I use 16gb cheapos off newegg.com for 40$ each.. they rock, never fails me..
Also, the 20d formats the cards as 8gb, so dont format in camera, always format on the comp.. if it does happen to get formated to 8gb, u have to use a partition program to fix it, sucks, I had to do it too.
I lost a 2gig card recently. It was a fake sandisk that i picked up on ebay. I just could not format the card but was still able to retrieve the images that were on there.
The only other card i've seen that packed up was kodak cf card belonging to a relative.
These days i only buy sandisk or lexar locally. Even when cards were not cheap they were cheap so getting good quality ones seems wise to me.
Just think of it this way. If you NEVER take a card from your camera during a shoot, what are your chances of:
1) card damage in the connectors
2) card corruption from dropping/pressure/bending, etc.
3) Loss of the card
4) accidental reinsertion and formatting
5) stolen cards from your belt/bag etc.
I have never had a damaged or lost or stolen card yet. My card gets put in the camera before an event and formatted there and then. It stays there till a later DL to the comp. No issues so far other than one or two bad images which were due to either filling the card to capacity or erasing something while the camera was still writing.
The method of using larger cards to eliminate the need to swap cards mid stream is a valid one. It ensures a lot of possible ways to loose images and cards are gone.
So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is this.
Do I believe I am more reliable than the card when it comes to errors? Or, how often do you make mistakes versus how often does the card?
Lord Fluff wrote:
Shooting weddings on super-cheap 16gb cards....do you play Russian Roulette for grins too?
There is no material difference between any of the cards. They are essentially made at the same factory and branded through using different coloured stickers. There is no upside to expensive cards in the same context as there is no upside to expensive gold plated HDMI cables for your home theatre.
Better off buying 3 or 4 of the cheapest cards - or a dozen - then one of the pricey items. Also - the 16GB cards are cheap enough to toss all of the select images on a card and toss it in the docket with the client records.
I wouldn't think twice about doing it with a camera that has dual card slots. The odds of having 2 cards go bad at the same time and not being able to recover the shots from either card even if they did seems extremely unlikely. I just don't use that much memory in one shooting sessions so it's irrelevant to me.
8 gig max...Shoot in M mode then switch to L for the locations.
I mean seriously how many images do you shoot at a wedding.
Couldnt imagine the possibility of a (1) 16gb card malfunction...God Forbid...!
I use 16 gig cards in my Mark 3's because I do instant backups to the 2nd card slot. But I stick to 4 gig cards on my 40D because of that weird "too many eggs in one basket" phobia. But my rational mind tells me I'm much more likely to misplace or damage a removed card than for the card to corrupt beyond recovery.
RedWhiteandRed wrote:
There is no material difference between any of the cards.
This is a popular myth. I will have to hunt down a side-by-side deconstruction that I saw done. Essentially the main memory chip may be the same, but the 'controller circuits' around them have been shown to be different.
Lord Fluff wrote:
This is a popular myth. I will have to hunt down a side-by-side deconstruction that I saw done. Essentially the main memory chip may be the same, but the 'controller circuits' around them have been shown to be different.
There is no material difference between cards - they are all basically the same. Generally made at one or two factories in Taiwan and very well marketed.
In the same sense as there are several folk who will buy the really expensive speaker wire at the stereo shops - so too are there folk among us who are convinced that it makes a fiffle of a difference which sticker is on their CF cards.
Should you find budget an issue - buy a whole bunch of cheap cards as opposed to one or two expensive ones. Also - this is a Mac/PC - Canon/Nikon - Red/Blue - Mao/Chiang kind of discussion. Fun - but rarely resolved.
RedWhiteandRed wrote:
There is no material difference between cards - they are all basically the same. Generally made at one or two factories in Taiwan and very well marketed.
In the same sense as there are several folk who will buy the really expensive speaker wire at the stereo shops - so too are there folk among us who are convinced that it makes a fiffle of a difference which sticker is on their CF cards.
Should you find budget an issue - buy a whole bunch of cheap cards as opposed to one or two expensive ones. Also - this is a Mac/PC - Canon/Nikon - Red/Blue - Mao/Chiang kind of discussion. Fun - but rarely resolved. ...Show more →
You are probably right, that there is only a few places, where they produce the cards, but maybe it is with flashcards as with processors, they are not all the same. There are variations. So, they are graded in different qualities at the end of the line.
DavidWEGS wrote:
So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is this.
Do I believe I am more reliable than the card when it comes to errors? Or, how often do you make mistakes versus how often does the card?
One persons view.
Couldn't help it...
I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? -Dirty Harry
RedWhiteandRed wrote:
Yes, several of the cheapest ones I can get. Almost using the cards as a backup for some clients.
THe real cheap ones are now something like $70 each.
Hmmmm... that has got me thinking. If I could pick up some cheaps 16gig SD cards I could use them as a backup to the CF cards in the MK3's.
2 copies of every file shot....... you could record them as small RAWs & still be safe... cool.
DavidWEGS wrote:
So I guess the question you have to ask yourself is this.
Do I believe I am more reliable than the card when it comes to errors? Or, how often do you make mistakes versus how often does the card?
One persons view.
Kinda - but actually the question is (say you use 2gb cards) - how likely am I to lose/destroy 8 out of 8 cards vs having one 16gb card spontaneously fail?
The point is that for a wedding - lose one small card and it's a disaster, lose all the images on a massive card, late in the day.....I can only imagine how well you'll sleep after that one.
ThinkTank Pocket Rocket and a little care and most of the 'risks' in changing cards can be minimised in any case.
You will see from the Lexar quote section that yes, there are a number of re-branders in the market, but that there are several chip manufacturers, along with many controller circuit manufacturers, and companies that assemble the two. I believe for those that have bought fake Sandisk cards on ebay and had them fail, it is the controller circuit that is the issue - also the article states that it is largely this circuit that determines the overall speed of the card.
Lord Fluff wrote:
Oh hold on...Sandisk made the fakes too, right?
Read what you like.
It is not that Sandisk makes 'fakes' but rather that there are no fakes. No material difference between cards - if you want to buy the more expensive ones - go ahead.
Transcend, Lexar, Sandisk, RiData, Kodak, Wal-mart, et al - no worries across the board.
I don't know enough about the subject to argue, but I will share what I've experienced.
I bought a "fake" Sandisk off ebay.... it takes twice as long to write the file. I keep it as a last ditch backup disk if I run out of cards.
I bought my mother a P&S and a 1G card -- I think it was branded Polaroid. The write time on that card is drastically longer than a Sandisk of equal size.
Maybe they're all made in the same factory, but there seems to be a difference... perhaps it's just a testing and sorting process and some samples are better than others for some reason.
