Ricoh SD Card Speeds 

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GX100 Card Speeds

Here's a short list of a few brand name SD cards with their read and write speeds. The write speed will determine the possible delay shot to shot, the read speed makes a difference when using a card reader or portable storage drive to read the card and may also have an effect on download speeds from the camera when directly connected via the USB. Any time an X speed factor like 40x etc is quoted it should relate to the write speed rating of the card, and 1x is taken as 150 kilobytes per second. So 40x would be 6 megabytes per second. Be aware that a card may be capable of writing at that speed, but any camera may be limited at some point in its write speed so may not see the full advantage of a faster card. List under construction as it is sometimes very difficult to find proper details about cards. 

Also now have Panasonic Class 2 1 gig card rated on their paperwork as "up to 5 mb/sec" = 33x (?), but it seems the fastest of those tried by me so far in the tables below.
The Aussie Panasonic cards are listed at http://panasonic.com.au/products/category.cfm?categoryID=130 Those are Aussie $ prices shown, and they are cheaper in the shops of course.

Be aware that some memory card makers will rate the X speed factor based on the read speed, and that is a nonsense figure as only the write speed matters in a camera.

Now for some Practical SD Card Speed Tests on the R3

Method: 

1. Remove the SD card, turn camera on, 
2. Set the R3 (or R4 as well) to highest resolution 4:3 image, top menu item for Quality
3. In Setup Menu - format the internal memory
4. Take shots of anything (with flash off to save battery) until the internal memory is full - on my R3 with same shot being taken of a room scene it took 13 shots to fill the memory, R4 may be a couple or so less shots. Now you have about 26 megabytes of images to use as a test. On a later retest it seemed to fit 18 images, so redid the test on all the cards plus another, and the new results are below.
5. Turn off camera, insert SD card of at least 32 megabytes capacity.
6. Hold Display button for a few seconds to turn camera on without extending the lens
7.  Press Menu button and go down to Copy To Card item
8. Using an easy to read sweep second hand of a clock, press the Right button as the hand sweeps over a convenient second mark, and start counting
9. Keep an eye on both the camera and the clock and time when the "Processing" message disappears
10. Note the results, format the card again to clean it up and maybe try it again or go back to step 5 to test another card
11. When finished, leave all SD cards formatted, and also format the internal memory to clean out the test shots.

Some R3 Results

Retries of the test usually show maybe plus/minus 1 second variation, the beauty of this test is that the focus, shutter and aperture are not being thrashed repeatedly. Despite using the lowly 10x Kingston card, there has never been an issue with waiting for the R3 to write to card. We don't use bracketing or continuous shooting is maybe the explanation. I had some odd conclusions with doing speed comparisons on another test so for completeness will now use the following method as well.

1. Set R3 camera for maximum resolution and Continuous shooting.

2. Hold shutter down for 30 seconds and release.

3. Measure final time taken after shutter release at 30 seconds to complete the write to card.

4. Count the number of photos taken in that 30 second continuous shoot.

From those two tests it appears the Sandisk Ultra II is not so ultra after all, in a real continuous shooting test it behaves like a 10x card and not like a 60x card - but of course that may most likely be due to the fact that the R3 and R4 may not be able to take full advantage of the claimed 60x speed of the Ultra II. When I have borrowed a few more card types I may be able to come to a more complete conclusion as to what point the SD card speed advantage fizzles out. Meanwhile I keep buying the Kingston standard 10x cards and there have been no problems. But now the cheap Panasonic card seems best.

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