Faster, better cards

luckyrwe

It looks like the Extreme III cards are on the way out and the Extreme IV is the way to go now....

mrlarter

Iam currently just using a normal scandisk 1 gig card in my little rebel. I am getting a 30D as of tomorrow so obviously need a new card. What are the prices looking like?

luckyrwe

MSRP is listed on that site, it sure beats what I paid for my 8GB card a year ago!

ian408

You can get a sense for pricing by using NexTag.com or some similar
service.

Beware that not all on-line vendors offer similar service though. You
might want to look at resellerratings.com too.

mikey7

I did some research on this and found evidence supporting my theory. Most cameras can not write/read that fast.

Sandisk Extreme III can do 20MB/sec, but most SLRs can only do 5-6MB/sec.



I also think the bigger the card, the slower it writes after 1/2 full. FAT and FAT32 isn't that efficient. No evidence yet..

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

ian408

Mikey,

In a sense I agree with you but remember, that you're buying those cards
not just for today but for future cameras as well. So what you want to do
(IMHO) is find something that's a good compromise for today's need but that
will carry you into your next camera too. That means finding speed and
memory size that meet those needs.

Ian

Red Bull

So will this bring the price of Extreme III's down? Or even the Extreme II's. I'd be happy even with an 8 or 4gb Extreme II if I could get it for not too much.

Pezpix

Speed is only an issue for me when shooting 8.5 frames per second at sporting events. And of course, while shooting raw, its nice to have some extra speed kick in when my camera is processing. But for me, I'd like to see a bigger size card more than insane speeds.

If the rumors are true about Canon's 1DsMarkIII and its 22 megapixel toting body, I couldnt even imagine how I could shoot more than 250 raw photos with an 8 gig card. And of course, forget about shooting many picutures with that H2D-39 megapixel large format bad boy from Hassleblad (I know, i know, its got its own hard drive )

Gimme space not speed!!!

Duffy Pratt

Buying for your next camera seems shortsighted to me. The cards are dropping in price and increasing in speed much faster than the specs on any camera. So if you buy now for something you will use a few years from now, you will just be overpaying.

Example, I bought my 20D a year ago, and then, 1 gig cards were going for appox $100. If I had bought a 4 gig card then, it would have cost somewhere around $450-500, and more like $700. Instead, I finally bought a 4 gig last month for $140, and its faster than the 1 gig I bought last year. And in the last month, the price on the four gig has dropped to about $90.

By the time I get my next camera, there will probably be even faster 32 gig cards that go for about $100. So I think its a bad idea to dump money now for performance that a camera cannot even use.

Duffy

Nikolai

I'll second that...

Duffy Pratt wrote:

...
The cards are dropping in price and increasing in speed much faster than the specs on any camera. So if you buy now for something you will use a few years from now, you will just be overpaying.
...
Duffy

Media market is way hotter and way more dynamic than dslr's.
Cards get bigger, faster and cheaper with a noticeable change period being every 9 months or so (talking Moor's Law Squared:-).

Cheers, y'all!

mercphoto

Duffy Pratt wrote:

Buying for your next camera seems shortsighted to me. The cards are dropping in price and increasing in speed much faster than the specs on any camera. So if you buy now for something you will use a few years from now, you will just be overpaying.

Agreed. Buying a memory card is not the same as buying a lens. Buy a lens for the future because they don't wear out and they don't go obsolete. So buying the better lens than you need today makes sense. But memory prices drop too quickly. By the time you **need** that faster memory card that faster memory card will be half the price that you originally paid for it. You are spending money in a way that brings no additional value you to you.