KevinKeeganPro.com Blog

Well I received my Nikon D90 about 2 weeks ago now. I’ve had plenty of fun with it so far…and in my opinion, it shoots great quality pictures. I was aware that SanDisk had released a new 30 MB/s edition of their Extreme III SD card to go along with this camera. Well mine arrived yesterday and I thought I’d do a little test to get some real world numbers out of it.

I’ve chosen three SD cards for comparison:

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card

My test was shooting a simple well lit area of my desk in order to get max fps. All cards were inserted into the D90 then formatted before each test. With the camera set to manual (*Auto-ISO off and Active D-lighting on…I’ll get to that later), Continuous High or CH shutter mode, and JPEG Normal, I proceeded to fire off as many shots as possible before the camera buffer appeared to get full and began to slow down the camera’s ROF (rate of fire).

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My results, though not exact, give you an idea of where the performance lies in this new 30 MB/s card from SanDisk.

1. SanDisk 4 Gb Extreme III 30 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 90-95 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed to about 3.5-4fps)

2. SanDisk 2 Gb Extreme III 20 MB/s (Class 6) SD card
Approx. 50 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a steady 3-3.5fps)

3. SanDisk 4 Gb SDHC (Class 2) SD card
Approx. 15 shots at 4.5fps (after that it slowed down to a about 1.5-2fps)

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The card didn’t offer any kind of speed boost but merely ROF endurance at the camera’s fastest continuous speed.

The card did seem to have a slight quicker rate of review when going through pictures in the playback mode. Also the quick review after you take several continuous shots was quicker too, but nothing amazing. But there is one cool thing, let’s say you’ve shot several of continuous shots like 30-50 for some reason, the live review will keep showing you the latest picture that it has written to the card. It takes a long time to catch up and show the preview of the last in the series. Well if you hit the play button or the shutter half way, the quick review ceases. This allows the writing process to the card to finish as fast as possible. After that, just hit the play button again and you’re able to immediately flip through all of the photos you just shot…instantly. This would be very good for shooting sports, when you might need to check photos quickly then right away begin shooting again. Also, the speed when downloading from the camera to a computer using this new SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s SD card is incredibly quick compared to the others. I was able to download 500+ full size jpeg pictures in a 2-3 minutes.

So overall this card has some performance gains over a standard card and the normal Extreme III card in keeping the camera from filling up the buffer.

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(Updated 3-5-09) *Now about the Auto-ISO issue. If Auto-ISO is enabled, and then activated by the camera** this can indirectly inhibit the camera’s ability to buffer. Also these other settings, pulled from the Nikon D90 manual, can cause the same effect…
• ISO is set to H 0.3 or higher
• High ISO NR is on and the ISO is set to 800 or higher
• If long exposure noise reduction is on
• Active D-lighting is on.

Here is the buffer size chart from the Nikon D90 manual…

**Auto-ISO: If the image being metered is going to be underexposed and the shutter speed has to drop below the minimum shutter speed parameter in the ISO sensitivity settings to achieve a proper exposure, only then will the camera force a change in the ISO settings from where you have it set at (i.e. ISO 200) – See below…

With the above settings, only when the camera’s shutter speed drops below 1/30th will the camera adjust the ISO above 200, but it will not exceed 1600.

Often times I turn to books, magazines, or anything else I happen to come across for ideas. Joey, from Wrecked Magazine, pointed out and poked fun a little bit at my taking of random pics with my blackberry’s camera. The truth of the matter is, you never know what or where inspiration may come from. It doesn’t have to come from one particular image or scene that you come across but… that one image or scene could just help add that missing element in a project you’ve been working on.

But other than pictures I take, one of the main sources I have been using lately to get creatively inspired is this series of books. I have two so far, 1000 Type Treatments and 1000 Graphical Elements, both put together by Wilson Harvey and published by Rockport Publishing. They offer such a diverse range of real world works that you’ll never have a creative dry spell again. Check them out.

Well here are some pics…

My new iMac is on its way. A 24″ 3.06 GHz model with 4 Gb of memory.

This will be MY first new mac since my current powerbook G4 from circa 2004. This is a very good thing as this laptop can’t last forever. Along with the compy, I will be taking delivery of Final Cut Studio 2 as well as all the most recent Adobe apps…Photoshop, Dreamweaver, AfterEffects, etc…

And I’ll finally be able to iChat video with people…any takers. I get lonely I kid…

Update: The compy is here and kick-ass. The screen is huge and the computer seems to be very quick. It’s making things much easier to multi-task on projects with Leopards Spaces and the best thing is it should pay for itself in 2 or so months. Apple has still got it.

I’ll post a pic once the office is a bit more complete…ya know like furniture and some framage on the walls.

While I was out in LA, I found this great shop that sold among other things “bombing” accessories. They had a great selection of books and magazines as well. One of the ones I picked up was a compilation of street art from Europe by european graffiti magazine StyleFile. This particular book was a “best of” from a series of ten books that have been published. The art contained with in is amazing to say the least, a true mastery of a medium. The typography and use of color is like a kick in the head from the norm and truly inspirational.

So if you’re looking for some new ideas or design stimulation, go order this book today. Here’s a link to amazons listing for it.

And some other links:
http://www.bombingscience.com/shop-tips.htm

I “stumbled” upon this a while back. This is a really great series of cheat sheets designed to help you with remembering all those tags and other web design info that can be hard to recall at times.

www.visibone.com

This is a great web browser plug-in that I have come across. It works with both Windows Explorer 7 (up to version 3.005) and Firefox 3 (up to version 3.17). The software simply “stumbles” around the internet based upon the categories that you have selected/are interested in. For instance, if graphic design is one of your categories, you can tell stumble upon to stumble only through sites that pertain to graphic design. That can be a really great research tool for someone and I have personally discovered many great resources for photoshop tutorials, stock images and other design related items. You can also stumble through some great videos and photos using it as well. The plug-in keeps track of sites that you like or dislike and in turn, shows you more sites that you give a thumbs up to and keeps a list of them like bookmarks. You can send links to friends and also (once they join) see what sites they’ve been checking out so you can visit them as well as many other great features.

From the site:
“Welcome to StumbleUpon

Join 4,734,696 Stumblers & Discover New Sites

Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

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Connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests.”

Check it out at www.stumbleupon.com.