Memory cards

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I have just got hold of a Nikon D80 with a 1gb card. Now looking for more memory should i buy cheap or branded cards
 
gtc said:
I have just got hold of a Nikon D80 with a 1gb card. Now looking for more memory should i buy cheap or branded cards
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It depends. Do you want to be certain of keeping your images, or not?
 
Go for the sandisk one from Amazon. Get a few but get smaller ones nothing over
8gb.
 
sep9001 said:
Go for the sandisk one from Amazon. Get a few but get smaller ones nothing over
8gb.
Click to expand...

Ignore that last bit. Get the biggest you can afford. You're much better off with all your eggs in one basket rather than trying to juggle several baskets of eggs. Good CF cards very rarely fail, but they're quite easy to lose or to accidentaly erase. Having just one big card means you can only lose it by losing the camera it's inside, nd you only ever erase it at the end of the day.
 
hollis_f said:
Ignore that last bit. Get the biggest you can afford. You're much better off with all your eggs in one basket rather than trying to juggle several baskets of eggs. Good CF cards very rarely fail, but they're quite easy to lose or to accidentaly erase. Having just one big card means you can only lose it by losing the camera it's inside, nd you only ever erase it at the end of the day.
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Or, if the card corrupts itself, you lose everything!

I thought the general consensus was to have many small capacity cards. ie. nothing bigger than 8GB.
 
andycallaghan said:
Or, if the card corrupts itself, you lose everything!

I thought the general consensus was to have many small capacity cards. ie. nothing bigger than 8GB.
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Nowhere near a general consensus, more the repetition of paranoid FUD. I've been using CF cards for fifteen years and I've never had one 'corrupt itself'. I have, however, lost a card and i've seen a friend format a card she thought was empty. Luckily she recovered all the images in the same way I'll recover mine should one of my cards ever decide to corrupt itself.

As for losing cards. The one I lost I'd put somewhere 'safe' whilst changing cards in the heat of the moment. Later I couldn't find it. That was in the days when cards weren't as cheap as they are today (I think it was a 64 MB card that cost around £50). Nowadays I always buy a card that can handle a whole day's shooting. The only way I can lose the card is to lose the camera. And I don't have to try and keep track of which cards are full and which are ready to be used.

Using your logic the sensible solution is to buy several hundred 30MB cards so you only lose one image if one should go wrong.
 
I guess I'm paranoid then.
When I am shooting for money, I shoot to both CF cards in my D3.
Because I have seen photographers crying over £600 bill for data recovery.
 
hollis_f said:
Nowhere near a general consensus, more the repetition of paranoid FUD. I've been using CF cards for fifteen years and I've never had one 'corrupt itself'. I have, however, lost a card and i've seen a friend format a card she thought was empty. Luckily she recovered all the images in the same way I'll recover mine should one of my cards ever decide to corrupt itself.

As for losing cards. The one I lost I'd put somewhere 'safe' whilst changing cards in the heat of the moment. Later I couldn't find it. That was in the days when cards weren't as cheap as they are today (I think it was a 64 MB card that cost around £50). Nowadays I always buy a card that can handle a whole day's shooting. The only way I can lose the card is to lose the camera. And I don't have to try and keep track of which cards are full and which are ready to be used.

Using your logic the sensible solution is to buy several hundred 30MB cards so you only lose one image if one should go wrong.
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No, because there's a fine line between being cautious and being stupid!

I use three 8Gb cards. Means I can take hundreds of shots, and when I come to a natural break in shooting, I can swap to a fresh card. Hopefully, if and when my card does corrupt, I wont lose ALL my images.
 
I have 6 x 4mb cards - probably because there's 5 card slots in my bag. there's always in there, always formatted plus 1 card in the camera.

whatever works for you, works for you. once you get into a routine of transferring to pc, back up, format then it's easy.

i can't understand how you can accidentally format or delete all your images on a card? :shrug:
 
the question was should i get branded or not and its one that a lot of people think about if i get say sandisk are they better than kingstone etc
 
So i will buy 2x 8gb sandisk cards would high speed make a diffance on the Nikon D80 regards
 
leftcurl said:
I have 6 x 4mb cards - probably because there's 5 card slots in my bag. there's always in there, always formatted plus 1 card in the camera.

whatever works for you, works for you. once you get into a routine of transferring to pc, back up, format then it's easy.

i can't understand how you can accidentally format or delete all your images on a card? :shrug:
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You have 6 cards. If you go out for a long day's shooting and you've already filled two cards and most of a third. Suddenly you turn a corner and see a fantastic shooting opportunity. You knock off a couple of shots then - Card Full!!! You're in a hurry to swap cards. Is your system for differentiating used from empty good enough so that you definitely will put the used card away in the correct place and swap it for one of the empty cards.

Or you could be scatter-brained and poorly organised. Not everybody is OCD enough to have a foolproof method of keeping cards separate.
 
David

To try and answer the question you asked, I would always buy a respected brand name from a respected supplier because that way you can be reasonably confident that you are getting what you think you are buying and that it will work well. Unfortunately the world seems to be awash with fake goods, not just memory cards, which I don't want to buy and rely on just to save a couple of pounds
 
Play.com have some deals on Sandisk cards that end 5 March. I have not checked their prices against others but its just a Heads up call.

Best wishes, Mark
 
Play.com's prices looks to be there or thereabouts.

Amazon looked to be best though. I got a 4GB SanDisk in Costco the other night for about £5 which I thought was a steal but Amazon and Play are selling them for much the same. I'm gonna get an 8GB too and that'll do me for what I'll be doing.
 
Go for a brand name card and get it from a reputable retailer so that you know its a genuine reliable card, not a fake.
As for what size you get, its entirely up to you. Personally I have a couple of 4gb cards which hold more than enough for a days shooting for me. I think I get around 800 shots on them.
 
gtc said:
So i will buy 2x 8gb sandisk cards would high speed make a diffance on the Nikon D80 regards
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According to the speed tests here, your D80 wouldn't really benefit from high speed cards, however, fast cards would be of greater value to you if you ever upgrade to a newer body.
 
If your going to shoot video, make sure its a class 6 card so it records to the card quicker
 
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Sandisk, Lexar, Transcend are all about the same quailty you just pay more for the Sandisk and Lexar names.

I'm with the get the biggest card you can afford camp, we have been hearing the same old get two small cards and not one since a 1GB card was the biggest available i.e. get two 512mb to be safe, in years to come it'll be get two 1 terabyte cards and not a 2 terabyte one.

As file sizes get bigger so must memory cards, I'll lose the same number of images from a 4GB with my 1D as I would have with a 1GB card in my 30D, look to the future and get big cards, I now have several 1GB cards that will hold 24 images on my 1D, yes it just like the good old days with film, but crap when shooting a 1000 a day.
 
The D80 uses SD rather than CF, still not convinced they are as durable as CF to be honest. I had a Sandisk Ultra II 8GB SD card go belly up on me. I rang Sandisk and they asked me to email them a copy of the receipt (Jessops) which I did but after numerous mails and phone calls I gave up and just ended up driving back to Jessops who swapped it for a new one. I then bought 2 x Sandisk extreme III (class 6) 4GB and did a trial in my D80 against the class 4 Ultra, it gave me one extra shot shooting raw before the buffer filled up.

I'm in the smaller but more cards camp.
 
I would always go for a card that gave about 300 - 400 images. As I normally fill a card up when I'm on holiday, I don't want to lose more than that should a card fail. I've spent so much to get those pictures, which may not be repeatable (are many pictures?) because they are in another part of the world.

The format, either Jpeg or RAW, greatly affects the numbers image that can be recorded, so it you switch from one to the other your capacity coulf be halve if going from Jpeg to RAW.

When I had the Nikon D70 I had 2GB CF cards. When I got the D200 I went to 4GB cards. I had all my cards stolen so got 8GB CF cards for the D300S, but also 4GB SD cards as I initially planned to shoot RAW to the CF and Jpeg to the SD, (the D300S can take both in case you didn't know ;))which would have been a similar number of images on each. I changed my mind and now use the SD card as an overflow from the CF card.

I also fill cards when at sporting events with continuous shooting, which can fill up a card quickly, but again, I don't want to lose too many images should a card fail in probably the situation where it is most stressed.

I don't want to have just one huge card, again, if that goes wrong, what do I use?

When it comes to brands, I would go for a name brand. I had a MyMemory CF card a few years ago, which was quite fast (and cheap), but I would occasionally get the odd corrupted image when using continuous shooting. :( So I've gone for Sandisk since, and have never had a corrupted image.

CF cards are more robust than SD cards, so again I would think of quality of manufacture. I was showing someone how to transfer images from their memory card a few weeks ago, and she had a very well worn no name SD card, and when I was pushing it back into the camera, the card disintegrated between my fingers. :eek: That is the first time I've had that happen, but I've seen it can happen, so a good make and keep them in their little protective cases so they are not being crushed or worn when in your pockets or bags.


It is getting very hard to get smaller capacities, as the average capacity they make is larger, they make less of the smaller capacities. There is obviously nothing to stop you changing a card before it is full, which is something I try to do. I don't want to get to a point where I fill it up at the wrong time. ;)
 
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