Skip to main content

SD Card Speed Test Roundup October 2017

I’ve done previous articles. A decent amount of the cards here will be the same. The goal was to round up as many cards as I had on-hand to do benchmark testing on. I also did a bracketed camera test with the Nikon D600.

Here is the companion video on Youtube.

I used a Transcend USB 3.0 card reader for this test.

Here are the steps I took to setup the benchmark:
Make a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu Desktop on it. In my case I used version 17.04.

Download an ISO.

Download the USB bootable drive tool.

Run Rufus and have it create the bootable drive with the downloaded ISO image.

At that point you can reboot your computer with the USB drive attached and get into Ubuntu. Once loaded, you have to find the Disk Utility. It wasn’t quite as easy for me as in past articles. Partly because I haven’t used Ubuntu for a long time and they also hid the utility for whatever reason. I was able to search the available programs and bring it up. They also hide the benchmark functionality inside a “burger” menu (the icon with three lines in it). Talk about a step backward in user interface design… anyways. 

Linux card testing.

Here is a published Google Sheets document with all of the results.

Take note that I have a second test below this big benchmark table where I used the Nikon D600 to calculate approximate write times for a 3-photo bracket.

The results with my links to the cards on Amazon (or at least the closest match I could find, some of these cards are very old):

















Here is the data compiled from the real world test using the Nikon D600 and a 3-photo bracket (RAW + fine JPEG at approximately 90 MB total):

Here is a chart to see of the camera speed data (click):






That’s it! It took a long time to compile and write/produce. A newer card doesn’t necessarily mean a faster card, at least in the case of write speeds. My favorite brand of card is Transcend mostly because they have been very reliable in my personal experience. 

Though, from the results the ones I have bought from them are not top performers. I’ve been shifting to cheaper cards in general over the years, which is part of the reason some of the newer cards don’t compete with the older ones. If I were to buy expensive new cards, the results would likely be very different. I just don’t need extremely fast cards with my 24 mega-pixel cameras that shoot a maximum of 1080p video.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

First look at the Sigma 18-50mm F/2.8 for Sony E-mount bought from KEH

I've use a Sony Alpha A6000 and the PZ 16–50mm F/3.5–5.6 OSS kit lens with my computer as a webcam for a long time now. It's a lower cost option that has been very consistent outputting 1080p at 30 FPS to a USB based HDMI capture device. The kit lens is generally fine, but it has a few quirks. The biggest issue is that throughout the zoom range the maximum aperture value is not fixed. This introduces technical challenges when I want to show detailed views of product or similar use cases. There are also other considerations I'll talk about later in this article. So I decided to buy the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN | C lens in E-mount as a replacement.  Links in this article are a mix of paid and through my affiliates. I earn from each in different ways. One is a flat fee and the others I earn from qualifying purchases. Considering them for your purchasing needs helps make the creation of this information viable!   I made a video unboxing the lens and trying it out with Open ...
Read more

Camera Gear Reviews and Marketing Issues Exposed

A great overview by Gerald Undone on his experiences in the field of camera gear related videos! It is an important topic. The more open the better, I’d say. After over 13 years making photography and videography gear videos, I’ve not had a huge amount of success comparatively, but I’ve also never been especially brand safe to begin with for these companies to consider me. 🤣 I think his mentions toward the end of the video are especially important. The unwritten pressure, or worse with companies like Insta360 , shouldn’t be acceptable and should be publicly called out more often. That’s probably the only way things will actually change for the better. I created a video detailing my opinion on the topic further: More of my comments on the video… His YouTube channel. 4:30 I understand that’s what Gerald does, but are there situations where companies are paying for flights and hotel costs of other reviewers with the expectation of a video/article being produced? (EDIT: I’ve seen confirm...
Read more

Canon M6 Mark II HDMI & 10-bit Output?

I’m writing all of this down as in case sources disappear and I want to reference M6ii HDMI-out information in the future.  So this is not by any means a definitive source but rather a jumble of information I’m putting together in the moment. The “HDMI info disp” setting to select clean output mode. There is one webpage I know about that mentioned the Canon EOS M6 Mark II supports clean HDMI output in 10-bit 4:2:2. I don’t think the page exists any longer on Canon USA’s website because the old link no longer works after a redesign. https://youtu.be/_UT9u0XVn5U However it does currently exist on the Internet Archive . Here’s the important quote from that webpage:  HDMI recording: Menu-selected user choices for HDMI output with info (images recorded to the SD card); Clean 4K output, or Clean Full HD output. With clean output, compatible HDMI recorders can be connected with appropriate HDMI cords. During Clean HDMI out, video is not recorded to an in-camera SD card. With compatib...
Read more