Memory cards

daizylindsay

daizylindsay

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Anna
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When I was in currys digital today I had a look at sandisk compact flash cards just for prices really.

For my 400d I have bought a 4GB compact flash sandisk ultima ii and do far shooting RAW and jpeg it's giving me hundreds of shots.

Anyhow, in currys it had a poster in the wall advertising memory cards and as a guide it said for DSLRs you need 16 - 32 GB as it needs the speed.

So am I wrong to get a 4gb? Do I need to spend £100 on a card?
 
The capacity of a CF card has no relationship to its speed. And nothing wrong with 4Gb cards although I generally use 8GB

Ian
 
THe size doesn't matter, You need speed if you want to buffer and shoot continuous or if you want to shoot HD video (not sure the 400D does video?).

Plus Currys may charge £100 but look online if you do want a 16Gb for about £30 or £40 :)
 
Yep thought so, thanks for your replies both of you.

No the 400d doesn't shoot video but I'm not bothered because I have a DVD camcorder for that.

I'm glad I wasn't taken in then. They are a bit naughty with their marketing.

On the other hand I felt a couple of lenses and the newer versions of my dslr and although they looked fab, I'm happy with my lot for now.
 
Go onto Memorybits for a wide selection of brands, capacity and speed. Used them for years and typically half the price of the High St with fast delivery.

Not sure what others think but the camera manual will tell you the optimum speed for that camera - anything higher will only help in data transfer to your computer.
 
Pretty sure an ultra ii is more than enough for the 400d, maybe an extreme iii at the most. I had a 400d and it made nowhere near full use of an extreme iii - 30mbs. Ultra ii is 20mbs which will be fine however they don't seem to be that easy to find as everything is getting faster all the time.
 
Just had a look and mind is actually the extreme iii. I got it for £29.99 off eBay. It's a 4gb. I'm glad it's ok I will stick with it for now.
I also looked at card readers but tbh its working ok just plugging my camera in via USB. Are there any major advantages to using a card reader?
 
daizylindsay said:
Just had a look and mind is actually the extreme iii. I got it for £29.99 off eBay. It's a 4gb. I'm glad it's ok I will stick with it for now.
I also looked at card readers but tbh its working ok just plugging my camera in via USB. Are there any major advantages to using a card reader?
Click to expand...

Faster and less faffing about
 
Thanks for that, I will stick to smaller ones then! I only need one for now.

Might stick a card reader on my Xmas list!
 
Just a thought: 1 x 4gb card = 1x DVD for archiving with no need to split up the pix on a larger memory card to fit on the DVD. For my use speed is more important than size.
Sandisk 30mbs in Compact Flash and class 10 SD cards both in 4 & 8gb sizes work just fine for this contributor (Me!)
 
im using, 4 and 8 gigs cards;
it gives me enoght space for images; however if it fails i dont losse as many photographs
 
Don't go for the cheapest option. And also try to buy from UK based sellers with high feedback. I'm not saying that all Honkong (ish) and Chinese sellers don't sell good quality (not fake) memory cards, however most of them do.

To be honest, some of the cards from china are as good quality as the original products are. You may want to save your self few pounds and get the cheap China one.
 
I bought from a UK seller, but it was only £29.99 for a Sandisc Extreme iii 4gb. It was just in a plastic case, not sealed or anything. It does seem to work but now I'm not sure if its real or not. Will it damage the camera if it is fake?

ETA I just checked and its from a seller called 7daymemoryshop and it looks ok (I would not have bought if feedback wasnt a 100%) so I think it is real!
 
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I just got a couple from iBood, 2 x 4GB for £18 delivered [30MB/S]. If you've never used the site before, the offers are only valid for 24 hours [unless stock runs out] and there's no guarantee when or if they'll be back again.
 
With Sandisk CF cards they generally have the speed printed on them as an example
45 mb/s. the fastest being 90mb/s.
Ok why go for a reasonably fast card? When doing continuous shooting the transfer rate from camera to card can "stall" with a slow card until it can catch up with the camera, Therefore the camera has to wait for the card to catch up.
There is nothing worse than having to wait before you can continue with the camera using this setting, Murphy's Law states during the "stall" period you will miss the best shot of the sequence.

I prefer the Scandisk Extreme 1V 4gig or 8gig with a 45mb/s transfer rate as the minimum to prevent the above happening.

As regards to real Sandisk CF cards on thing to look for is on the edge where it says "Made in China" it should be preceeded with a serial number. Fake Sandisk cards often don't have this serial number, its just one quick easy check but don't use this as a hard and fast rule but worth noting.

Anna there is a shop called 7dayshop and I have made several purchases from them and they are based in the Channel Isles and can recommend, not to be confused with your 7daymemoryshop.

Quote " Anyhow, in Currys it had a poster in the wall advertising memory cards and as a guide it said for DSLRs you need 16 - 32 GB as it needs the speed." unquote.

This has absolutely nothing to do with speed on a DSLR camera, its just the amount of memory the card can hold and you definately don't need 16-32 gb card for a DSLR (only if you have a DSLR camera with movie mode) infact it can be a disadvantage. Should the card get damaged you have lost all the photos on it, and to download such a huge card onto computer would take ages. Another disadvantage is you might one day want to shoot pictures of wildlife and on another a friends wedding. With 2 or more smaller cards you can keep the subject seperate and work on each as and when you want in editing. Also if one card is damaged you havn't totally lost everything.

Realspeed
 
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realspeed said:
With Sandisk CF cards they generally have the speed printed on them as an example
45 mb/s. the fastest being 90mb/s.
Ok why go for a reasonably fast card? When doing continuous shooting the transfer rate from camera to card can "stall" with a slow card until it can catch up with the camera, Therefore the camera has to wait for the card to catch up.
There is nothing worse than having to wait before you can continue with the camera using this setting, Murphy's Law states during the "stall" period you will miss the best shot of the sequence.

I prefer the Scandisk Extreme 1V 4gig or 8gig with a 45mb/s transfer rate as the minimum to prevent the above happening.

As regards to real Sandisk CF cards on thing to look for is on the edge where it says "Made in China" it should be preceeded with a serial number. Fake Sandisk cards often don't have this serial number, its just one quick easy check but don't use this as a hard and fast rule but worth noting.

Anna there is a shop called 7dayshop and I have made several purchases from them and they are based in the Channel Isles and can recommend, not to be confused with your 7daymemoryshop.

Quote " Anyhow, in Currys it had a poster in the wall advertising memory cards and as a guide it said for DSLRs you need 16 - 32 GB as it needs the speed." unquote.

This has absolutely nothing to do with speed on a DSLR camera, its just the amount of memory the card can hold and you definately don't need 16-32 gb card for a DSLR (only if you have a DSLR camera with movie mode) infact it can be a disadvantage. Should the card get damaged you have lost all the photos on it, and to download such a huge card onto computer would take ages. Another disadvantage is you might one day want to shoot pictures of wildlife and on another a friends wedding. With 2 or more smaller cards you can keep the subject seperate and work on each as and when you want in editing. Also if one card is damaged you havn't totally lost everything.

Realspeed
Click to expand...

Thanks for all that, my card seems ok but I will only use recommended shops/sellers in future.

I thought the speed/size thing was odd in currys, I guess they just want to sell the more expensive stuff. It makes far more sense to have a few smaller cards as you have said.

Thanks again.
 
AboveFunction said:
THe size doesn't matter, You need speed if you want to buffer and shoot continuous or if you want to shoot HD video (not sure the 400D does video?).
Click to expand...

  • HD video needs nothing faster than 8 MB/s. I doubt you can buy a genuine CF card that's that slow.
  • Card speed has zero impact how many shots you can fit into the buffer before the fps slows down, or stalls. Card speed does determine how quickly the buffer empties after it's been filled. Assuming...
  • ...Assuming that the camera can actually write to the card fast enough to take advantage of a fast card. The 400D tops out at around 10 MB/s (from memory)

Getting a fast card for a 400D is a waste of money.
 
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To be honest I'm happy with what I've got so far. It seems to hold lots of photos and the speed isn't an issue. Thanks for all the replies, the girl I bought the camera off recommended the card I bought. It was just so confusing seeing the poster in currys which was extremely misleading.
 
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