3x 16gb or 6x 8gb? CF card quandary

dakid

dakid

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Hiya,

I shot a wedding recently (first one), and took approx 40gb of photos (about 1700 photos). In doing so, I used all of my current cards (7x4gb + 4x2gb) and even had to re-format two of them on the day to re-use them, and it felt very wrong to do so!

I am therefore intending to purchase more space, but also upgrade to bigger cards, so I have to swap less often. I am having trouble deciding between either three 16Gb cards (@ £76 each) or six 8Gb cards (@ £46 each). I'd have to swap cards less often with the former, and I'd be £50 better off, but I'd lose more images if one went tits up.

Any thoughts?

Also - and I shall be scouring the forums as well - I'm looking for some decent AAs for my flashgun battery pack. The current "2100" 7-day shop ones had to be recharged five times on the day. I've heard good things about Sanyo Eneloops, but I'll pay a little more again if I'll get longer-lasting batteries.

Thanks in advance for any help :)
 
I'd go for the smaller cards and just swap them. If one goes wrong then you have lost less. All your pics on one card means all of them lost.
 
you need to relax your trigger finger! 1700 - how many were worth the effort?
 
I have heard some cards have recovery software on them, this may be safer.
I recently got a 16GB 133X KINGSTON C/F for 32 squids, works well, check out the suppliers (U.K).
The real question is why are C/F cards so much more expensive, same capacity and speed can be 4 times greater from the same manufacturer, it seems that the electrics are the same, only the casing is different. I suspect some serious profiteering.
 
I dont use anything over 4gb, i recently lost a card to a failure but luckily managed to get the pictures back, on that single 4gb card were all the pictures from my recent SU elections shoot.

I would have to think what i could have lost on an 8gb or a 16gb if i couldnt have got them back
 
frankcanon said:
I have heard some cards have recovery software on them, this may be safer.
I recently got a 16GB 133X KINGSTON C/F for 32 squids, works well, check out the suppliers (U.K).
The real question is why are C/F cards so much more expensive, same capacity and speed can be 4 times greater from the same manufacturer, it seems that the electrics are the same, only the casing is different. I suspect some serious profiteering.
Click to expand...

I use 16GB 133X Kingston in my 1Ds Mk1 and they have given me no problems what-so-ever so far (probably taken 20000+ images) and they a very reasonable prices. :thumbs::thumbs:
 
cowasaki said:
I'd go for the smaller cards and just swap them. If one goes wrong then you have lost less. All your pics on one card means all of them lost.
Click to expand...

I agree, I shoot 4gig cards plus they fit straight onto dvd for back up, you only need one card to corrupt at a wedding and you are snookered and someone loses memories of their special day.
 
I do tend to shoot a lot of images. It makes up for my lack of ability! I dare say that as time goes on then I'll shoot fewer, but I do also do sports/wildlife shooting as well, where I use a fair bit of burst shooting, so the extra space will never be wasted.

4Gb is too small for me, I think. I do take the point about 8Gb being a little more redundancy-safe, but how many people have ever had a card fail that couldn't be recovered? Especially one from a decent manufacturer like Sandisk?

Seems there's no simple consensus on it though. More opinions definitely welcome :)

Any thoughts on the batteries thing? Are the Eneloops the best I can get?
 
I use 16Gb Sandisk Extreeme III's, never had one fail yet nor the 4Gb, 2Gb or 1Gb predecessors.

How often do you want to swap cards? For me and sport I don't want to very often as I might miss something.
 
I regularly use 16Gb cards, in very harsh environments too. Never had a problem and I'd rather not be changing cards when I'm out if I can help it.
 
Anyone ever had non-recoverable card failure? I've heard of people having cards fail, but always being able to recover. Would be interested to know the incidence of people losing images because of card failure.
 
I use 4Gb cards at the moment, but I'm going to buy a few 8Gb's. I nearly missed a goal at the football the other night due to changing cards! I wouldn't want to switch to 16Gb due to the risk of card failure, unlikely as it may be.

Dave
 
Another vote for more smaller cards. I have had a card fail (as always, an unrepeatable family occasion) but was lucky to have the images recovered (at a cost). If I'm shooting where running out of shots would be a pain, I keep a close watch on the shots remaining display and swap out during a break in the action when I'm down to a suitably low number of slots left.
 
I'd go for the smaller cards if you're going to be shooting something like a wedding. Last thing you want to do is lose half of the days shots through corruption, loss, damage, and such.
Sounds like you took a hell of a lot of photos. Must have taken ages to sort through.
 
Nod said:
Another vote for more smaller cards. I have had a card fail (as always, an unrepeatable family occasion) but was lucky to have the images recovered (at a cost). If I'm shooting where running out of shots would be a pain, I keep a close watch on the shots remaining display and swap out during a break in the action when I'm down to a suitably low number of slots left.
Click to expand...

Was that a Sandisk, Nod?
 
No, it was a cheapo card I bought when cards were expensive and I was skint! Can't remember the brand and it's long since landfill.
 
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