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New Camera - Which Compact Flash Cards?

post #1 of 17
4/4/04 at 3:06am
Thread Starter 
Hi.

I'd appreciate some advice with regards to which brand and size of compact flash cards to buy.

I've just bought a Canon EOS 300D and need some cards to go with it. I've got a two week holdiay coming up in a few months and will be wanting to take lots of shots.

Thanks.
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post #2 of 17
4/4/04 at 4:59am
Amazon and Ecost have some pretty decent CF prices, but the deals come and go pretty quick. I just paid 57.00 for a 256MB Kingston CF from Amazon that seemed a decent price.

Haven't filled it up yet w/my new Canon A80 !
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post #3 of 17
4/4/04 at 8:19am
I picked up a couple Lexar 256MB CF cards on sale last summer for less than $50. I also have a Kingston 256MB CF card from CompUSA (less than $50 onsale, too).

Each of the cards is rated for a different speed. However, when taking pictures with my Canon Powershot G3 I cannot notice any difference between the different cards. The faster ones may transfer faster to my PC, but that's not a big deal for me -- I usually just walk away while the photos are downloading if I have a full card.
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post #4 of 17
4/4/04 at 9:28am
This guy tests cards out in different cameras. It'll give you a good idea of which cards are decent for your camera.
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post #5 of 17
4/4/04 at 10:48am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for that link Keith. I've been browsing around those forums, but never thought to check out the main site :b
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post #6 of 17
4/4/04 at 11:17am
I'd stay away from Sandisk, personally, since they've got some quality control issues.

I really like Crucial memory. They've got some good deals on their websites, usually including free shipping.
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post #7 of 17
4/4/04 at 5:15pm
Quote:
I'd stay away from Sandisk
Really? I've used a 64 megabyte card made by them in my camera for quite some time now without any problems.
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post #8 of 17
4/4/04 at 7:24pm
I've used a lot of Lexar memory, and will continue to do so.
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post #9 of 17
4/5/04 at 5:26am
Sandisk has had some quality issues in the past, but have made great improvements with their newer, high-end cards. I use (per Rob Galbraith's website above) a Sandisk Ultra II with my Canon 10D and have had great success with it.
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post #10 of 17
4/5/04 at 9:27am
Wow, I use the cheapest cards I can find and never had any problems with them (I usually get them at pricewatch).
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post #11 of 17
4/5/04 at 11:35am
Thread Starter 
I'd never thought to look at Crucial. They're seem to be the cheapest for cards in the UK.

Does the speed make much difference? I won't be shooting that much in RAW format, probably high quality JPEG.

We're going to Venice, Italy so I will probably get a couple of 512Mb cards to make sure we've got enough memory for all the photos.
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post #12 of 17
4/5/04 at 12:28pm
I went with dual 512 Lexar 16x cards with Write Acceleration.

I was going to go with the 40x Professional series due to
the fact that they come with rescue software and a longer
warranty on the card but in the end the frugal in me won
out and I opted for the 16x's instead.. (I had to pinch
pennies somewhere because my camera order was over 5 grand)



The Lexars have served me well thus far. I have shot just
under 3000 photos in a couple months and I have never had
any card read errors or any corupted files at all.

I also have a 30 Gigabyte Nixvue Digital Album Lite that I
dump the raw files onto when a card is full. I get about
76 raw files per 512 card.
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post #13 of 17
4/5/04 at 2:22pm
Darren, I saw benchmarks specifically for the Canon EOS 300D. The speed of the card makes no appreciable difference when taking pictures, because of the 4 frame buffer of the 300D. However, speed is a factor when downloading to the PC with an external USB card reader.

The 300D file transfer speed through the camera cable is horribly slow. Use the money you save buying a slow(er) card, like a 12x card, and buy yourself a compactflash card reader for your PC! I have a Lexar 7-in-1 USB2 card reader...I get 2 megabytes/sec with a Transcend 24x 512mb CF card. Compare that with the 300Ds built-in slothful 150 kilobytes per second transfer speed...
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post #14 of 17
6/28/04 at 8:28am
Quote:
I have a Lexar 7-in-1 USB2 card reader...

Is this an external or internal reader? And where did you buy it from Max? Thanks.
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post #15 of 17
6/28/04 at 9:45am
Jeff, Max is right about getting a USB 2.0 universal card reader instead of transferring from your camera.

Here's a link to a card reader similar to the one I bought at CompUSA:

Universal USB 2.0 Card Reader/Writer
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post #16 of 17
6/28/04 at 10:26am
Thread Starter 
A quick update. I bought a Crucial 512Mb card (8x) and a Lexar 512Mb card (12x). Both cards performed fantastically on holdiay and survived the trip with no problems in the heat (about 32C in Southern Italy).

I didn't notice any real difference between the two cards. I shot at high quality JPEG for most of the trip (a couple of RAW files to experiment with).

Both cards downloaded fine using my internal USB2.0 card reader and the excellent Downloader Pro software. It seemed to take at most a couple of minutes to download - I just made a cuppa whilst waiting
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post #17 of 17
6/28/04 at 12:08pm
This is the Digital Media Reader/Writer that I'm interested in.
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