New to me D300: Current CF recommendations

<p>After much consideration, I purchased a barely used D300 this past Friday! I am delighted with the camera.</p>

<p>I need to pick up a few CF cards for it and need some specific, current recommendations (including manufacturer & model) that address two considerations:</p>

<ol>

<li>I would like to get the best (speed & reliability) cards that are appropriate for this camera, but realize that some of the latest ultra-fast cards likely offer much more performance than the camera can take advantage of. Money spent on these would likely be false economy. What do I really need here?</li>

<li>This will be a camera that I plan to use quite a bit on travels where I will not also bring a laptop. I was thinking of using 4GB cards such that, when I fill a card, I can visit an internet cafe/kiosk and pretty easily transfer the entire contents of the card to a single DVD. Is this a recommended approach?</li>

</ol>

<p>I do realize that there are lots of threads discussing CF cards, but manufacturers are constantly coming out with new products. What was "the card to get" in 2011 may be no longer even available.</p>

<p>I find the biggest advantage to fast cards is in the download time and not in camera. I have used all of the big name cards and the only company I will never use again is Transcend. Also DVD's are not all that safe of a way to save information.</p>

<p>1) 40MB/s and UDMA enabled; the D300 can't write much faster than 30MB/s. There are still 30MB/s cards available, but they are non-UDMA (at the least the SanDisk ones). For fast transfer to a computer, get an UDMA enabled card reader as well, either USB 2.0 or better USB 3.0.<br>

<br /> 2) Personally, I don't consider DVDs a reliable backup medium; I much rather carry two notebook drives for that purpose. And with internet cafes, I would worry about virus infections. Hyperdrives http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive-COLORSPACE-UDMA-s/64.htm are an - albeit not exactly cheap - alternative (especially if one needs two for backup redundancy).<br>

<br /> It also depends on how much you are shooting when traveling - maybe having one hyperdrive and enough cards to last you for the entire time is an option?</p>

<p>What Dieter said; for backups, consider a portable 2.5" HDD, they're small and light enough. And of course, do not format any CF card while travelling. Memory cards are cheap enough.</p>

<p>I simply wouldn't sweat too much over the CF card - just make sure to buy it in a real store to avoid counterfeit cards, and take one of the large brands (Sandisk, Lexar). I've mainly used Sandisk Extreme III (30MB/s non-UDMA) and Extreme IV (40MB/s UDMA) cards with my D300. Only when shooting really long continuous series, the Extreme IV had a small advantage. Whether that tiny advantage ever was worth the extra money they costed.... don't think it ever made a huge difference for me, but I'm no sports/wildlife shooter who frequently hits the limit of the buffer.</p>

<p>For the D300, there is no point to buy anything faster than SanDisk Extreme 4, which was state of the art back in 2007 when the D300 was introduced. Today, it is no longer considered all that fast. IMO, any savings on up-load time is not worth it; you can always initiate the upload and then have dinner or go to sleep.</p>

<p>I would also buy a couple of CF cards with much higher capacity than 4G. If you are going to be traveling for a while, perhaps two 32G CF cards can hold your images for the entire trip. You can still back up onto hard drives during the trip if you want, but having a copy of your images on flash memory is safer. Back in 2011, I went to Ecuador for two weeks and captured wildlife like crazy on the Galapagos Islands. I captured over 10K images with mainly the 16MP D7000 and I had no more than 120G of RAW files. Today, it is entirely possible to bring sufficient memory card space for such trips. However, it is still safer to backup onto additional drives just in case flash memory fails or you somehow lose the card; the latter is actually the bigger risk.</p>

As I've just written about a similar question in the beginner forum, I've seen slowdown in review times with larger cards at similar rated

speeds - my 32GB card (which IS convenient) is appreciably slower than my cheap 8GB cards. Something about how Nikons scan the file

system. I've seen this reported by others. I assume the D300 behaves the same.

 

I'd stick to 16GB and below unless you really want the convenience of 32 or bigger (and 4GB is probably not cost-effective - you can always

not copy all the card to one DVD). I've found some cheap (but slow) 64 GB USB sticks that I use for backup during travel - more convenient

and portable than DVD.

<p>I use 4Gb and 8Gb SanDisk Extreme III and Ultra cards in mine; they are 30Mb/sec. <br>

<br />Plenty fast, plenty reliable.</p>

<p>I use Sandisk Extreme 60gb cards which is all the camera can handle. It's extremely fast with this CF card. I use a couple of 8gb cards.</p>

<p>I use Delkin 8 GB 625x UDMA 91 mg/sec Combat CF cards in my D300s (I missed out on their 16GB). It's fast as can be in the camera, but I chose it mainly because of how fast it transfers to my MacBook Pro via a UDMA Firewire 800 reader. To me there's a value in having a fast card while transferring, not just for the internal speed of the camera. (Hey, I just ordered 2 Kingston 16 GB 90mb/sec cards for $35 each.)</p>

<p>Contrary to Michael B's experience; the only brand that I've <em>never</em> had any problem with is Transcend, and I now buy them in preference to other makes. I've had bad experiences with both Sandisk and Lexar CF cards - not disastrous, but the occasional corrupted file. OTOH I've used off-brand cards like Dane-elec, Viking and Keymem for years in a little old bridge camera with absolutely no issues. </p>

<p>BTW, you may find that 4gig cards are a bit uneconomical to buy. The price of CF cards has risen lately, and the lowest cost-per-gig is now to be got from cards in the 8 to 32 gigabyte range. Faster cards also tend to come in larger capacities.</p>

<p>Ditto, suggestions for the 30 MB/s CF cards and faster card readers (unless your computer has a CF slot).</p>

<p>Awhile back I bought a SanDisk 2 GB 15 MB/s CF card, just because it was on sale dirt cheap. With my ancient USB card reader it takes up to 40 minutes to transfer a full 2 GB card. That is painfully slow. And due to a glitchy import quirk with Lightroom 4, I have to use Picasa to import photos using that particular card and reader. (No problems with LR4 using my SD cards plugged directly into the computer's slot).</p>

<p>Regarding card brands, I've had no problems so far with Transcend 8 GB SD Class 10 cards. The only media cards I've had problems with were the obsolete SmartMedia cards (very unreliable) and one particular SanDisk 1 GB Extreme III CF card, which developed a glitch the first year back around 2006 (it will work with other cameras and CF readers, but not with the D2H in which it was originally formatted and used). Other than that all of my SanDisk, Lexar and Transcend CF and SD cards have been reliable.</p>