SD Card quality?

[newguy]

I can get a 2gb sd card on overstock.com for half the price of the photo shop. Are they all about the same? What concerns should I have?

I have a pentax k10d and will want to have up to 100 pic on it at a time.

Nothing real big in file size for now.

 

[JerryPH]

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. In the storage card world, you are mostly purchasing write speed.

If you are comparing the same card with all the same specifics and one place has it cheaper than the other, then at that point it is possible you are paying for service, peace of mind or faster delivery... otherwise if they are both the same... one is merely charging more than the other.

 

[Big Mike]

A photo shop can't hope to compete with an on-line store in terms of price...especially on stuff like this. The store has a much higher overhead. Also, the stores have to at least try to have competitive prices on the bigger items, cameras and lenses...so they tend to mark up the accesories and make their money on those.

 

[AdamZx3]

I agree with the above posts. I bought a cheaper 4GB Transcend SD card and it had worked for months and months, before going on a photo shoot 4.5 hours away I purchased a sandisk extreme III. Long story short, when I needed it the most, the 4GB Sandisk failed me after taking a few photos with it. The good part is that I started with the extreme III card and then switched to the Transcend. Luckily I had my Macbook Pro there to dump photos on and continue using the 1GB card.

2 things to take away from this:

1. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, if I had loaded up 4GB of photos and then it crashed, well I would be one sad camper, and one less client. Having 4 quality 1GB cards would be ideal. (for my camera at least, a 21mp camera or shooting 10 fps would eat up a 1GB card, thus a 2 or 4gb would be a better choice)

2. I tried to save a few bucks on the Transcend card and it bit me hard. The money saved is nominal and now I have a $65 paperweight, that Transcend wont fix under warranty.

Also I always buy online, you can get things a lot cheaper that way. Everything at my camera shop is MSRP, I bought my D80 local to get the service. Also try out www.newegg.com they have a bunch of deals on memory cards.

 

[Sideburns]

Basically, Sandisk, Kingston, and OCZ...
Buy big names...cause you want something that isn't gonna stop working.

There's other names...but that's off the top of my head.

 

[Tayfun]

I agree with the above posts. I bought a cheaper 4GB Transcend SD card and it had worked for months and months, before going on a photo shoot 4.5 hours away I purchased a sandisk extreme III. Long story short, when I needed it the most, the 4GB Sandisk failed me after taking a few photos with it.

Adam, I think you wrote "the 4GB Sandisk failed me" by accidentaly. Transcent failed you right? If so this will be a helpfull comment for me because I was between Sandisk EXtreme III and Transcent. 4 GB Sandisk Extreme III sounds better this way. Thanks

 

[JerryPH]

In the 5 months that I have my D200, the price of cards has dropped at least 30-40%. There is no real reason to not get brand name quality cards anymore, IMHO.

 

[Mesoam]

just have to pay attention to the read/write speeds of the card, junkier ones will be slower

 

[ToddB]

I'm interested in this also.

I have a D80 and currently have a 2gb card. I'm wanting to get another card before our next vacation. What would be considered a high speed card? Is there something in the specs that I should look for? What would be the recommendation for a fast writing 2gb card?

 

[usayit]

I shoot with a bunch of 1gb high speed cards from Sandisk.... (either CF or SD depending on the camera). I stick with 1gb cards for the same reason AdamZx3 mentioned... I'd rather loose 1GB of photos than 4GB of photos.

Besides.... 1GB will still hold more frames than a 24 shot roll of film.....

I also have two USB/SD 1GB cards (SanDisk with built in USB interface). Makes it really easy to leave a copy of the photos with family during a gathering.


All media cards can fail.. it is the nature of how they are handled in a relatively harsh environments. I prefer SANDisk but you have to be careful since there are A LOT of SANdisk fakes out there of subpar quality.

Another thing to consider... I always reformat the card in-camera after copying them off to my computer. For longer trips away from home, I carry either a 20GB wolverine or Epson P2000 image tanks for backups.

 

[Sideburns]

I'm interested in this also.

I have a D80 and currently have a 2gb card. I'm wanting to get another card before our next vacation. What would be considered a high speed card? Is there something in the specs that I should look for? What would be the recommendation for a fast writing 2gb card?

Sandisk Extreme III, or IV. They are both real fast.