Sandisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-I Camera Card (Review) Wildlife Photography

When you’re taking photos of wildlife like birds in flight at a lagoon or giant red and blue dragonflies you need perseverance, luck, skill as well as a digital camera, lense and camera card that are fast enough to capture a tiny fraction of a moment in time before the creature in question flies away.

I took a 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card that Sandisk had given me to review on my recent journalism/photography work trip to the Kimberley region of Western Australia and found that it was significantly faster than the collection of Panasonic, Sandisk and Verbatim class 6 SDHC cards I already owned.

Blue Dragonfly – Broome Bird Observatory – Kimberley, Western Australia

I noticed the key difference when I was taking photos with my digital SLR camera set to burst mode where it continuously took 5 shots per second of wildlife that was moving fast.

Red Dragonfly – Broome Bird Observatory – Kimberley, Western Australia

The older class 6 SDHC cards took a bunch of photos and then the camera slowed down noticeably when it’s temporary buffer storage memory got full because photos couldn’t be transferred to the SDHC card fast enough to empty the buffer. In comparison the SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card was able to transfer photos from the camera buffer really quickly so my SLR was able to take a lot more photos before the buffer became full and transfer speeds slowed down.

Pied Heron, Bird Watching – Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve – Kimberley, Western Australia

Yes the SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card is more expensive than slower camera cards but if you’re likely to use your camera to take photos of fast moving wildlife, sports like car racing or aviation open days then it’s well worth investing in a fast camera card like this so your SLR camera can take photos at it’s peak speed capability, rather than being crippled by a slow camera card.

Pied Heron, Bird Watching – Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve – Kimberley, Western Australia