SD Cards?

[Peacemaker636]

Is there anything to them? I know about the high-speed ones, but are they worth the money? Or would that money be better spent on more memory? Right now I've got a Dane-Elec 512MB.

So is there a superior brand? Do cheaper ones work as well as the more expensive? And mainly, are the high-speed ones worth it?

 

[Tiberius]

I'd go with name brand for Build Quality if nothing else.

I started with a 2GB Corsair 133x card. I love Corsair's memory and stick exclusively to them for computer RAM, and the pricing was fantastic. The performance of the card was fine, but after about 3 months the read-protect tab started to loosen, and completely broke off last week (about 7 months after buying it), so I bought a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II that feels much more solid. I can't tell any performance difference between the two, however.

Lesson learned from days of 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, however: A piece of scotch tape over where the read/write tab normally would be allows the card to work fine, but I don't trust it enough to make it my primary card.

 

[Jeremy Z]

Hi Peacemaker.

The speed will come into play if you are doing continuous shooting. The sooner the camera's memory cache can unload onto the card, the longer it can keep up the high frame rate. It might also be important on an ultrazoom camera while shooting video at high res, but I kind of doubt it.

I just bought a 512 MB card for my new camera, and the high speed one (Panasonic) was only $5 more. My next card will probably be a 2 GB one, in case I want to shoot more than 40 shots in RAW.

 

[Big Mike]

I used to think that 'faster cards' were not needed because my camera has s good buffer and I don't shoot sports with a lot of rapid shooting. Eventually I realized that the slower cards are slower to read the images when you are reviewing the shots. Maybe not a big deal most of the time...but when compared to a faster card...it's a pain in the but.

I have some Sandisk Ultra and Extreme cards. I also have a few regular Sandisk and some Kingston cards. I haven't had any problems with any of them...but I like the Ultra and Extreme cards best.

 

[Peacemaker636]

I really like the continuous shooting mode, but the shutter speed seems to make more of a difference than I would think the write speed would make. My average picture is usually only around 2MB (no RAW on my camera), so I think that the write speed isn't as big a deal as it would be with bigger files.

I understand the faster viewing that you're talking about Big Mike, but I usually review my pictures on the computer anyway.

I think I'll opt for a bigger card, although looking at the prices on the Sandisk cards, it's only $60 for a 1GB Extreme III.

I'm going to go in between and get a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II.

 

[Alex_B]

i only trust Sandisk Ultra and Extreme (in my case for CF though) ... but that is just me. there are certainly cheaper option that won't let you down.

a friend of mine lost lots of valuable images due to a corrupted cheap-brand card (Hama that was, it is probably not sold outside Europe, but you will have similar semi-brands).

 

[Peacemaker636]

Yeah, my dad actually has a 1GB Sandisk (normal, not Ultra or Extreme) in his Axim, and he's using next to none of the memory, so I'm gonna give him my card, and he's gonna give me his.

It'll hold me off for now.