Canon T1i, use only fastest sdhc cards or lose video
138 of 142 people found this review helpful.
Great camera, I'm sure you can read all the spec and features elsewhere. I will concentrate on thing they don't tell you.
Some Class 6 SDHC cards are NOT fast enough to do video on this camera. My experience specifically KINGSTON class 6 is too slow. IF you see the video buffer bar at the right of the screen show up, then your memory is too slow. Once that bar reaches 5 the camera will, without warning or beeps, stop recording. You will miss the whatever happens after that. You will then have to restart recording, it will not do so automatically. You clip will abruptly end at the most inopportune time.
SanDisk Extreme III class 6 is quite fast enough in my testing.
I have been told that the transcend class 6 16GB is good too.
I have tested my T1i for memory usage in video mode, here are the results using a Sandisk 8 Gig Extreme III:
T1i Video Memory Usage Rates for a 1 minute file.
1080 mode 282 MB
720 mode 194 MB
480 mode 131MB
Following is for 5 minute file
1080 = 1,383 MB
720 = 988 MB
480 = 638
Any 1 clip can be 4GB max, so the following is an approximate max clip length
1080 about 14 minutes
720 about 20 minutes
480 about 30 minutes
These figures are approximate as the content of the video will affect the compression and amount of memory actually used but these are pretty close to an average time you should expect. I did a little rounding so these are probably the on the low side you may get a little more time, but not much, maybe a minute.
You can shoot as much video as the card will hold, just any 1 uninterrupted clip cannot be longer than 4 gig.
Shooting Video also eats the battery, buy extras, one Battery per every 8 gig card should be about right.
Still shot Capacity on 8 gig card
Large + RAW =286
Just RAW = 359
Large = 1375
Medium = 2334
Small = 4175
* if you shoot any video mixed with the stills these numbers drop very fast.
If you are going to do Video, and it important at all, I can only recommend the SanDisk 8 gb sdhc extreme III at this point. Just be warned that the video mode is very demanding and picky about the performance of the card, just the class rating is not to be counted on, as I found out the hard way. Some class 4's may work, even class 2's but that buffer bar starts showing up.
DO NOT BUY KINGSTON Class 6, I had 2 of those and lost important video due to their inability to keep up with the camera.
>>>>>>>> Be Safe Buy the Sandisk Extreme III or similar cards that are much faster than the minimum spec/claims of class 6.
Review ID: 10000000012062018
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Canon EOS T1i
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