Fuji How important are fast SD cards?

I've actually found fast SD cards to be more beneficial with Fuji cams than any other. I'll never forget the difference in the X100 when I switched from a standard card to a fast one - it actually made it a very useable camera where it nearly hadn't been shooting raw with a slower card. I haven't tried the X-Pro with anything BUT fast cards, so I don't know if that's still the case or not. With my other cams, the speed of the card never seemed to make much practical difference. With the GH2 I had for a while and the OMD I have now, I can find a difference if I'm shooting with a fast burst mode - the write times are a lot better with the faster cards. But I shoot like that almost never, so I'm fine with just about any cards in my other cameras.

-Ray
 
What surprised me in the story -- and I'd need to confirm it elsewhere -- is that video requires less speed in storage than stills does. Given the relative quality of any video frame I can almost believe it, but there sure are a lot of them and, nifty compression algorithms notwithstanding, it seems counterintuitive. I don't shoot videos with my Fujis, but we do use a couple of LX-5s to make instructional DVDs that have been pretty successful. (There, the problem has never been card speed but the absurd limit of about 8 minutes per scene. Makes my editing life problematical, synchronizing two video streams and an audio stream, without them beginning or ending at the same time.)

Then again, my first digital camera was a Sony which wrote directly to floppy, with no discernable buffer. That was slow! (And a single floppy would hold only four highest-quality images, so I had to carry a bag of floppies when I shot an event -- felt only a slight improvement over a 4x5 press camera, with two pictures per film holder. And 4x5 pictures are a whole lot better!)
 
What are you guys considering a 'fast' sd card since 'class 10' isn't really all that telling...30 mbps write?, 45mbps? 95mbps?

Good question. I no longer purchase any card slower than 95 mbps. I already have slower cards for my older cameras that don't take advantage of the UHS-1 standard but even they are at least 30 mbps/Class 10.
 
When I made the switch to Fuji, I found that class 10, 45mb made a huge difference over my older class 6 cards. And since I use Apple, specifically my iPad more than Mac, I have gotten in the habit of formatting the card in the camera after uploading and clearing the card out. A few times I didn't do this (and if I recall may have even changed the file structure) which caused significant lag in performance...
 
What surprised me in the story -- and I'd need to confirm it elsewhere -- is that video requires less speed in storage than stills does. Given the relative quality of any video frame I can almost believe it, but there sure are a lot of them and, nifty compression algorithms notwithstanding, it seems counterintuitive.

I think it is because how mpeg algorithms work: Every now and then you store a full quality frame (keyframe) and between them every frame only stores the differences with the precedent frame (i-frames) wich needs way less information. Those keyframes are roughly like Jpegs, so even them are less "heavy" than a RAW.
 
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