Of the four or five5 most popular memory card formats for digital cameras and other devices the top two are SD (Secure Digital) and CF (Compact Flash). SD cards are the newest of these two and I think more popular at least in the consumer end of digital cameras including both P&S (Point and Shoot) and dSLR (Digital SLR) cameras and other devices like MP3 players.
There are a couple of things to consider when choosing your memory card and it doesn’t really matter what type of card you need. These things are...
- Capacity.
- Write Speed.
- Brand Name.
- Memory Card Quality.
Capacity
Capacity is important to a point. Generally you need at least a 1GB card if you have a camera that is over 6MP (6 Mega-Pixels) in resolution. These images are high resolution and large even when talking about JPEG images and even more so when you get in to TIFF and/or Raw images. I do not recommend cards higher than 1GB. Why? Because these cards are small and if something happens and you lose one you have lost far fewer images with the 1GB card than with 2GB, 4GB or larger cards. The same holds true if the card gets damaged or the data corrupted.
Write Speed
Write speed is even more important in my opinion than the capacity. 1GB is 1GB but if you have a late model camera that writes out large high resolution images then a faster card is a must. Faster cards will allow you to shoot images more rapidly because it allows the camera to clear its memory quicker enabling you to shoot the next picture or pictures sooner. Write speed is especially important when dealing with TIFF and Raw files as these tend to be quite large and for JPEGS when shooting in burst mode (holding the shutter butter down and shooting picture after picture after picture).
Brand Name
If you have ever bought a card off of eBay because it was a very good price. The chances are that you got a counterfeit card. Even if it says Lexar or some other major brand on it. Flash memory card counterfeiting is a very profitable venture these days and there are more of these on eBay than real brand name cards.
Brand name in memory cards is important to me. It means that I have a good reputable company behind it and a company that I can trust to make cards that are high quality, reliable and that will function correctly in the devices that use them. I like Lexar and SanDisk and I will not use any other brand, I don’t care how cheap they are. I like Lexar best and will cover why later.
To make sure that you are getting a real memory card of the brand that it is sold as (Lexar, SanDisk, etc.) make sure and buy it from a place you trust. Before you order call and ask them flat out “Is this a real <brand name here> memory card? If something happens will <company name> here honor the warranty on the card?” Now of course a company can lie, but it is always best to get them to lie. It gives you more ammunition against them later should you find out the card they sold you is fake.
As far as the fake cards go it can be hard to figure out if what you have is a real one or a fake one. Generally the best way is to compare write speeds. If you have a real 133X card and you have what you think is a fake one compare the write speeds. Very seldom do the counterfeit cards actually write at the speed of the real card. You can also pretty much forget about looking at the card and telling from that. The counterfeit ones look very real right down to the labels. You can however, call the company that is supposed to have made the card and by giving them the serial number they should be able to tell you if you have a real or fake card.
If you do end up with a fake card, fight for your money back. If the place that sold it won’t give you your money back then go to your credit card company and get there help. Don’t take things like this laying down. It isn’t right and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.
Memory Card Quality
This goes right along with brand name. If you get a brand name memory card you are getting a quality card. Companies like Lexar and SanDisk simply can’t afford to get a reputation of putting out substandard cards. Don’t buy on the cheap. Buy smart and get a name brand so that your images and your time is well protected. There isn’t anything worse than going on vacation and shooting wonderful pictures only to lose them because you went cheap on your memory cards.
Now all memory cards sooner or later will fail. Everything has a lifespan and that includes memory cards. However, a good brand name high quality card if handled and treated correctly will out last several digital cameras or memory card using devices. I have a 16MB card from one of my early digital cameras that is still working great today. Memory cards are an investment, not the most expensive investment you will make, but an investment none the less. Don’t cheap out. Though do look for sales from reputable stores especially around the holidays you can get brand name 1GB cards for less than $30 at places like Target, Wal-Mart, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. You can trust that when you buy a Lexar card from places like this that you are indeed getting a real Lexar card.
Final Words on Capacity and Write Speed
Whatever card you choose, whatever brand you choose it is vital that you make sure that the card you choose will work in your camera or device. Just because your camera or MP3 player or whatever uses SD cards doesn’t mean it can use any SD card. The newer larger and faster SD cards are only usable in the very latest devices. A camera or MP3 player that came out before the larger faster cards probably is not going to support them. Some place in your devices user’s guide it should tell you what the maximum size and speed card it will handle is. Do not buy a card that exceeds this, it won’t work. If you can’t find this information in the manual, call the company and ask them. You can also check with the memory card maker, they often have lists of what cards work with what products. If you don’t see your device listed you can contact them. Though you will probably have better luck contacting the maker of your device, they should know better what speed and size cards your device can handle. Now some types of cards are more prone to this than others. For example SmartMedia cards because of having the controller for this cards in the device itself instead of in the card meant that SM card using devices could only handle cards to a certain size, generally the size of the largest card available at that time. If larger cards came out you couldn’t use them because you had no way of updating the controller in your camera. Compact Flash doesn’t have this speed or capacity problem at all. Everything is contained in the card. So please check and make sure that what you buy you can use.
Our Test Card
We recently decided it was time to make the jump from our Panasonic FZ30 advanced point and shoot digital camera to a dSLR. The one thing we looked for in choosing a dSLR was what type of memory card it used. We wanted one that used SD (Secure Digital) cards just like our Panasonic, we have a few older, smaller and slower cards laying around and wanted the option of being able to use them. However, we wanted to make sure it would take the high speed larger capacity cards too. We are talking about a 10.2MP camera with Raw files of around 16MB in size. We ended up with a Pentax K10D, 10.2MP dSLR. It takes SD cards and can handle the newer larger, faster cards.
Next we needed to decide of the two brands of memory cards that we trust without question. The two brands we trust are Lexar and SanDisk. Yes, you may pay a bit more but you never have to worry about 100% compatibility and dependability. In the end we chose Lexar. Why? Well, Lexar makes it easier to tell what speed card you are getting. They tell you right on the front in plain English. It is very hard to misunderstand what 133X means. SanDisk on the other hand doesn’t come out and tell you what the speed is. They use terms like Extreme III, Extreme II, Standard SD, Shoot and Store, etc. It seems like SanDisk goes out of their way to make choosing a card and figuring out what the speed of it really is time consuming and even confusing.
Also, in the past we have found the Lexar cards to be a bit more durable. Since getting our first digital camera that used SD cards we have had three cards fail. Two were SanDisk, one was Lexar. We of course treat all of our cards with kid gloves. We also find them to be faster. For us the Lexar Professional 133X card is faster in our Pentax K10D than the SanDisk Extreme III. We don’t have millisecond times to compare, but using the cards in the real world it seems we can get back to taking pictures sooner with the Lexar than with the SanDisk card.
Since we are all about testing and using products like a real consumer would, we take these results to mean Lexar is a better card not just for overall quality but for speed as well. Compatibility isn’t an issue for either brand as long as the device you use it in can handle the cards speed and capacity. This however is not a compatibility issue but a device age issue. Older devices can’t use newer faster, larger cards.
Now to be fair, unless you have both cards that you can try out and compare for yourself you probably aren’t going to notice the difference and even if you do you still may not notice it. We are not talking about seconds of difference but more like milliseconds. We have used enough devices and cards over the years that it is easier for us to notice things like this. This is however one reason we don’t do benchmark testing, most people aren’t going to notice several milliseconds difference in the real world they just want to use their cameras or devices and get on with life.
In the end we rate the Lexar cards a higher than the SanDisk. We like that it is easy to tell what speed card you are buying and we feel the Lexar cards are more durable. In the end however, the choice is yours. Get what you like and use it. Just make sure you are getting the real deal and not a fake. |
