What's the difference in CF cards?

TonyCooper

I've been shooting a Nikon D60 for several years, and just purchased
a used Nikon D300. I'm just an hobby photographer; you can check
out my stuff in "Documentary" or "Other Cool Shots" or at my SmugMug
site.

First time using a CF card, and there are so many choices. With my
style of shooting - all RAW but seldom over 100 clicks a day - a 2GB
or 4GB card is sufficient. Download time is not a factor for me.

What difference will it make to me in choosing a brand/type of card?

Richard

First, congratulations on your new toy.

AFAIK, there are only three things to consider: reliability, capacity and speed. Oh right, and cost.

Any card can fail, but one from a reputable manufacturer (San Disk, Kingston, Transcend, etc.) will probably last longer than a generic brand. Some people swear by one brand or another, but I suspect that statistically, there isn't a hell of a lot of difference. I have never had a problem with San Disk cards, FWIW.

The capacity you need depends on the size of the files. Assuming you're using 14-bit mode (which you should for best image quality), an uncompressed file will average around 25 MB, which should give you roughly 160 frames on a 4 GB card. Nikon offers lossless compression, which reduces the file size to around 17 MB without compromising image quality. Not sure whether there are any performance or workflow consequences to using compressed mode--perhaps a Nikon shooter can clarify.

As for speed, keep in mind that besides download time, it can affect performance when shooting in burst mode. It won't affect the first six shots, but once the frame buffer is full, a slower card will take longer to empty the buffer and let you continue shooting. I've seen some of your work and I don't think it will matter much to you, but if you decide to shoot sports or wildlife you might want a faster card.

Your needs are fairly modest, so I would just keep an eye out for stuff on sale at Adorama, B&H or Amazon.

HTH.

divamum

Also, sales at newegg.com

I personally love Transcend - no real reason, they've just served me reliably and are often a little cheaper.

Matthew Saville

Tony, here's your problem: You may not NEED a high-speed, high-capacity card for what you do, HOWEVER... The pro cards also come with one thing that often times the lesser, cheaper cards do not: Reliability, and a lifetime warranty to prove it.

Simply put, buy professional grade memory cards. Don't skimp. I've been shooting digital for +10 years with both SD and CF, from pretty much every one of the major manufacturers out there. I've seen shady cards go south, and sometimes your images are easily recovered with free software, but sometimes your images are gone forever and there's nothing you can do.

I'm not saying you need to buy a bazillion megabyte-per-second memory card that costs 3X what you're expecting to spend. I'm just saying, you should think twice about trying to save just $5-10 on the most critical aspect of your entire camera bag. Don't spend thousands of dollars on cameras and lenses, and then hunt for a bargain memory card.

Personally, I usually prefer Sandisk pro-grade memory cards that have a lifetime warranty, and I either buy them from B&H or my local camera store. Amazon and Ebay are a little too sketchy, in my opinion, because you can never truly know what is "legit". Just google "fake CF cards Amazon" or something similar, and read up. I'm just saying, be wise about it.

=Matt=

Matthew Saville

Richard wrote: »

First, congratulations on your new toy.

AFAIK, there are only three things to consider: reliability, capacity and speed. Oh right, and cost.

Any card can fail, but one from a reputable manufacturer (San Disk, Kingston, Transcend, etc.) will probably last longer than a generic brand. Some people swear by one brand or another, but I suspect that statistically, there isn't a hell of a lot of difference. I have never had a problem with San Disk cards, FWIW.

The capacity you need depends on the size of the files. Assuming you're using 14-bit mode (which you should for best image quality), an uncompressed file will average around 25 MB, which should give you roughly 160 frames on a 4 GB card. Nikon offers lossless compression, which reduces the file size to around 17 MB without compromising image quality. Not sure whether there are any performance or workflow consequences to using compressed mode--perhaps a Nikon shooter can clarify.

As for speed, keep in mind that besides download time, it can affect performance when shooting in burst mode. It won't affect the first six shots, but once the frame buffer is full, a slower card will take longer to empty the buffer and let you continue shooting. I've seen some of your work and I don't think it will matter much to you, but if you decide to shoot sports or wildlife you might want a faster card.

Your needs are fairly modest, so I would just keep an eye out for stuff on sale at Adorama, B&H or Amazon.

HTH.

The D300, thankfully, comes with both 12-bit and Lossy compression options, which I do recommend for high volume shooters such as for action sports or weddings. Of course for landscapes or for taking less than 100 clicks per day, maybe 14-bit and/or lossless compression are okay, although completely un-compressed (let alone TIF) are IMO worthless features, they're mainly just Nikon's subtle way of saying "this camera is for pros". Honestly though, I did a lot of my own testing and literally could not tell a difference at all between any of the compression modes or bit-rates. And a 12-bit lossy compressed RAW file is often LESS than 1 megabyte per megapixel, within a few %% of the highest quality JPG! I routinely fit ~400 RAW images on the 4 GB cards I use in my D300 and D700.

Oh, by the way, one other thing to consider: Just because you can't imagine shooting more than 100 images in a day doesn't mean you shouldn't buy two cards or more. Because in the event of a memory card failure, everybody knows that the thing to do is to immediately stop shooting on that memory card, remove it, and save it for recovery software later. If this happens while you're out and about, sure you might rest assured that all your images will probably be recoverable, but you're done shooting if you don't have a spare memory card. In fact not having a spare memory card is one of the primary ways that people screw things up when their one card goes south and they try to fiddle with it and keep shooting images. That's a recipe for more serious corruption / image loss.

So, whatever you get, buy two or three!

By the way, I just looked around (on B&H, Amazon and Adorama) and NOBODY offers pro-grade 4 GB CF cards anymore unfortunately. Except third-party sellers on Amazon, and that IMO qualifies as nobody. It's even hard to find "cheapo" 4 GB's, as well as pro-grade 8GB CF cards too actually. The ONLY one I could find that was available was slightly off-brand, but still one I have tested and do trust: Delkin Pro, found on Adorama.com.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier- you may not NEED more than a 4 GB memory card, but the only 4 GB cards available today might be slightly sketchy or unreliable. Therefore I would strongly recommend considering a higher capacity pro-grade memory card.

And as others have mentioned, nothing is a guarantee. Even Hoodman, which bragged about "zero failures in the field" for quite a few years for their extremely pricey "RAW" brand cards, eventually has had documented failures / corruptions.

So, you never know. You could follow all our advice and make the safest purchase possible, and still get a lemon. That's global manufacturing for you! Which is why I was saying it's always good to have two or three memory cards, even for a low-volume shooter.

Take care and good luck,
=Matt=

Richard

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Oh, by the way, one other thing to consider: Just because you can't imagine shooting more than 100 images in a day doesn't mean you shouldn't buy two cards or more. Because in the event of a memory card failure, everybody knows that the thing to do is to immediately stop shooting on that memory card, remove it, and save it for recovery software later. If this happens while you're out and about, sure you might rest assured that all your images will probably be recoverable, but you're done shooting if you don't have a spare memory card. In fact not having a spare memory card is one of the primary ways that people screw things up when their one card goes south and they try to fiddle with it and keep shooting images. That's a recipe for more serious corruption / image loss.

So, whatever you get, buy two or three!

It's always a good idea to have an extra card or two. And since we all know that the killer opportunity happens just when your card fills up, using a bigger card than you usually need means fewer missed shots.

NikonsandVstroms

divamum wrote: »

Also, sales at newegg.com

I personally love Transcend - no real reason, they've just served me reliably and are often a little cheaper.

Same here, though I did switch to SanDisk for my D7100 just because it needs the fastest there is due to the small buffer.

With a D300 though the OP is a bit behind which is a good thing, it means that the top level cards don't offer much.

Also Tony there's no reason to get one as small as a 4GB. Right now on B&H looking at Transcend the 8 and 16 GB CF cards are the same price (30 bucks) and the 32 GB is just 8 bucks more.

They do have a SanDisk 4GB card for 20 bucks, but the 8GB is only 24 so just go for the 8 GB.

There are some cheap Kingston cards but that's the only brand I've ever bought and had issues with.

TonyCooper

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Tony, here's your problem: You may not NEED a high-speed, high-capacity card for what you do, HOWEVER... The pro cards also come with one thing that often times the lesser, cheaper cards do not: Reliability, and a lifetime warranty to prove it.

Personally, I usually prefer SanDisk pro-grade memory cards that have a lifetime warranty, and I either buy them from B&H or my local camera store. Amazon and Ebay are a little too sketchy, in my opinion, because you can never truly know what is "legit". Just google "fake CF cards Amazon" or something similar, and read up. I'm just saying, be wise about it.

=Matt=

What I ended up buying was three 8GB SanDisk cards. I have 6 SD (4s and 8s)
cards that I've been using with my D60, and 3 batteries, so I already know the value of
back-ups.

It's hard finding an 8GB CF card. My local camera store's smallest CF card was
16GB, so I was going to go online to buy a 4 or 8. Friday, though, the camera
store called me to tell me they did have some 8GB SanDisk cards, but they
hadn't been out on the shelf.

I don't look for a savings card-to-card for brand names, but the idea of 16 or 32GBs
just seemed to be an unnecessary cost, and upload speed is unimportant to me.

Matthew Saville

Richard wrote: »

It's always a good idea to have an extra card or two. And since we all know that the killer opportunity happens just when your card fills up, using a bigger card than you usually need means fewer missed shots.

Exactly. As a professional wedding photographer who needs reliable memory, I find myself no longer being able to use 4 GB memory cards simply because they don't offer them anymore. So I bought 8 GB professional grade cards right before those started getting difficult to find, and I basically just shoot them to be about half full.

=Matt=

jhefti

FWIW, I shoot pro sports and so need the speed, both for writing and reading (due to the deadline nature of my work). I've been running Lexar 32GB cards for several years now. The problem is, I've twice had them fail--once critically, when I was shooting a USWNT soccer event--and so have moved to SanDisk cards. Never had a problem with them.

For your work I'd think reliability is the key quality you're looking for. Again, never had a problem with SanDisk.

Oh, and definitely have back-up cards on you, at least for anything you really want to keep.

jhefti

Matthew Saville wrote: »

Exactly. As a professional wedding photographer who needs reliable memory, I find myself no longer being able to use 4 GB memory cards simply because they don't offer them anymore. So I bought 8 GB professional grade cards right before those started getting difficult to find, and I basically just shoot them to be about half full.

=Matt=

I'd think that 8GB would be awfully small for your needs. But perhaps it's a risk-mitigation strategy in that you change cards frequently so that if one fails you'll still have lots of shots.

I don't run dual cards at most of my shoots, mostly because of write speed, but thinking I should, at least for big events. If I were shooting a wedding I sure would be running dual cards!