pictures going on to the card is limited by the write speed of your camera. Even the best DSLR's can only make use of a card that would be slightly slower than a Sandisk extreme III. So Sandisk Extreme III is about as good as you need.





Extreme IV will upload faster to your computer as long as you use an external card reader. But it won't record from your camera any faster than an extreme III.





The image buffer on your camera plays a role in the speed at which your camera can take shots as well. Once your buffer is filled, the cameras write speed limits the speed with which the camera can take continuous images.





Let me illustrate:





Canon advertises that their new EOS 40D can record a burst rate of 6.5 jpegs per second. The buffer of this camera holds 75 jpegs. So you can shoot continuously for 11.5 seconds capturing 6.5 images per second. In the meantime the buffer begins to fill up because 6.5 jpegs per second is somewhere in the neighborhood of 22.75 megabytes per second of information that the camera is recording. The camera's write speed can put about 10 megabytes per second onto the card, so then when you take the difference of the 22.75 coming in and the 10 going out you are left with room for 12.75 megabytes to come in per second. That translates to about 2 frames per second once the buffer has been filled. These are of course estimates but you get the picture.





The main thing to realize from all that is that the 10 megabytes per second going onto the card is dictated by the cameras write speed, not the cards ability to accept what the camera is writing. A Sandisk Extreme IV can accept 20 megabytes of information per second, but if your camera can only write 10 megabytes per second, then why not save yourself come cash and get something that only accepts what your camera can do?





You're paying extra for a card that your camera can not even fully utilize.





Of course, if you have a regular pocket camera, then get a regular card, the speed is of no consequence whatsoever.





Hope that helps you!





F-stop
Reply:Check out SanDisc.com





I use their SanDisc Extreme III
Reply:It is actually both.





The only time this becomes important is when a photographer is shooting continuous frames.





Cards are designed to run at certain speeds, just like RAM. The faster the card, usually the more it costs.





On the camera end, the camera must be optimized to utilize the faster cards.





Some of the first Canon DSLR's (over five years ago) did not have this optimization in the the cameras electronics.