Memory Card?

ocalla

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 24, 1999
Now that I have learned a bit about batteries, my next question is on the memory cards/sticks etc.

I was looking at BestBuy.com where they offer a Sandisk 2 GB for $38.69, and at Target they offer a Transcend 4 GB for 52.99.

Knowing NOTHING about how many pics this will actually hold, and also NOTHING about if Brand Names make a difference, your input would be appreciated.


(hopefully by the time I get all my questions answered, I will have my first Digital Camera for our upcoming trip!!!)
 
I know from direct experience that SanDisk cards are very good; I use 1G and 2G SanDisk Ultra II's in my Canon S3; they're fast enough and hold plenty of images and video.

Transcend is also a well-respected name in the SD card "arena" and I've never heard anyone complaining about them.

I also use a PNY 2G card that I bought at BestBuy and have no problems with it.

One thing to watch out for; there are SD cards and there are SDHC cards. The SDHC are the "official/industry standard" way that SD card capacities can be greater than 2G. Not every camera supports the SDHC, yet, but a great many do.

And, I've also read of occasional problems with the 4G (non-standard) SD cards.

Personally, for images, I'd rather have a few 2G cards than 1 4G or 8G card ... that way if something does happen to a card (it's really rare, but it can happen) you don't lose all of your pictures. For video, however, it makes the most sense to have bigger cards as they tend to really eat up space!
 
A 4gb card will obviously hold twice as much as a 2gb card. How those sizes translate into numbers of pictures depends on how large the picture files are. Most cameras can shoot at different resolutions, with higher resolutions making for larger files. Some cameras can shoot at different quality levels, with higher quality making for larger files. Some cameras can also shoot in different file formats (typically JPG, the standard for pictures on the Internet, and RAW, the a richer format proprietary to each camera make/model). The size of files also varies somewhat with what you take a picture of and the camera settings, with pictures showing lots of detail or picture taken in low light sometimes making for slightly larger files.

Some camera reviews, like this one on DPReview for the Canon S5 IS, will give you size approximations. It looks like it will hold about 286 pictures on a 1 gig card at the highest resolution and quality settings. From that, we can do some simple math to see that it would hold about 572 pictures on a 2 gig card and 1,144 pictures on a 4 gig card.

In the past, there were some cameras that had problems using cards larger than 2 gig. I don't know whether that problem has been universally fixed or not.

As a general rule, I don't worry about brands of cards. Others are quite brand loyal. I would suspect that using any major brand (Sandisk, Transcend, Crucial, Lexar, Panasonic, Kodak, Kingston, etc) will all work just fine. In fact, there are probably only a very small number of companies that actually manufacturer the memory cards that supply the brands selling them. I have noticed the casing on some cheaper cards seems a bit flimsier than on others.

There are also large speed differences between cards. The impact of the cards speed depends on a lot on how well the camera can take advantage of the cards speed. I've never really noticed much difference in the speed of the cards I've used, but I suspect that is a function of the camera I use.

As for the type of memory card, there is a frightening variety. Compact Flash (CF) and SD (what is that, Secure Digital?) are the two most common by a wide margin. Sony likes variations of its proprietary memory sticks. There are a bunch of others that I know nothing about like xD cards. As long as your camera takes either CF or SD cards, I wouldn't worry about it. If you are considering a camera that uses something else, check the price and availability of such cards and consider that as a factor when deciding on that camera. At the moment, SD cards appear to be the cheapest, but it was not always the case. I don't know why CF cards cost more and I wouldn't be suprised at all to see them come back to parity.
 
I should also add that you can clean your CF cards by placing them in a pants pocket and putting them through the washing machine. In my experience, they always come out cleaner, but 50% of the time their capacity is reduced by roughly 100%
 


Personally, for images, I'd rather have a few 2G cards than 1 4G or 8G card ... that way if something does happen to a card (it's really rare, but it can happen) you don't lose all of your pictures. !

I'm going to cloud this decision.


I subscribe to a different train of thought on this..that being that you are more likely to end up with card problems, the more often the card goes in and out of camera, more risk of dropping it or bending pins in the camera, therefore My main card is an 8gig backed up by a 4 gig a 2 gig and 2 1 gigs

I hope to add 1 or 2 more 8 gig cards shortly, 8 gig cards allow me to do a model shoot , a car show, day at WDW , or a day at the PA Renn Faire without stopping to change cards
 
I don't know why CF cards cost more and I wouldn't be suprised at all to see them come back to parity.

my theory is CF cards are more expensive because the manufacturers, know that DSLRs use them and pros will pay the higher price because they need them, professionals expense them so price isn't an issue, since they will pay the higher price the rest of dslr users must pay it as well..
 
I should also add that you can clean your CF cards by placing them in a pants pocket and putting them through the washing machine. In my experience, they always come out cleaner, but 50% of the time their capacity is reduced by roughly 100%


no matter how many times I see you post that advice it still makes me laugh,:rotfl2:

how hard did you kick yourself when you realized you had washed your card...
 


I subscribe to a different train of thought on this..that being that you are more likely to end up with card problems, the more often the card goes in and out of camera, more risk of dropping it or bending pins in the camera, therefore My main card is an 8gig backed up by a 4 gig a 2 gig and 2 1 gigs

I think that might certainly be the case with a CF card, as they seem to have way more pins/connectors to worry about/damage/corrode.

But, I've never read about anyone having connection problems with SD cards ... they only have 7 contacts and they don't "plug-in" like CF cards. Read/write errors and general "corruption" problems seem more common with SD cards....

MarkBarbieri said:
I should also add that you can clean your CF cards by placing them in a pants pocket and putting them through the washing machine. In my experience, they always come out cleaner, but 50% of the time their capacity is reduced by roughly 100%

Ha! :lmao: I just did that recently ... I left one of my SD cards in the "watch pocket" of my jeans and sent it through. Luckily for me, it only came out cleaner! :thumbsup2 I wonder if it would have survived banging around in the dryer ... not that I want to test it! :rotfl:
 
I have had 3 memory cards fail (all CF) - 2 had to be replaced by the manufacturer who also recovered the images for me (Lexar Professional cards); 1 I managed to recover the images myself with SandDisk's image recovery software. All 3 failed cards were 4 gig cards. I will never use anything higher than 2 gigs now and I buy the fastest ones my camera can use because it makes a huge difference especially when shooting in bursts. I keep my 4 gig cards as back-up. Right now, all of my 2 gig CF cards are SanDisk
 
So wait, now not only do I have to worry about size, I have to look into Speed of the cards?

where do I look for that?

I'm begining to think that my film camera may be easier?!?!?

Sorry to hear about your "loss". How many pics were on it?
 
So wait, now not only do I have to worry about size, I have to look into Speed of the cards?

where do I look for that?

I'm begining to think that my film camera may be easier?!?!?

Sorry to hear about your "loss". How many pics were on it?

I wouldn't worry about the speed of the card so much. If you are, just buy the Sandisk Ultra II cards and you should be just fine. I had no problem with them in my Canon S2 IS and have had no problem with them in my Canon EOS 30D. Plenty fast as far as I can tell. The big difference I see is in uploading the photos to the computer. A faster card uploads faster. I suppose it writes from the camera to the card faster too, but I think that is a bunch of hogwash as it really depends on how fast the camera can write to the card, buffer size, etc... I'm starting to think that a faster card is just a selling point like more MP's.

I should also add that you can clean your CF cards by placing them in a pants pocket and putting them through the washing machine. In my experience, they always come out cleaner, but 50% of the time their capacity is reduced by roughly 100%

Mark, you are killing me here! :lmao: :rotfl: :lmao: :rotfl:
 
no matter how many times I see you post that advice it still makes me laugh,:rotfl2:

how hard did you kick yourself when you realized you had washed your card...

Not hard enough to stop me from doing it the second time.

After the first time, I changed my practice so that I no longer stuck cards my pocket during switches. I always took them from and put them back into my camera bag. Sadly, I loaned a card to a friend while on a shoot and got it back on a day when I did not have my camera. I put it in my pocket and promply forgot all about it. Fortunately, that was the time that it just came out cleaner.
 
So wait, now not only do I have to worry about size, I have to look into Speed of the cards?

where do I look for that?

I'm begining to think that my film camera may be easier?!?!?

Sorry to hear about your "loss". How many pics were on it?

Fortunately, they recovered all of them at no cost to me - the advantage of buying the pro level cards. It took almost 2 months but at least I had them.

Speed - each generation of cards gets a bit faster. You don't necessarily have to have the fastest but the super cheap ones tend to be quite a bit slower. Ultra IIs are fine. I'm on SanDisk Extremem IVs now....
 
I have had 3 memory cards fail (all CF) - 2 had to be replaced by the manufacturer who also recovered the images for me (Lexar Professional cards); 1 I managed to recover the images myself with SandDisk's image recovery software. All 3 failed cards were 4 gig cards. I will never use anything higher than 2 gigs now and I buy the fastest ones my camera can use because it makes a huge difference especially when shooting in bursts. I keep my 4 gig cards as back-up. Right now, all of my 2 gig CF cards are SanDisk


what brand were the cards and what make is your camera..??
 
what brand were the cards and what make is your camera..??

2 Lexars; 1 SanDisk; Canon 1DsMkII

When the 1DsMkII came out, they discovered an issue with Lexar cards and Lexar fixed them for free if you sent them in. Both of mine were fixed cards that failed after the fix. The 2 that failed (August 2006) did so at the same time when I was flying back from California to Boston. While I can't prove it, I think something happened when they went through the screening machine because I had used one of them on the way to the airport and had no problems with it. I was able to fix and recover the images on the SanDisk one that failed (just 3 months ago) but I put it in my back-up card case as a result.
 
2 Lexars; 1 SanDisk; Canon 1DsMkII

When the 1DsMkII came out, they discovered an issue with Lexar cards and Lexar fixed them for free if you sent them in. Both of mine were fixed cards that failed after the fix. The 2 that failed (August 2006) did so at the same time when I was flying back from California to Boston. While I can't prove it, I think something happened when they went through the screening machine because I had used one of them on the way to the airport and had no problems with it. I was able to fix and recover the images on the SanDisk one that failed (just 3 months ago) but I put it in my back-up card case as a result.

I was curious because I've read message boards full of problems with lexar cards and canon cameras., I hadn't heard of the problem being fixed...
 
I'm in the process of purchasing the Canon S5 and found the San Disk Ultra II and the Kingston 2G cards for only $19.00 each at Amazon. Thought some of you might be interested.

At that price I'm thinking about getting one of each to see which if any I like better than the other. Figured at the very least I'd have a lot of memory to practice taking pictures and movie clips.
 
I'm in the process of purchasing the Canon S5 and found the San Disk Ultra II and the Kingston 2G cards for only $19.00 each at Amazon. Thought some of you might be interested.

At that price I'm thinking about getting one of each to see which if any I like better than the other. Figured at the very least I'd have a lot of memory to practice taking pictures and movie clips.

Bummer! I thought I had recently checked Amazon for memory cards. Oh well!! I do remember buying 2 - 1GB Ultra 2's from Amazon 2 years ago- paying $57 when they were going for $100+ in stores. How prices have come down.
 

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