SD cards?

[deebee29]

When buying SD cards, does brand matter, or are they all the same? I'm not a photographer by no means, but I take lots of pictures and I try to take good ones. Thanks

 

[NostalgicDad]

I personally believe that brand name definitely matters with regards to SD cards. Everyone will have their own opinions and personal experiences with both unknown as well as major brands. I've currently settled on Transcend for my SDHC cards that are 4gb and 8gb. So far, no issues so I'm happy. Especially since they are typically priced lower than other, well known brands.

 

[deebee29]

The brand is Core Micro, any good?

 

[My2Girls66]

I mostly use Sandisk Sd cards(some are Ultra2 and some are reg. speed) but I also have Polaroid, PNY and a Kingston- they all seem fine.

 

[Groucho]

This is a topic of much debate... I mainly concern myself with lifetime warranty, which most have, and price. I did just pick up a Transcend 8gb class 6 as it claims to have write speeds of 14meg, which is well past the 6 required to be a class 6, and my new camera writes enormous files so I want some serious speed.

Sandisk Ultra 3s are faster (20m) but cost at least 2x as much. No thanks.

 

[deebee29]

I got a great deal today, $30 for 2 2GB Lexar SD cards! Woohoo!

 

[Super]

out of Sandisk, Tanscend and Kingston. Kingston is the better manufacturer for the higher priced memory. When the price drops, so does the carefulness of manufacturing and the memory cards can suffer increased problems. But basically because SD cards are not overclockable and use rated transfer speeds. Like 2MBs/4MBs/6MBs and 20MBs, you won't encounter any issues with any brands.

The only likely cause of problems will be electrostatic or magnetic damage to the memory. Avoid putting memory near your computer hard drives or any other devices with magnets in them. Also avoid letting them near Cathode Ray Tube tv's (Big Glass ones)

 

[jann1033]

i saw a test once where they tested a bunch of different cards, brand did matter for speed but not always the "name " brand was best( that was awhile ago so the actually cards are probably not the same but i would guess the general results still apply)...

i pretty much buy what i find in my price range and i have a couple microcenter cheapies that work as well as my "more expensive brands" they might download slightly slower and i don't take sports shots much so maybe i'd notice the speed there but so far they all appear to work about the same to me and have held up the same. the one card i use most is a cheapie actually so it's held up really well. ( i'm to lazy to do anything but reformat, changing the card would mean opening another zipper in my case )
one thing is some of the high speed cards don't work in all cameras ( don't work in mine at high speed, just normal speed) so you might want to check before you spend more on something your camera won't get the benefit of

 

[cmwade77]

Currently I won't pay more than about $10 for a 1 GB card, brands don't matter too much as there really aren't that many manufacturer's of them, they are all pretty much made by the same 3 or 4 companies and they just slap other labels on them, you can tell based on the numbers printe on the card that are not on the stickers who makes them, I haven't figured all of them out and the same brand of "generic" cards might be made by all of the companies that actually make the cards, just depends on who gives them the best deal. I use (in order of preference, but all of them are good):

• Kingston (I believe they do make thier own cards and well they are known for thier memory and are usually pretty cheap)
• PQI (Next to Kingston, this is my favorite brand, as they are generally cheap and have a faster speed than most others)
• A-Data
• Transend (sp?)
• Dane-Electric
• Apacer
• Kodak
• Sandisk (generally speaking I find thier cards to be the slowest of the bunch)

Basically, I buy what ever brand I can get the best (fastest & largest capacity) card for the least amount of money and I have not had any of my cards fail to date (except due to physical damage, which was always my own fault, the perils of taking cards to theme parks I suppose) and I have taken well over 1000 pictures on each of them by now. With how cheap they are now I no longer worry about the warranty.

Please note that I did have some of the cards stolen, but by the time that they had been, they had each taken well over 1000 pictures.

Prices that I currently will pay for SD cards:

Standard Capacity (All speeds):
1 GB <$10
2 GB $10-$15

High Capacity Cards:
4 GB $15-$25
8 GB $25-$35
16 GB <$70

All prices above iclude shipping costs and I have confirmed that the prices are still available through the website that I purchase them from, feel free to PM me and I will be more than happy to provide the website.

 

[handicap18]

I haven't seen enough or even experienced enough to know for absolute sure that the brand makes a difference.

I usually buy whats on sale.

I have 14GB in SD cards over 4 different brand names: SanDisk, Viking, Kingston and MicroCenter. The only one that has given me a problem was a SanDisk. I've since tossed that card as I didn't want any more problems.

I like the Kingston one's. I think I have the most of those, both higher speed ones and "slower" ones. I still can't seem to find much difference in speed though.

 

[brenalexacamp]

DO NOT wait until you get to the hotel to get one!
my sis needed a 2nd one and went down to get one-75.00!!
she didn't get it I had a 3rd and let her use that one-
Target usually has good deals sometime riteaid has 19.99 and mail in rebate-free or 1/2 off.

I can remember staying off site and going to cvs to "dump the pics" on a disk


they were way expensive then.

 

[Groucho]

Sandisk's basic ones are pretty slow, and the Ultra 2s are similar to most others, but their Extreme 3s are about the fastest out there. But the cost is just totally out of whack. The only Sandisk cards we have are for my wife's PSP, because Memory Stick cards don't have the wide variety of manufacturers that SD cards do.

I have heard of a brand or two where cheaper manufacturing of the plastic case can lead to premature failure (where the case fails, not necessarily the memory inside), but either way, by and large, memory cards are pretty darn reliable. I would bet that most corruption problems people see are caused by the cards not being ejected right, or in some other way have writing to them interrupted, leaving lost clusters - rather than actual problems with the memory itself.

The other thing to remember is that, by and large, the only writing to the card that will be done is done by the camera - and most cameras can't write all that fast to the card, the extra speed of a high-end card may be wasted.

 

[Shir Kahn]

I sell cameras for a living and I personally use and trust Kingston:

DW and I have a total of around 34gb of SD cards for our upcoming trip! I don't generally trust no-name cards. I want to make sure that I don't come home with faulty cards and lose all my pictures.