Nikon D90 is a popular digital SLR with great image quality. Nikon D90 uses SD/SDHC cards. There are many different brands of SD/SDHC cards with different speeds. Which brand is the best? How much memory do you need?

The speed ratings of SD/SDHC cards are very confusing for consumers.

The conversion of Class and X rating:

• 26x = Class 4 (writing speed 32 Mbit/s or 4MByte /s)
• 40x = Class 6 (writing speed 48 Mbit/s or 6MByte/s)
• 66x = Class 10 (writing speed 80 Mbit/s or 10MByte/s)

The reliability of SD/SDHC cards are extremely important for digital SLRs. I learned this lesson in a hard way after my SDHC card failed and I lost all the photos and videos on the card. Since the price of the SD/SDHC cards went down so much, it is better off to buy good and reliable cards.

Considering the value, reliability and speed, the best cards to use with Nikon D90 are SanDisk Ultra SDHC cards. This card is fast enough (15MB per second data transfer), reliable and not very expensive. I prefer to have a couple of 8G San Disk Ultra cards instead of 16G. For Nikon D90, 8G SDHC card can record 4 clips of 5 min 720p videos and ca 530 photos in RAW. You can get a couple of 8G or 16G SDHC cards depending on your own needs.

SanDisk Extreme III SDHC cards are faster than SanDisk Ultra II SDHC cards but more expensive ( “>SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card 8G ). Other good brands include Kingston Ultimate Class 6 SDHC and Lexar professional 133x SDHC cards.