What particular memory card to get for the 10D

[johnny_black]

I am looking at getting a 512mb card, but is there any particular

write/read speed that I should be leaning towards? Or will it make

that much of a difference. What about brands (any that you would

stay clear of or recommend?)

Thanks.

[jack_pizzillo]

I just bought the Lexar 512 40X at Adorama and it works great. Very fast for the jpeg files I shoot. It even came with a free jumpshot reader.

[david enzel]

San Disk Extreme cards are very fast in the 10D. Expensive though but I think they are

worth it for the speed and reliability.

[wingell]

Ditto what David said--especially here at the near North Pole where I shoot.

[grant_.]

try to find a muvo mp3 player with a 4gb microdrive in it...thats the best deal out there....

[vpi]

As so often in live, it depends. I just bought a 1GB Sandisk for the price of a 512GB Sandisk Extreme (Amazon had a great deal - you might want to check dealnews.com and techbargains.com). Since I shoot RAW with my 300D, it holds ~120 RAW images, rather than the 60 my old 512MB card does. On the other hand, once I shoot a picture and try to press the Menu button to change something in my setup, I have to wait until the entire image or images are written to the CF card. And that can often take a couple or more seconds. In that case, I would be willing to sacrifice space for speed. But overall, space is more important to me, so I'm glad that I got the 1GB drive, even although it's not an extreme edition card.

[NK Guy]

>I just bought the Lexar 512 40X at Adorama and it works great. Very fast for the jpeg

files I shoot. It even came with a free jumpshot reader.

 

I have a 1 gig Lexar 40x that came with said reader. Kind of strange, really - the reader is

a sluggish USB reader. Why sell a chip sold as super-fast with a superfluous USB reader?

[eran_hammer_lahav]

Check out http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6111. It is the best source for CF and SD performance data. There is also info on the fastest readers.

[johnny_black]

Thanks for all the responses. I will probably get the Lexar 512, but I see they have a 40x and an 80x. With the 80 being about 10 dollars more. What kind of benefit would I get from the 80 or is the difference not something that I will notice?

[digitmstr]

It's a faster card - I do see a difference between my 'old' 24x Lexar and the 40x, and it's a very noticeable difference both while taking pictures (as the camera writes) and when downloading them to the computer. I would say it's worth the xtra $10 bucks to be on the 'leading edge'.

 

Also, as need arises, look into one of the many portable, stand-alone storage devices (Image Tank II, etc...) they are about the price of a 1gb CF card (sometimes quite a bit less) and hold (at that price) anywhere between 10-20gb of data.

[Spearhead]

The write times on different cards with the 10D are trivial and would be impossible to notice unless the buffer is full. Even then, it's not much difference.

 

However, unless you're doing professional pj or sports work, it's really unusual to fill the buffer, and unless the buffer is full, the speed of the card doesn't matter. After about 10000 shots through a 10D, I have yet to see any difference between a generic standard speed card and the fastest accelerated card.

 

On reading into the PC, I do see some difference, particularly with a Microdrive, but that shouldn't be a concern.