How much do CF cards run now days?

[Lachesis00]

I thought I saw them as low as $25 for 16 gigs (give or take) but when I went to check Fry's Electronics, which is where I buy a lot of my stuff, it was $58 for 8 gigs on a CF card

Were my eyes playing tricks on me??

 

[diputs]

It really depends on the read/write speed of the CF card. The memory size is only one factor on the price.

Make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

 

[MICKEY88]

i've seen decent speed 16 gig cards for around 48, but never as low as 25,,

 

[jann1033]

i got one at microcenter on sale for $35.99 a few months ago, kingston with the green flower( not sure of the speed, but i think different colors of the flowers mean something ) 16 gb...if you don't need it right now i'd wait for a sale. i have noticed a bunch of emails about black friday prices now at JR and a couple other electronic sites but sorry i have deleted them and don't know if they had cards or not.anyway the one i bought is fast enough for me and my 40d. and i have yet to use it all in one sitting...guess i need to go on vacation for that to happen

I just looked it up, it's $45 now at microcenter and the speed is 133

 

[handicap18]

I usually get 8GB CF cards... Amazon or buy.com has them for around $22.

Recently I picked up the Kingston Elite Pro 8GB CompactFlash Card - 133x. Not the fastest, but works perfectly fine for $24 (at buy.com now). I also use the Transcend 8 GB 133x CF Card ($30 at amazon and buy.com).

If your into Sports photography and using the 6-8 frames per second feature on your camera, or you have a very small buffer for using the high FPS, or you have an older slower computer, then maybe spending a little more for the faster cards is worth it. Personally, I've never used the fast cards and I've never not been able to take any pictures and my upload speed to the computer is pretty good so I can't see spending the extra money.

 

[disneyboy2003]

I, personally, go with the faster CF cards (ex. UDMA / 300x speed), not because they're faster in my camera, but because it's faster to download pictures from them onto my computer.

I don't think my Canon 40D takes advantage of the fact that my CF card is UDMA, so I can actually use a CF card of any speed for my camera.

However, when I get back to my laptop with my 1000s of pictures (don't ask me why I take 1000s of pictures...), downloading them onto my computer is TONS faster. However, you need a UDMA card reader to take advantage of the faster download speeds of the UDMA CF card.

For example, it used to take me a painful 45-60 minutes to empty my 8GB CF card. Now, with the faster UDMA CF cards, it takes me about 10 minutes to download the same number of pictures.

 

[Kyen]

I think Costco has them cheap. I got 4g for $9.99

 

[Lachesis00]

My Costco Card expired Dang it!

I don't shoot sports, just 2 FAST toddlers!!

 

[TheGoofster]

I love reading all these threads because I really do learn so much from them.

I had never heard before that it could be a problem for a camera to write onto a card due to the card speed. Is this something that anyone has actually experienced before (perhaps while shooting some sports event or something)?

I am planning on getting back into photography very soon, and even though I don't see myself doing much fast frame shooting, it is something to at least keep in mind.
Downloading the shots to my PC at a faster rate certainly is something to consider as well, but that seems like an (in)convenience at most, but missing some shots due to card writing speed could be a much bigger problem.
What kind of conditions could actually cause something like that to happen?

Depending on what people say, I might just look into the more expensive cards.