Hi, I recently got a Sony DSC-W7 and really like it so far. However, I am confused about the different kinds of "memory stick" formats. I purchased a 1GB Memory Stick Pro (Sandisk) and it works fine, however I see that there are Sandisk Ultra II Pro sticks as well as "Duo" type Pro sticks from both Sony and Sandisk, either regular or high speed. The only thing I can gather so far from either the manual or Sony's web site is that my camera does not support the 80 Mbps speed of the high speed sticks.
But, can anybody tell me if a high speed stick would help, and why there are regular and duo sticks? I don't mind investing in another memory stick if if would improve the performance of the camera.
Memory sticks do not improve the performance of the camera. All memory sticks do is store information. If the manufacturer claims that it does not support a certain type of memory stick try not to make your own experiment and go against that as it may cost you some money.
A high speed stick helps out in the writing and reading speed of the memory, nothing more. How important is reading and writing speed to you. Is it important enough for your work or for the type of shooting that you do? if you are not a pro, getting a faster speed will probably not benefit you in any way.
Berny, I know that the actual performance of the camera would not change, but the higher speed stick may help as far as how fast the camera is able to store the photos (and avi's). I did a bit more reading and found out a little about the duo sticks, but as far as the standard pro stick versus high speed, again, nothing in the manual that states how fast a speed the camera supports, so I guess if anyone out there has used a w-7 with a regular versus high speed stick and saw some writing time improvement let me know.
The first question is whether the current memory you have is causing the camera to pause while it writes. If it is, then a faster one would help; if not it won't do much for that. The other benefit you might see from increased speed is downloading to your PC.