What speed of memory card?

[pierre1]

I'm looking to buy a new digital camera. I currently have an Ixus v3 (3.2 Mp) and am about to get either the Ixus 55 (5Mp) or the Ixus 750 (7Mp) as I'm happy with Canon. In my v3 I have a 512 Mb Lexar Compact Flash card, I'm not sure of the speed but it doesn't say anything like Ultra or anything so I'm assuming it's not that fast.

The camera shop guy says I may as well get the Sandisk standard SD card (20X) and that I could record at max video rate (640x480 @ 30 fr/second) for a few minutes without issue (subject to big enough card). Is that right? I'd prob. go for Sandisk which have standard (20X), Ultra II (60X I think) or Extreme (130X?). Which should I go for - I could also go for the new card that doubles as a USB stick, but I worry that moving parts could break!

I don't want to spend more than I need to but also don't want to limit the photos per second or video that I'd get. The cameras record in jpg, I'm guessing at about 2Mb (Ixus 55) and 3Mb (Ixus 750) per photo at best resolution and superfine.

Any thoughts? Cheers, Pierre

[MarkE19]

I don't know the actual figures, but I very much doubt that any compact camera will be able to write the data fast enough to a CF card to make use of the higher speeds some of the cards are capable of. Therefore I would say just get a good quality standard speed card, such as the Sandisk you mentioned.
In most cases the high speed cards only really become worth buying if you have a DSLR that can take many pictures per second and write them in RAW format. I've not looked at any of the latest compacts, but in the past they were only able to take a picture every second or so and only until the buffer was full.

Mark.

[bobalog]

I'd agree from what i've read about the camera struggling to make any difference regarding the speed. But it might be worth considering the read speed for when you download your photos etc?

Just a thought. If you shop around you might be surprised at how close they are in price. I've just bought an Extreme III sandisk card, which i'm sure won't make any difference when taking photos, but it was only about £2 more (£47 delivered) than the cheapest Ultra II card I could find! So went for it anyway.

[ush flynn]

ill Third that, the 20x will be fine or any lower number but still high speed card, mainly because if you use a usb2 card reader you might as well have a card that can keep up with the reader, but compacts like that dont make much of a difference in write speeds, my gf has the ixus 50 and i got her a 1gb kingston card which i think was 133x but dont quote me on that, anyway the sad fact is its not that much difference compared to the same speed CF card in her 20d (thats sick)