Two types of SD cards...a 4GB SD card and a 4GB SDHC card. What is the benefit to the SDHC type?

I have a Panasonic DMC-FZ18 Lumix camera and am curious, as I presently have a 4GB SD card...if I wish to utilize the burst or continuous shooting mode, will that card suffice or do I need a SDHC card or something of that ilk...not real familiar re: write speeds and requirements and such, just wanting to know if my present SD card will serve my needs. Thnx

Two types of SD cards...a 4GB SD card and a 4GB SDHC card. What is the benefit to the SDHC type?
No need to worry. The 'HC' in the SDHC card just stands for 'High Capacity' this is a general term for cards over 2GB. Earlier cameras had a memory limit of 2GB and therefore could not use cards larger than that. AS needs grew, SDHC cards were invented for cameras and devices that could address more than 2GB of memory. Now the 'HC' is starting to lose its meaning as it is becoming very common these days to use more than 2GB in a device.





This has nothing to do with the card's speed. The original standard for measuring the speed of a card was referenced to 150 kilobits per second or 0.15 megabits per second. This is referred to as 1x or one speed. a ten speed card was ten times as fast so it could process 1.5 megabits per second. You average camera likes to write at around 25x or 3.75 Mb/s. Any card faster than that will be fine. If the card is slower, then you will just experience a longer delay before the camera is ready to use again. In most situations this is not the end of the world.





My advice is stick with a name brand card such as Sandisk, Lexar etc and just get what the budget can afford. Sandisk however is the world's most counterfeited card, so watch out for 'cheap' ones on places like ebay etc.





teef_au