A-Data Memory Cards?

[tpimages]

I'm in desperate need of a larger memory card and have been drooling over the Scan disk 16g extreme memory cards but just can't justify the $250 price tag. I have been looking at some other options and A-Data is selling a 32 gig card for $110 bucks.
A-Data Speedy Series Compact Flash Memory Card 32GB


I shoot weddings, and horse shows. Well over 750 pics per day.

My camera is a 40d with 70 - 200 f2.8 is L lens. it's on the camera the most.

Please give me some advice.


Thank you!

TP

 

[Overread14 2]

I would personally not use anything over 8GB - even 4Gb is good enough most times unless you are traveling. If you are traveling I would recomend taking more smaller cards and a portable harddrive or photo storage unit.
Having a large memory card has the downside that if it does break/corrupt you lose a lot more htan if a smaller card breaks = also I have never heard of A-Data, which makes me a little cautious at using such a large card

 

[tpimages]

Thanks for the input, i currently have two 4 gig scandisk extreme 3 cards and love them. I only get 280 pics per card. And switching cards or running out of room when a good shot comes up worries me.

 

[Overread14 2]

hmm how about moving up to one or two 8GB cards - at would be at least 500pics plus on each card

 

[Bifurcator]

I have like, forty or fifty 1, 4, & 8 gig cards. Most are San Disk but there's several A-Data in the mix. Two 4Gb 266x that are pretty nice. I have 1 "Speedy" grade A-Data card at 8Gb. I think they're great for an inexpensive alternative in larger sizes. A 32Gb card holds about 5,000 ten megapixel images in JPG format. It would probably be fine for weddings where you don't need to sustain 6fps over an extended period It can sustain 2fps (3.5 MB jpegs) for the size of the card though. I get about 16MB/sec. read speeds out of it.

Is it worth it? At $120 ~ $150 for a 32gig card I would say yes. Is there any reason not to get a big card? Nope. None at all. If you dump your images to HDD at the end of every job like you should do with any card there is the same risks involved. On all cards I've had images become corrupt - I've never had an entire folder (on any card) of images die.

Card spec on the Speedy from ADATA Technology:

• Conforms to Compact Flash Card specification standard
• Fully compatible with PC Card ATA specification
• Support for 8-bit or 16-bit host data transfers
• Support PIO mode 4
• Support Error Correcting Code (ECC) function to detect and correct errors.
• Support In System Programming (ISP) function to load the firmware.
• Supports power down commands and sleep mode
• Support Wear Leverage function to maximize data endurance.
• MTBF > 1,000,000 hours
• Durability: Minimum 10,000 insertion/removal cycles

 

[Garbz]

The only thing you should watch for is the speed of the card. The last thing you want is to be snapping away at a wedding and in the crucial point need to pause while you want for your camera buffer to empty.

With my older dodgy ebay card the buffer filled quite regularly. With my Sandisk extreme III I haven't managed to fill my buffer in a normal situation yet.

 

[Bifurcator]

Well the "Speedy" grade A-Data card is the slowest in my collection. The company doesn't actually rate the card but Japanese users test/rate it at between 60x and 70x depending. I keep that card permanently inserted into one of my older P&S cameras that almost never gets used.

I've never shot a wedding with digital. Are there rapid fire moments where the 5 to 20 shot buffer (depending on the camera) wouldn't hold all?

 

[Big Mike]

I don't do a lot of rapid fire shooting at a wedding. There is the odd time, but I'm usually shooting with flash, so I limit myself to the recycle time.

However, I do tend to chimp and check my recent photos when there is a break in the action. I've found that slower cards are significantly slower to retrieve the images and display them on the LCD. It's not something you would notice if you only used that card, but when you go from a fast card to a slow one, you notice right away and it's annoying as heck.

 

[Bifurcator]

That makes sense. Thanks Mike!

 

[tpimages]

I don't do a lot of rapid fire shooting at a wedding. There is the odd time, but I'm usually shooting with flash, so I limit myself to the recycle time.

However, I do tend to chimp and check my recent photos when there is a break in the action. I've found that slower cards are significantly slower to retrieve the images and display them on the LCD. It's not something you would notice if you only used that card, but when you go from a fast card to a slow one, you notice right away and it's annoying as heck.

Thank you Everyone for your comments. But Mike that makes sense, i think it will drive me crazy when i'm ust to something very fast.


Looks like i'm going to have to splurge and buy the Scandisk