Hi, I am new; just bought an E-PL1. I have a bunch of questions. I have a pair of 16GB Class 4 cards that I used with my DSLR. Oly says they recommend Class 6 for video. Will Class 4 lead to dropped frames without warning, or is it relatively safe?
Can't speak for a class 4, but at full resolution my class 2 Sandisk started to lose frames after about five or six minutes. No warning was given; I only found out that frames had been dropped upon reviewing the footage when I got home.
Class 4 should be sufficient for video, so I would at least wait and try before shelling out for a class 6 card (or cards). The E-pl1 in general is not a speed demon when it comes to CPU processing, and therefore does not generally take advantage of the speed of a class 6 card in other areas (like writing images to the card) either. Try it out, and then give us a report!
I rarely do video, but I find the faster Lexar (class 10's) cards speed up the multiple exposure and bracketing functions. Also, I stick to 8 gig cards because I don't want too many eggs in one basket.
The gf1 is a faster camera though, and would therefore have benefit from a faster card. With the e-pl1, I have not noticed a difference between my class 4 or 6 cards.
You may be okay with your class 4 cards, but you would have to try it out. I initially bought some cheap class 6 cards for my E-PL1 (Patriot and some other brand), but I was getting corrupt photos. About 1-in-14 photos were corrupted. So I then bought these Panasonic Class 10 SD cards and it solved my problem, and it is fairly fast. It is rated 22mb/s. Plus when I put it in my card reader, it is really fast to download the photos off of it. This card is made in Japan if that matters to you. Panasonic claims it has some sort of power-failure protection too. If battery goes out while writing a photo, all of your previous photos will still be in-tact. Panasonic 8GB SDHC Memory Card Class 10 in Secure Digital Memory Cards at JR.com Amazon.com: Panasonic 8 GB High Speed 22MB/s SDHC Class 10 Memory Card RP-SDW08GU1K: Electronics
I've been using a Class 10 Panasonic card for 4 months now and its fantastic! It really comes into its own with continuous shooting JPEG+RAW. If you look around the cost difference with others cards is surprisingly minimal!
I started using Panasonic Class 10 cards too because I like taking multiple exposure shots for HDR processing purposes. My GF1 is usually set up to take 7 exposures at 1/3 increments and the Class 6 cards seem to stall the camera at around shot 5. The performance difference between Class 6 and 10 is really noticeable. The 16 gig cards are often on sale for Can$99.
About this fragmentation, maybe someone can help me. I have a 16g class 10 Transcend memory card. The other day it "crapped" out on me, skipping a lot of frames while recording some test video. (EPL1). The card was almost full at the time, and the next video I shot gave me a "CARD FULL" message after just a few seconds. Now I have formatted the card, and have not had this problem again. Is it safe to assume, that fragmentation could be the cause? Or is it somewhat common to loose frames on the last few minutes of the Cards?
My sandisk class 6 (4gb) has not failed me and my E-PL1 yet. I have had first hand experience with transcend and patriot cards, and let's just say it was not a good experience (at least I wasn't the one that bought them).
Update for whomever might interest. I'm getting these dropped frames when, and only when, I do autofocus while recording video on HD. Luckily for the controlled enviroment where I'm going to use the EPL1, this is not a problem. I've done some testing with 3 different cards. A transcend class 10 and two transcend class 6, and they all do the same. Sadly I don't have any other brand of cards to do some testing. But it would be great if others could do this test with different types of cards.
I don't recommend Transcend cards... I bought two 16 GB Transcend Class 10 SDHC cards and they both failed in a month. Maybe they were fakes, but still I'd recommend other options.
using class 6 and class 10 in pana G1, and there is a difference. class 10 being of course faster in use.
I uses Sandisk SDHC Card 16GB class 4 on my E-PL1 and when i recording a HD video format,when it reaches about 600MB or about around 2 minutes,the record suddenly stop,on screen it still had a recording logo on top left corner,but on the time line (right down corner) it shows just "00:00",and hang..i had to push recording button to stop this strange screen..whe i start recording again,it happens again and again.. anyone had a problem like me?is it the speed of the SD Card makes E-PL1 only can write HD Video around 2 minutes length?or may a 16GB capacity on a class 4 makes this look "overloaded"? i had 8GB Kingston class 4 SDHC and recorded well.. thanks for any help and information
GF1 Performance I don't do video, but I do like the fast cards for high speed shooting or to reduce the delay from shooting to preview on my GF1. I tested my previous card at 13 MB/s write on my PC, and I recently bought a Sandisk Extreme III card that tested at 23 MB/s. I saw a small increase in speed, but not much. So I think that anything faster than 15 MB/s or so is limited by the speed of the GF1.
