Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler SD cards

Hi all you photo enthusiast I just bought my first digital camera. I did not get the Rebel XT which I relly wanted but thought it was way too much camera for me and I would never use it to it's full potential. I ended up getting a Canon Powershot SD600.
My questions are all about the SD cards. I never owned any or even used them. Which brands do you like and does it really matter? Which ones to stay away from? Where is the best place to buy them from? Looks like size really does matter 512mb, 1gig, 2gig, 4gig which do you prefer? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Overall I don't think brand seems to matter a lot. I would recomemnd big cards but instead of getting say, x1 4gig card I'd get x4 1gig cards so you can break up what pix you are taking into batches, plus gives you the flexability to take one card back to the computer for downloading and just pull out another card in the meantime.

Clarence,
another suggestion Clarence instead of buying numerous flash cards is to keep just the one you have in your camera and look at buying something like this: Archos 402. It's an MP3/video player with the ability to plug a camera directly into it and upload your pictures. At $330 Canadian it is a bargain IMO. Ideal if you are travelling, at the end of each day you can dump all your photos to the player and even create folders to keep things organized. Makes some sense if you are planning a long trip, don't want to lug a laptop around, but want MP3/video capability. The only compatibility question is if your camera is USB Mass Storage compatible....I don't think many Canons are, which means you can't upload direct from the camera, but could from a USB Mass Storage compatible card reader.

Of course if you aren't planning on buying a bunch of cards, then the point is kind of moot as you'll still be cheaper to buy one or two cards.

It's a decent alternative though and I think I'm going to pick one up when i travel for a month this summer. Also got great reviews CNET.

That's a great idea! Last year we went to Italy, filled my memeory card up after a week or so, had to buy another one over there. Let me just say they are MUCH cheaper here in the US. Next time I go on a long trip I'm going to have to get me one of those.

It does appear to be a bargain. I've been looking for just this sort of product for a couple of years. A few manufacturers have come out with MP3 players that are close to what I was looking for but some of the features suffered for trying to cram that many in. This seems to be the first one that does music - video - pics, with no compromise.

SanDisk makes SD cards that are at a pretty good price/quality point. These cards are pretty failure-proof anyway as long as you keep them away from magnets and off your dashboard on a sunny day. Costco is a good place to get them if you are a member, http://www.buy.com offers daily specials and SanDisk SD cards are often amongst them.

1Gig San Disk are going for around $40.00US on ebay, with shipping.

SD is like ram... once yo reach a threshold of quality, it merely works or it doesnt...

I've had a couple of digital cameras and 1 gig is enough... that will give you hundreds of pictures at RAW or near RAW quality... and you probably will use a lesser imaging quality because of download times...

Neb

Gotta disagree on the RAM front. Sure, it's all got lifetime warranties. But not having to use them is worth an extra $100 to me...

In reply to:

---

Gotta disagree on the RAM front. Sure, it's all got lifetime warranties. But not having to use them is worth an extra $100 to me...

---

Indeed. I'll put my matched Corsair XMS TwinX 2048 LL Pro sticks up against Joe's Generic Ram any freaking day of the week. And not just because they offer far more stable performance at much lower latencies. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Like I said, SanDisk is right at that golden price/quality point. Paying more will get you marginally better performance as far as seek speed/latency (not much of an issue in camera applications) and probably the same quality of manufacture. BTW can't wait for NAND flash type storage to replace disk drives. Nothing says reliability and speed like "no moving parts."