Card Carrying HMC150 Users SDHC Cards
 

A friend of mine just ordered an HMC150 yesterday. He called to tell me he is now "a card carrying HMC150 shooter". I guess it's true in more than one way, since it does not use tapes.

This brings up the topic of SDHC cards. I have searched for manufacturers who list their write speed. I have only found two. OCZ Gold Series lists a speed of 150x and a Kingston that list 133x. I bought some 8 and 16 gb OCZ cards. They are more expensive than most other cards, but I wanted a faster card when recording longer continuous record times like wedding ceremonies that will run between 30-60 minutes.

Has anyone found other cards that list the write speed?

Here are the links to what I found.
Newegg.com - Kingston 8GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Ultimate Class 6 - 133X (20MB/sec) Flash Card Model SD6/8GB-U - Flash Memory
Newegg.com - OCZ Gold Series 8GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) 150x Flash Card Model OCZSDHC6PRO-8GB - Flash Memory
Newegg.com - OCZ Gold Series 16GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) 150x Flash Card Model OCZSDHC6PRO-16GB - Flash Memory

Toms Hardware just did a review of 13 different SDHC cards.

13 SDHC Memory Cards Reviewed : SD Memory Cards for Professionals

Hope it is helpful.

Mark,
My HMC150 is on the way -- and I really liked the Texas dealer you recommended. I searched too, but couldn't find any others listing that higher speed. I ordered a couple of OCZ cards and some Transcends from Newegg. Have you used the OCZ's yet? Is there any sort of noticeable performance difference from the cards with the slower write speeds?

What does an 8GB card get you in terms of minutes?

About 45 minutes I believe...

If it helps, I did a test of a 16g card at the highest quality. It ran for 147 min before it stopped.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the link. It was good to see some additional fast cards, but I wish he would have included pricing and a chart to compare models, speed and price.

Hi John,

Congratulations on the new camera and I'm glad they took good care of you.

I used the OCZs a week ago, but have not gone through all of the footage yet.

Thanks Tom.

Wow, 2 1/2 hours is pretty darn good.

Darn it, sorry about that.

1 hr, 47 min. , not 147 min. Big difference.

Still pretty good.

So I have to ask before I buy my camera: Are there any issues anyone can imagine where the card might fail?

I haven't heard of any. I'm just concerned. I'm weary about making the jump from tape to cards.

Certainly nothing is perfect and when it comes to failure...."Never say never".

But being that there is no tape drive with its moving parts, it should be more reliable than tape. And tape was generally pretty reliable.

The SDHC cards it uses are looking to be much more reliable than tape. No drop outs!

Plus it's so nice to be able to instantly review clips and not have to worry about messing up the timecode or accidentally over-writing something.

I don't think this is a fair assessment. One can loose ALL of their footage on a SDHC card quite easily. If you check the reviews of many of the popular SDHC card brands you will see that around 10% of the people complain of loosing all the data on the SDHC card for a unknown reason. Obviously this isn't a very scientific statistic but people need to be careful. Careful what brand they purchase and how they treat their cards. SDHC cards aren't just some miracle solution. They have their drawbacks as well!

Mark I think it would be worth buying the 16gb Panasonic cards. I think that is the route I will take. I'm glad you started this thread... This is a topic that has interested me a great deal.

I'd be cautious of anecdotal reports of data loss.

Not saying it can't happen, but there are a LOT of knockoff memory cards floating around with big brand names on them (don't buy memory on eBay unless you are VERY sure what you're buying...).

The fake/knockoff stuff is very iffy as to how much data it will hold (usually NOT what's on the label), is prone to data loss (when file sizes and the actual capacity disagree, bad things happen), and good luck with the read/write speed...

Memory is cheap enough as it is, and saving a few $$ on memory from unknown sources is really dumb, but quite common (I tried it myself... thus speaking from experience).

Buy your memory from reputable sources and name brands and I don't think you'll be losing data or sleep.

Mark,

Have you checked out the footage on these cards yet? ( 16 gb OCZ cards )Wanted to pickup a few and wanted to know how this worked out.

Thanks!

Hi Steve,

I have shot over a dozen events with the OCZ Gold 16gb cards, and they work great.

Thanks I placed an order for 4 16 Cards at tigerdirect. $44 each. Not bad. Thanks again.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I'm glad they were in stock. I have had a tough time finding the 16 gb OCZ Gold cards in stock.

If you check out a certain site known for being very slick, you'll see a promo for Sandisk Ultra II 16gb cards for about 12bucks each after rebates. Fantastic deals.

What is this site you speak of? lol. just kidding. I saw that, but I didn't pick up the Ultra II because of supposed slowness, and I can't afford that. I did pick up 6 8GB Ultra III using a similar rebate, but I'm now looking for a few more to be safe for an upcoming event. I'll take a look at ones mentioned here.

Class 4's (Ultra IIs) are fast enough for the HMC150...even the EX1/EX3 with MxR adapters. :)

It's just the offloading onto the comp that you will see a small difference in speed...not enough to justify the huge price difference with this deal.

Hope ya pick a few up, it's a great deal.

I just got my HMC150 today..pretty pumped.. While the batteries are charging, thought I would run a speed test on the card that came with it (I got a B&H kit, included a 16gb Class 6 eFilm Pro (Delkin Devices) card.

The Delkin site shows it as a 75x speed device (and $99). B&H shows it at $46 and 150x.

My read speeds all topped out at 21 MB/s no matter what system I tried (in fact, system speed showed little difference).

Write speeds at best were 9.1 MB/s . I know faster speeds are possible, I have a 512 Generic SD card I got with my Zoom H2 recorder, and that thing has always been a smoker for speed, 15 MB/s at best.

I guess it's fast enough, Class 6 starts at 6 MB/s.

And really, it might as well be a 1x Real Time card, because it takes as long as it takes to fill the card with live video. It's the read that matters most, I seriously doubt I'll ever write to this card outside of the camera.

I don't have anything else over 2gb to test , but those are only practical to use as a last resort. Hmmm.. just realized pretty much every piece of my equipment has an SD slot... I think it's going to be around for a long time.

I bought a Patriot 16 GB SDHC Class 6 today for about $40 CDN, and it is FAST.

I clocked it at 11.5 MB/s. Don't know if speeds above Class 6 matter to the 150, I'll probably never write to this card with a PC.