SDHC and Camera Bag advice

Samriel · Jan 12, 2008

After finally deciding what lenses I'm going to buy, I can now focus on the smaller things, like a SDHC card, and camera bag. So, I want to ask about some SDHC card advice first:

What speed is considered fast? All the cards I'm looking at are Class 6, but they have 10MB/s, 12MB/s, 24MB/s speeds.
How much speed and memory do I need? I plan on photographing mostly in RAW, or RAW+JPG, 10MPs. Sometimes I might be photographing sport events, but it's my main type of photography.
To present a concrete problem, I can buy a 8GB card for around 50-60 US dollars, with a write speed of 10MB/s and a move speed of 22MB/s, or a 2GB card with a write/move speed of 24MB/s. Considering the previous point, what would you suggest?

Then we come to the camera bag:

It needs to be a backpack, no shoulder bag or similar.
It needs to be up to 100 US dollars
In shouldn't be too big, so no trekking bag, rather something I could take to my university with me.
If possible (although I know this might be hard), it should be able to fit a A4 file folder in it, plus camera and some lenses and a flash of course.
On top of all this, it would be nice if it was "fashionable" - it should not look too much like a photographers backpack, not be too blocky etc. After a few visits to the local camera stores, sI know this is not easy either...

So far I've liked some Kata bags, and also a Nikon one, but they couldn't fit a A4 folder, although everything else was good. Another bag (Photoland Stellio) was very spacious, but the design was just horrible...

Antithesis · Jan 12, 2008

As far as I know, the buffer on your camera can make up for the slower write speed on your memory cards as long as your not firing off a rediculous amount of shots. You should look in your manual for your buffer size, if it seems like you might run over that pretty often, then spring for the spendier cards. I read in a magazine that most cards won't write over 20mb/s, but I'm not sure if someone can verify or deny this.

For packs, I would look into tamrac bags and Lowe Pro bags. Lowe Pro makes these sort of sling packs that are pretty cool.

I'd check their websites, they offer tons of stuff:

http://www.tamrac.com/

http://products.lowepro.com/catalog/Camera,14.htm

shivaswrath · Jan 12, 2008

I'd check out Tamra or Lowepro (as mentioned above), and as far as SDHC's go, if you're shooting in JPG+RAW, you will use up 4GB's FAST (I know from personal experience), I'd opt for an 8GB if it's compatible (I just recently posted a query about this in another forum to see if anyone knows if 8GB SD's work with dSLR's). . .

Antithesis · Jan 12, 2008

Oh snap, missed that line. If your shooting in RAW or RAW+Jpeg, your going to want a minimum of 4gb per card. On my 2gb when shooting in raw I get about 115 shots per card at 10MP, so keep that in mind.