digital shooters - how many CF cards?

hey

 

im trying to figure out how much memory i would need for a 10 hr wedding. so

far i have a 2gb and 2 x 256 mb. i know it depends how many shots i take and

how much i edit down, but i wanted some extra opinions.

 

also, are some CF cards better than others and if so, which ones?

 

thankyou in advance

This is asked about once a week. You would be doing yourself a service by reading some of the threads already in the archives.

Do a search--asked many times in this forum. Depends if you shoot RAW or jpeg. Depends if you go with the "eggs in one basket" idea or believe in the durability and quality of memory cards. Some brands have a better write speed, which may or may not factor, depending on what camera you use. To be safe (don't take chances on weddings), get the name brands--Lexar and SanDisk being two. You are severely under-outfitted if you intend to shoot RAW. Plus, you need to carry extra beyond what you think you'll need, in case a card goes down during the wedding.

How much do you need to eat to fill yourself?

 

What I'm saying is this is an open ended question. What camera? RAW or jpeg?

 

You pretty much answered your own question. Is this your first wedding? If so, you have a lot to worry about. If not, figuring out how many CF cards you need is easy to figure out.

Please do a search.

If you do a search, all of your questions are asked weekly.

42

 

 

(Note that someone sarcastically gives the answer "42" from the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in response to a tedious question about as often as the "how many cards for a wedding" question is asked.)

I used to take 4 gigs + a 60 gig wolverine device. that was a bit stressful b/c you would never know if the wolverine would work.

 

now I take 19 gigs and love it. I can shoot the full wedding PLUS enough for a second shooter on my cards.

esme - re: better cards. search around, and if you do this professionally, you will find that lexar and sandisk are generally considered the only cards to use.

 

if you shoot a lot of frames at a time, you will fill your buffer, and card speed will be important.

 

google ron galbraith's CF card speed database.

 

just fyi - my canon 20D gets around 120 raw files per gigabyte card, or around 350 JPG files.

more is better.

Sandisk and Lexar are the leaders, and I give the edge to SanDisk.

I think most people decide on card numbers in a couple of ways. One is figuring enough capacity to be sure you've got more than enough so that reusing the same card or needing to edit isn't going to be necessary. Some will download and re-use, others won't.

 

Then there is a bit of a choice - do you have a few cards to reach that size or more cards - as in if you figure 8 gig, do you go with 8 1-gigs, 4 2-gigs, etc. Swapping cards isn't that difficult and you'll almost certainly swap fewer cards than you might have rolls of film but swapping is a bit of a risk factor: lost card, damaged pins, fumble fingers, etc. OTOH, if something really catastrophic happens (cards really don't fail much at all and a bit of care reduces problems with pins, fumbles, etc.), then the more cards you have, the less you've lost.

 

The Retailers Golden Rule? You always need another card.

 

I get slightly over 100 RAWs to a 1 gig card with my camera. If shooting RAW I wouldn't even consider using the 256 mb cards.

I answer as a beginning outsider: if you are using a DSLR dpreview.com should have tested which cards perform best with it - Buy these if you won't be limited by a slow flash.

 

Many folks here would sell probably 500 frames - having card space for 1500 RAW files doesn't sound unreasonable. Hireing a kid to dump your cards on a laptop and burn CDs might be cheaper than getting the 20GB I mentioned above.

The number of cards you need is the number of cards it takes to shoot a full wedding WITHOUT reusing cards....during pauses in the wedding, back up your cards to an image tank, but DON'T format the cards...use the tank as a 2nd copy...that way all your images are on at least two places incase a card or the tank crashes.

Ditto Ellis' contribution.

 

I'm currently using 2 gig Sandisk CF cards, with 2 gig SD card back-ups in 1D series cameras.

When 4 gig SDs hit the market and are a reasonable price I'll switch to 4 gig CFs and SDs.

 

IMO these are the wedding cameras to aspire to if not for that one feature ... they shoot to 2

cards at once, so fear of lost shots from a bad card is minimized or eliminated.

It is a fact of life that stuff sold at Walmart and Best Buy are not up to the same quality standards as the exact same items sold at smaller specialty stores for a bigger price tag. It's a matter of how the price deal was negotiated and what the manufacturer does to bring that price down.

 

For example, the professional painter I know does not buy his paint at Home Depot for a lesser price, because the quality of the paint at the specialty paint store is held to a higher quality standard.

 

I do NOT know if this is a fact, but I treat CF cards (or any of my critical gear) the same way.

Hi esme,

 

You didn't mention what camera/resolution/format you will be shooting in - this will play a major factor. When I started shooting in RAW, I had to go out and double the amount of cards I had.

Many cameras will take 1 photo thats file size is a lot smaller than mine, likewise, many cameras will take 1 photo that is much larger in file size.

So all the advice I can give is - take more than you will need! (sorry if that's not much help!)

The real answer to your question is - as many as you can afford. As they always used to say, "film is cheap".

 

I use Ridata and SanDisk. If you shoot RAW you will need larger cards, 2,4,&8 GB cards are the most common for RAW shooters. If you shoot with a 12MP camera or higher the 4 & 8 are your only way to go.

 

I bring about 20GB to weddings but I shoot jpg. If you shoot RAW you'll want as many GB as your budget will allow. Don't get caught short.

 

If you have a portable storage device to upload your images during the event - DON'T - erase any cards and re-use them. The device is only for safeguard and backup not replacement. You cannot trust the images to a hard drive in the field. Make several copies of your images before formatting your cards.

 

Lou

I've never exceeded 4GB (450 shots). So double that and you'll be fine. However, I assume your cameras are between 3MB and 17MP sensors since the original question really makes no sense (opinion free answer)

 

"Pick a number between 0 and one million and I'll tell you if you are correct."

Esme,

 

I just shot my first wedding yesterday (5/21/2006). It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work. I bought what I thought would be enough cards to make it through, and found that I had been wrong. I brought 4 1GB cards and one 256MB card, which allowed for 432 images, and filled up earlier than I wanted to during the reception. I ended up needed to delete a couple of definitely bad shots to have some space for the couple's first dance and cake cutting. There were more shots that I would have loved to capture, but was not able to. Before I do another wedding, I will have at least twice as many cards as I do now...

 

I'll be posting more about my first wedding experience in another post.

 

George

to the poster who mentioned the home depot - I would be very surprised if a given memory card at best buy is any different from the card sold by b&h.

 

the fact is that b&h has great stuff at a price that the big computer stores usually can't match. back when a 1gig ultra 2.0 CF card was $90 at B&H, I would routinely see them for $125 at best buy or circuitcity.