What's a good card?

PNWSGM · May 2, 2012

First and foremost. I am looking for an SDHC card, as I shoot with a D80 and am looking to upgrade to a D300S in the future.

I shoot a lot of motorsports so the card needs to be a high speed card. I was told that Sony Class 10 cards are great. I have used a Sandisk extreme pro card and had no issues but have heard that they can be unreliable at times, anybody have any input on this?

Any card recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Forkie · May 2, 2012

The D300s also takes CF Cards which are faster than SDHC so consider looking at those first. You can have a high speed CF in one slot as your main card and have a fast SD in the second slot as an overflow or backup.

BlairWright · May 2, 2012

I have never had a Lexar Pro or Sandisk Extreme Pro fail, they are pretty rock solid.

Dao · May 2, 2012

I bought the Sandisk extreme CFs back in 2008 and they are still working like a champ without a single issue. And all the CF package comes with a data recovery software in case of data lost. (i.e. corrupted card or deleted files)

Right now, if I am going to buy a new CF cards for me camera, it is going to be Sandisk.

KmH · May 2, 2012

Card class is a rating of how quickly images upload from the card to a computer, not how quickly images can be written to the card from the camera's buffer.

Page 394 of the D300s users manual shows the camera buffer capacity for the various image quality settings. Page 393 lists which cards have been approved by Nikon for use in the D300s.
You can download the D300s user's manual here - http://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/kie88335f7869dfuejdl=-cww2/D300S_EN.pdf

The Nikon D300s does not need a card faster than class 6, even for doing video.

I used San Disk and Lexar cards a lot error free, though I never had any off brand card problems either.

PNWSGM · May 3, 2012

Forkie said:
The D300s also takes CF Cards which are faster than SDHC so consider looking at those first. You can have a high speed CF in one slot as your main card and have a fast SD in the second slot as an overflow or backup.

I know but I shoot with a D80 with only takes SD so why buy a CF when I can't even use it?