CF Card Recommendations?

[Jaimiem]

I'm hoping to pick up a CF Card tonight off of Amazon so that it will be here before the weekend. What do you recommend?

I'm looking to get 16GB. Is there a big difference between the Ultra and Extreme Sandisk cards? I shoot with a 7D and primarily do family shots.

Thanks!

 

[Vinny]

In general you don't need a super fast card unless you're shooting action. If family shots are around a table any card will do, if you're talking sports where there's a lot of action (soccer or football) go for speed. I would also caution on buying a large card - if it fails, and they sometimes do, you've lost a lot. I use SD and have 1 - 8 Gb and 2 - 4 Gb cards, take photos in RAW +JPEG fine and the 8 Gb card holds over 500 photos. All my cards are class 4 and I've been able to get off about 8 or 9 photos while holding down the shutter before the buffer fills up and the camera stops.

 

[KmH]

I agree with Vinny.

Often the shooting speed limiting factor isn't the memory card, it's the camera's write buffer.

Card speed becomes apparent when uploading images to the computer.

My camera's are 12 MP and I don't use cards larger than 4GB for fear of losing 250 or so irreplaceable RAW images in one fell swoop. When I upgrade to 16 MP or more, then I'll go to 8GB cards.

 

[j-digg]

I have the 16gb UDMA Sandisk that is ( I think 60mb/s ) and can shoot like crazy with no interuptions on my 7d while shooting L-RAW... I dont think the card is overkill, but could be wrong, it cost me $95..

I believe Lexar is currently having rebates that puts theyre cards at comparable prices with the equivalent Sandisks so you could check those out as well.