Hi there

My first ever posting, so please go gently on me.

I've just bought a Canon Powershot S2 IS, love it but need a bigger card. I've read the review in one of the computer magazines at work and they recommended the Integral card. Now however I am stuck, do I need a normal SD card or a Hi-Speed one? Will both work in my camera? Any other advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Regards
Penders

Hi Penders, I'm just waiting for a little point and shot to come through the post (Canon IXUS 750) It only comes with rubbish 32MB SD, so i've got to buy a new card. I've been in the same predicament.

I'm not expert and i don't know the figures, but i think both will work in your camera. The difference is the camera will be able to write to the high speed one faster! (i think)

I don't know if its worth it or not. I think its a case of asking your self are you going to be taking pictures every second or not. If you are then a high speed one might be good.

I'm going for a standard one!

Simple.
Check the write times of the camera. If it doesnt support the speed of the Card then its stuck to the speed of the camera, internally.
Though if you bought a faster card, it might be utilised in your next camera purchase. Future proofing possibly?
The choice is yours.

[barongreenback]

I would get at the moment the issue is whether your powershot is 1) Physically capable of using the additional speed and 2) Are you planning to take several shots in a burst? If you are just taking the odd shot and are not bothered about action photography then the extra expense isn't worth it.

As for future proofing, having just moved from a compact to a digital SLR my collection of SD cards were redundant (although thankfully I have a PDA to take advantage of them).

Thanks for the advice guys, very informative and far less painful than I feared.

[Andrew_arkless]

I wouldn't bother with a high speed card - I've got the Ixus750 & a cheap 1GB card. The camera can do arround 15 shots at 2fps to the internal memory before it needs to write to the card. (this may be different on the S2 though).

If you got the cash get the biggest & fastest

[Overlord69]

Hi penders,
My next door neighbour has got the Ixus750 and I bought a SD card from Amazon.co.uk for him (as part of my order to save on postage). They sell a Viking 512MB Secure Digital Memory Card for (£19.19). He's very happy with it for both photo's and movie clips. So much so that he ordered another one. Click here to have a look.

PS: Don't go for the biggest (ie: 1Gb) get smaller variants (2 x 512Mb) then if a card goes tits up you haven't lost everything.

[ush flynn]

andrew thats your buffer or cache not the card speed at work there, the fact is your camera still has to stop and write the photos, thats where the high speed cards come into effect, that time is drastically reduced.

To answer the original question and rehash whats been said, check the s2 even supports faster card speeds, the s1 didnt so its worth looking at the specs. Then decide how you use your camera, moving subject? sports? kids? pets? might be worth the extra pounds to reduce time between shots for these things, landscapes and macro, maybe not

[Andrew_arkless]

Yep I know its the built in cache, the point I was making was that unless you need to shoot constantly at 2fps then any delay writing to the SD card doesn't matter.