Does card speed and size in the Canon SD600 matter?

I just bought a Canon SD600 which comes with a 16MB card. I need to upgrade this card. What card speed and size would you recommend for this camera? I will be taking lots of quick photos, both indoor and outdoor.

Brenda,

Are there different card speeds to choose from? if so, which do you recommend? Can you also recommend one or two good brand names?

Thx..ah

Hi Albert,
There are a few different speeds for memory cards- what you'll be looking for is a number followed by an x, which stands for the camera's write speed (how fast it 'writes' and saves data). 1X=150KB-per-second
sustained write speed.

Memory cards aren't always clearly labeled with their speed, but they typically range from 32x all the way up to 80x. Sometimes it is also labeled as mb per second, in which case 9 mb per second is usually the minimum speed for a card to be called high speed. For the SD600, I think you will be perfectly happy with anything from 40x to 60x, or else anything around 9mb per second; you can buy something faster than that, but you probably won't notice a significant difference with the super-fast cards (which are also more expensive), since the camera is 6 megapixels and it doesn't need a SUPER fast card in order to write that amount of data quickly.

In terms of brands, my opinion is that it doesn't matter a whole lot, but I have always used SanDisk with my Canon digital, and it's never once failed on me. The SanDisk high speed is called an Ultra/ Ultra II. With all of this advice here's a link to a good card that would work for you: SanDisk Ultra II 512 mb (you can also, of course, find the same card in other sizes).
Hope that helps!

I can't get the continuous shooting mode on my SD600 to work when using the 16 MB SD card that came with the camera or my own regular speed 1GB SD card that I use for my PDA. My hunch is that the camera won't give me continuous shooting mode unless it sees high speed SD card, is this true ? If so, what speed of SD card must I buy to ensure continuous mode works ?

Hi Dave,
It's possible that it's the card that's causing the problem- or rather, the speed of the card. Let me ask you this, what exactly happens when you try to use the continuous mode? What goes wrong?

Brenda:

I never get into continuous mode. I try to scroll through the choices when I press the single shot/continuous/timer button, but only single shot and timer modes are available. The LCD never gives me the continuous mode indication, only single shot and timer. The camera somehow knows to inhibit me selecting continuous mode.

Dave, I looked into this further and it sounds like your hunch may be correct. Everyone is recommending a high speed card in order to 'get the most out of' the continuous shooting. I didn't find info anywhere, however, that said that WITHOUT the high speed card you wouldn't even be able to access continuous shooting. That sort of surprises me, as I thought you'd be able to use it but you would just have slow buffer times and it wouldn't work very well. But it's very possible that a high speed card is required.

Before you purchase one, let's make double sure that you're doing the right thing to access continuous shooting. According to the manual of this camera, continuous shooting can't be used in Auto, Stitch or Movie Modes. If you have the camera in Auto, this may be why you're not being allowed to access it. I own a different Canon (the A85) and when I set it to Auto and hit the button for timer/ continuous, it just gives me the timer. But when I switch to another mode like Manual, P, Scene, etc., it lets me access Continuous.

Give this a try and let me know if it fixes the problem. Note, if you are going to use the continuous, you should get a high speed card just to make it work better. But do let me know if you're able to access it by changing modes.

I have a standard Sandisk 128MB card and was also blaming it for not shooting in continuous mode till I too discovered it doesn't work in auto mode. Switched to Manual put it in continuous mode switched the flash off and was surprised that even with a slow card the camera set at 6 Mega pixel and Fine shot off about 10 frames in 5 seconds (each file about 2MB) that would be 4-5MB a second so I have no idea how the standard card sustained that write speed. I am going to buy a Kingston 50X 2GB card.

Yes, Brenda, you are right, I was in auto mode. I changed to manual, bingo, continuous mode became available. I will be buying a "high speed" SD card tonight anyway. I read the Canon manual ( more carefully this time), and it recommended a "super high speed" card. Other digging on the net has led me to believe this is a bit overkill for my usage.

I'll test the high speed card tonight and report back on how well it went.

Thanks Brenda!

I'm glad it worked!!!!

Finally got my 80x 1 GB Transcend SD card. In continuous mode, with flash turned off, 2 frames per second.

So does anyone know if there is any proformance benifit from a 133X card when taking pictures? Can the camera even handle writing to the card that fast?