Compact Flash Cards

chrisjohnson

In the airport yesterday I got confused by the wide range of Compact Flash cards on sale - different brands, different specs, roughly the same price per gigabyte.

I just wanted to pick up a spare 2GB UDMA card for my Canon 40D before my trip to Ireland next week. In the end I did not buy anything.

Seems like 2GB cards are no longer on sale - "haven't had them for 9 months mate".

Can I safely buy any of the cards, or do I have to watch out for specific things?

ziggy53

Your primary considerations should be:

Durability and Reliability
Speed
Cost

... and I suggest in that order. If card is not durable or reliable, you risk image loss. If a card is not fast, in terms of saving images from the camera buffer to the card and from the card to the computer, it slows your work. Cost should be the last consideration because if you amortize the costs of each image over the life of the card, any card is pretty inexpensive.

I think that Sandisk and Lexar are the most durable brands that I have tested, but many folks here like Transcend cards too. Sandisk cards tend to couple better with Canon cameras in terms of write speeds, but there are exceptions. I use mostly 4GB cards because each card contents can fit a single layer DVD. The 40D does not use UDMA transfer, so that is not an important purchase consideration for that camera. (You could use a UDMA card reader to speed transfer onto the computer so UDMA might be important in that way.)

Look at this page and then review costs (Note that many of the latest cards have not been tested, but look instead for trends.):

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257

My recommendation is the Sandisk 4 GB cards with the 30MB/s speed rating.

chrisjohnson

ziggy53 wrote: »

Your primary considerations should be:

Durability and Reliability
Speed
Cost

... and I suggest in that order. If card is not durable or reliable, you risk image loss. If a card is not fast, in terms of saving images from the camera buffer to the card and from the card to the computer, it slows your work. Cost should be the last consideration because if you amortize the costs of each image over the life of the card, any card is pretty inexpensive.

I think that Sandisk and Lexar are the most durable brands that I have tested, but many folks here like Transcend cards too. Sandisk cards tend to couple better with Canon cameras in terms of write speeds, but there are exceptions. I use mostly 4GB cards because each card contents can fit a single layer DVD. The 40D does not use UDMA transfer, so that is not an important purchase consideration for that camera. (You could use a UDMA card reader to speed transfer onto the computer so UDMA might be important in that way.)

Look at this page and then review costs (Note that many of the latest cards have not been tested, but look instead for trends.):

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257

My recommendation is the Sandisk 4 GB cards with the 30MB/s speed rating.

Thanks Ziggy53, star answer. I can work with this.

So the guy who sold me the UDMA card in the first place "ripped" me, likely unintentionally - never mind, it still works perfectly and I am glad that I have the best money could buy!

It is a shame the 2GBs are discontinued instead of drastically lowered in price. It could be a good backup option - I seem to remember special storage devices for multiple 2GB cards a while back but no longer. I think flash cards are theoretically better than any other current media for long term data retention.

colourbox

goldenballs wrote: »

I think flash cards are theoretically better than any other current media for long term data retention.

I would not assume that is the case. I have read recommendations against using USB flash drives as long term storage, for instance. In the specific case of compact flash, you really have no idea about the build quality inside the card, as evidenced in this analysis.

So, yes, we can definitely say that marked build quality differences do exist between Compact Flash cards, even when they rely on equivalent components and when they are sold under well known brands....The bad news is that you, the consumer, can't tell. The build quality of a compact flash card can only be ascertained by opening it, and that operation is not reversible, at least if you want to continue using the card in your digital camera. Further, there is virtually no guarantee that a specific manufacturer will deliver the same build quality over time. Compact flash cards are often sold in non-descript batches that are simply branded by the vendor. This is why we won't give you the names of the brands involved above: there is no guarantee that different batches or different generation of cards would not reverse the comparison.

AlbertZeroK

Sandisk is what I primarly use, although, I have some Transcend memory cards. I like Transcend, but am a bit in a flux because one of my 8G 600x died, but never had an issue with the 16G 300x cards, and they are fast cards!

The 4G sandisk cards are often found cheap - just stay away from ebay and no name resellers - their are a good amount of FAKE sandisk cards out their.

Also, when buying sandisk, sometimes you need to do the math. I remember sandisk had a rebate, something like $10 if you buy one, $30 if you buy two, $50 if you buy three. So Adorama was selling 3 packs of cards for $20 more than if you buy 3 seperate cards - it looked like a deal because of the rebate, but you should always check the math!

jswoolf01

I can't help much with the "what to buy" question -- I have half a dozen Sandisk Extreme II and Extreme III cards, and have yet to see a read or write problem. Not that I use them very heavily. But I can help with this:

goldenballs wrote: »

It is a shame the 2GBs are discontinued instead of drastically lowered in price.

They haven't been. At least, they haven't been discontinued here in the States; I don't know about where you are. Right now, this minute, you can find Sandisk Ultra (15Mbps) 2GB CF cards on Staples's website for $17.99 each, or Amazon.com for $15. There are any number of internet-only stores that sell older sizes of cards, too. Even drugstores like Walgreens sell lower-grade cards, sometimes under brand names, sometimes under their own store name.

-- Jon W.

Photoskipper

I have been using the Sandisk for more than 6 years. From the very first 256MB,1G Extreme then 2G Ultra II, 4G Extreme III, 8G Extreme IV till recently the 16G Extreme, all of them still working fine. Couple of other brand failed within 2 years so that I got back to Sandish again.