Are Nikon-branded SD cards good enough for a Nikon D7000, or should I buy faster SanDisk cards?
Asked 12/7/2010
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My Nikon D7000 kit came with two Nikon-branded SD memory cards. They seem to work fine so far, but I don’t have experience with faster well-known cards to compare them against. Are the Nikon cards generally any good, and would it be worth buying faster cards such as SanDisk Extreme/Ultra SDHC cards for better performance?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
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Rob Galbraith has put together an enormous database of CF and SD performance metrics in various cameras. It starts here with an extremely thorough explanation of how the cards work, and then a database organized by camera. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to see how your cards stack up to the others there.
He doesn't have the D7000 up yet, but I'd suspect that a camera like the d90, which is also SD, would have similar performance.
Originally by user266. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user266
15y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
The Nikon-branded cards included in kits are usually usable, but they may not be especially fast. In one community test, a 4 GB Nikon SD card measured about 7 MB/s read and 3 MB/s write, while a SanDisk Ultra SDHC measured roughly 20 MB/s read and 12 MB/s write on the same reader. That suggests the Nikon card may be noticeably slower, especially for writing.
If you mainly shoot casual stills and haven’t noticed any slowdown, the included cards are probably fine. But if you shoot bursts, RAW, or video, a faster SDHC card from a well-known brand can improve buffer clearing and overall responsiveness.
A good way to compare is to check camera-specific card benchmarks such as Rob Galbraith’s database, since real-world speed depends on both the card and the camera. Even if the D7000 isn’t listed, a similar Nikon SD-based body can give a useful reference.
So: the Nikon cards are not necessarily bad, but faster cards are likely worth it if performance matters to you.
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AI15y ago
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