Best memory card for Canon 7d?

[JohnTrav]

Any sandisk fast card will do. The 7d has a great buffer so unless you are pressing the shutter and hoping for the best you should be ok. Probably there are 10 more good brand names that would also do the trick. I dont however recommend a 32gb card. Go for a few 8gb. You may have to change out a bit more but if in the unlikely event one fails (all eggs in one basket). If you shoot raw the 7d has a medium raw setting that makes a 10gb file also. this also is not the best way to go but might be ok for non critical parts of the day

As for back up, your 1000d will likely be as good image wise in good light, the 7d better in lower light. It may help to have a lens mounted on both for convenience. Good luck

I just decided to get two 32gb ones because I found very good offers on them, not scandisk but they will work fine, good reviews and all that! I usually shoot candid, photographing people they either don't want their photo taken, or are unaware, so this is going to be quite a bit different! I love my little 1000d, but it feels like a toy compared to the 7d haha! Cheers

I have SanDisk cards and transcend. They all work the same. In my opinion they are both just as good of quality and the transcend was a lot cheaper and I also bought on amazon too. Glad to here you picked up two cards. The photographer at my brothers wedding said he walked out with over 1000 pictures so you will need the space. I'm sure he was a little happy with the shutter release button.

 

[robbins.photo]

Ok, well thought I'd weigh in real quick here. If your going to be shooting burst in RAW at any point I would use the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards. The thing about most of the other cards mentioned thus far is that their write speeds are relatively slow in comparison, generally around 45 mbps. The write speed is what will really make the most difference to you, a fast write speed allows information to be written to the card and cleared out of the buffer of the camera much quicker, which of course prevents the buffer from being overwhelmed as quickly and gives you the ability to shoot longer bursts before the camera slows down to try and clear the buffer.

I use sandisk extreme pro's exclusively in both of my cameras and honestly once you try them it's very doubtful you'll ever be willing to go back to a slower card, they really do make that much difference. My cameras actually take SD cards, but the good news is Sandisk does make the extreme pro in CF cards as well, and they are even faster than the SD's - the write speed I believe on the CF cards is up to 150 mbps. They are more expensive than your average run of the mill CF card, but believe me they are well worth it.

Oh, one other quick note - see if you can borrow the 7d before hand and shoot with it for a bit, you really don't want to be using a camera that you aren't familar with if you can avoid it. I'd also think about taking your own Canon DSLR along as a backup, just in case. Good luck!

 

[jaomul]

Ok, well thought I'd weigh in real quick here. If your going to be shooting burst in RAW at any point I would use the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards. The thing about most of the other cards mentioned thus far is that their write speeds are relatively slow in comparison, generally around 45 mbps. The write speed is what will really make the most difference to you, a fast write speed allows information to be written to the card and cleared out of the buffer of the camera much quicker, which of course prevents the buffer from being overwhelmed as quickly and gives you the ability to shoot longer bursts before the camera slows down to try and clear the buffer.

I use sandisk extreme pro's exclusively in both of my cameras and honestly once you try them it's very doubtful you'll ever be willing to go back to a slower card, they really do make that much difference. My cameras actually take SD cards, but the good news is Sandisk does make the extreme pro in CF cards as well, and they are even faster than the SD's - the write speed I believe on the CF cards is up to 150 mbps. They are more expensive than your average run of the mill CF card, but believe me they are well worth it.

Oh, one other quick note - see if you can borrow the 7d before hand and shoot with it for a bit, you really don't want to be using a camera that you aren't familar with if you can avoid it. I'd also think about taking your own Canon DSLR along as a backup, just in case. Good luck!

To be honest Robbins.photo this is more of an issue with the 24 mp nikon crop cameras and small buffers. Sure the write speed makes a difference for clearing the card but the 7d buffer is around 27 raws after a recent firmware upgrade. I had slow cards when I bought it first and even then I was never limited by its speed. My Nikon d7100 however is a different story

 

[JohnTrav]

My buffer on my 7D is 22 shooting large raw. I have filled my buffer numerous of times with 400x write speeds. Considering I shoot sports a sandisk pro would make sense for me personally but it is out of my budget right now. And with 22 shots before it fills give me enough where I only really fill it once in a blue moon.

As far as shooting a wedding like mentioned In my opinion write speeds above 400x would not be needed. I don't know any portrait, event, or wedding photographers that shoot in high burst mode. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong since I've meet actually shot a wedding.

A sandisk pro with write speeds of 150mb/s would be awesome for me to own.

 

[lambertpix]

I've got a 32GB Lexar 800x card that I've been pretty happy with, and some Kingston's that have been ok for stills, but aren't fast enough for video. I've got some older Sandisks that I've actually had problems with on occasion, so they stay on the bottom of the stack, to be used only in case of emergency.