On Saturday I returned from vacationing with the kids at the Ridin Hy Ranch in Warrensburg NY. While there I shot over 520 pictures. When I sent my Mom a copy of the photos via Shutterfly she instantly proclaimed” Saw them all-WHEW! Maybe 400 too many?? Bet some were in moving frames but I just saw picture after picture” and asked why I took so many pictures of the same damn thing. The answer? Auto photo shooting. My Nikon D60 shoots continuously at 3 frames per second and I’m such a bad photographer I need to take 15 pictures of the same thing to get one decent looking shot. Occasionally I notice the number of captured frames is more like one per second. Dopey me doesn’t realize that maybe it’s the cheap (aka slow) wholesale club memory card that I’m using which is bottlenecking the process. SanDisk just introduced an affordable line of very fast 30 MB/S Extreme III SDHC memory cards in 4, 8 and 16GB formats. They’re reasonably priced starting at $64.99 for 4GB, $109.99 for 8GB and $179.99 for 16GB and will be available starting September 2008.

The cards are introduced to coincide with the new Nikon D90 announced this morning which offers faster shooting speeds as well as the ability to take video movies (a first for Nikon). Whether you’re a skilled photographer — or a basic amateur like me — having more speed is always good!

SanDisk Extreme III - 30 MB/S SDHC Memory Cards