CF cards for Nikon D3s

[BelaMolnar]

<p>A simple question. What is the most economical / low priced CF card, for Nikon D3s ? I do not need a speed, mostly landscape photography. Question 2; Can I use two different CF card in the D3s ? I do not need to have second copy on the second card, I like to use one card and when full, camera goes to second card. The card I may using is 8GB or 16GB. Or! . . Different made, mixed cards. (?). Planing to buy 2x32GB. One more time, speed is not a question, quality, reliability, yes. Thanks you for your answer and suggestion.</p>

[cyrus_procter]

<p>For whatever its worth, the larger cards in theory, & many claim in practice, have less reliability. Also, as a card gets fuller (over 90%) the read\write rate can drop dramatically; the risk of data being corrupted increases significantly especially with sustained rates (long burst or pictures).<br>

<br />Personally I use Kingston's 32GB card, and I had three of them and they never failed me. Good bargain too. Although I'll admit I bought them with the bargain idea in mind not quality. If you are truly worried about reliability just buy two and use the other as a backup, and erase both once you've dumped the card and confirmed everything is AoK</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Never had issues with Sandisk (but I bought it at places where counterfeit ones are less likely... there seem to be a lot of those); the Extreme III cards are good value for money.</p>

[elliot1]

<p>Avoid eBay as a counterfeit cards can be sold there - stick with reputable dealers like Adorama and BH Photo.</p>

<p>You can use the 2nd slot for overflow but you must select it via the menu. </p>

 

[BelaMolnar]

<p>Thank you Elliot, I was just about to order some from eBay. Stopped to do. How about Amazon?<br /> Skyler. The Kingston's 32GB Extreme III is to expensive to me. <br />Until now, I using; Transcend, Kingston, Lexar cards, and so far, never had a problem, with any of them. I'm planing to buy 2x Transend 32GB card, from TigerDirect.ca for a bargain C$61.99/each. Previously I had several 4GB Transend, ad so far, no problem. To use a 32GB card, it scares of me a little. I feel very comfortable with a 4GB card, but using 32GB, almost a day work on the field, it is scary.<br /> Wouter, you right, buying form a dealer is the safest thing you can do. I hate to go to downtown. <br /> Thank you guys.</p>

[Dieter Schaefer]

<p>You have the money for a D3S and worry about the cost of two 32GB CF cards? And you can fill a 32GB card with landscape photography in a single day? I would be scared too to put all my eggs in one basket - especially if I had a camera that allowed me to make a backup copy on the fly. I still use 4GB cards and the fact that I need to change them out once in a while so far hasn't bothered me. I can see it being a problem for fast paced action shooting - but not for landscape.</p>

[eric_arnold]

<p>i currently have a Lexar Professional 8g and a Sandisk Extreme 8g in my D3s. haven't noticed any difference in performance between the two. i personally don't need 32g cards, but you seem to have answered your own question.</p>

[rp1512]

<p>+1 on what Dieter said. If you're using top-of-the-line camera equipment, using the cheapest cards you can find is kinda weird. I was in a workshop last week where the majority of students were carrying D3's and 5d's. The guy to the left of me had a D3 with a kit zoom lens attached to it.<br>

<br /> I'm also of the opinion that smaller cards are more practical in forcing me to download images periodically. No way I would ever use a card larger than 8GB.</p>

[BelaMolnar]

<p>Dear, Dieter, Eric, Reginald. All of you are right. <br>

Reginald. I just come back from a photo-workshop, and I also had seen a guy with a D3s and some kinda consumer lens on it. Definitely not a 24-120 VR2, or God forbid, a 17-35/2.8 or 24-70/2.8. <br>

So. . . For all of you. I really appreciated your comments. . . Why? . . . Because some of my photo friend using D3s, D700, D300, D7000, and some of them using 16Gb and 32GB CF or what ever cards, saying, they not wanted to bother to run out of card and has to change. I thought I'm a paranoid person, and always wary, if anything happen, I would lose a lots of images with a big card. So to be honest, please don't laugh on me, I'm using my oldie 1GB card and when I run out of them, the 2GB cards, and I own 4GB cards only. For me, it is not a big deal to change cards, because I used to use film, 45 years, and film is only 36 images. I wanted to know, what is other people opinion about the big cards, if they feel the same way as I do? And forgive me, but I don't own a D3s. As you can see all of my images, if they had the data with it, all my present cameras are D40,(family camera. Supper.) D300 and D700, Lenses, From FF fish eye to 14/2.8 17-35/2.8 24-70/2.8 and so up to the longer lenses.<br>

So, one more time, please forgive me, for this tricky question. Now, I feel more comfortable with the cards I'm using, and I may go to 8GB maximum, witch is a comfort level, if I ever going to have a D3s.<br>

Thank you very much for your very useful comments.</p>

 

[mark_stephens]

<p>Go on amazon, I just got a 16gb sandisk extreme pro cf for my d3s 96 pounds they also had 32gb for 165 pounds. I ordered mine and got it the very next morning. Its sold by amazon so you know the card is real. These are the fastest cards and you will not find one anywhere else even close to this price.</p>

[cyrus_procter]

<p>Well, it just depends, personally I worry more about someone stealing a computer with all the images than I do a camera frying a card mid-shoot. As long as I'm shooting, the card is the camera and it never ever leaves my hand. I don't work with an assistant so if I download the images to my laptop, then its in a case somewhere; somewhere that I'm not, so I don't know whats going on. I suppose the safest way would be to dump cards frequently to a portable hard drive that you keep on your person, that you have an assistant that is in possession of the laptop at all times or that you shoot directly to a backup card that gets downloaded while there is still a copy in camera.<br>

<br />Yes I've seen plenty of photographers that buy a very expensive camera and then turn around and put a cheapo lens on it. However I don't really feel that philosophy applies to cards. Unless you buy the absolutely bottom of the barrel cheap crap, the majority of cards will hold up plenty well. The aforementioned 32GB Kingston CF card that was the "value" card has been through hell for 2 years and I've never ever had the slightest problem. A cheaper card doesn't affect the quality (as long as the picture is in tact), where a cheap\expensive lens directly contributes to quality, arguably more so than the camera itself. Of course if you shoot sports its a big deal to have faster cards, which can directly contribute to getting the shot or not, but for everyone else not shooting 9FPS for 20 seconds, a "value" card is just fine. Sure they can fail, but then again, so can the expensive ones.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>I have several 16G Sandisk "Extreme" cards, each of which holds over 600 D3 raw images. I've only overlapped into the second card on two or three occasions before backing up to a computer. Faster cards do cycle noticeably faster in the camera, but also when downloading to the computer. You need a Firewire 800, USB3 or eSATA reader to take advantage of the "Extreme" speed. Personally, I think it's a waste to look for bargain-basement cards for use in a $6000 camera. They don't wear out, at least in the economic life of the camera.</p>

[richard_potts]

<p>"...Its sold by amazon so you know the card is real." Amazon lists some merchandise that is sold by an "affiliate" vendor (who must conform to Amazon's guidelines), and some of that stuff may be knock-offs or poor quality imitations (e.g., camera batteries). If it just says sold by Amazon alone near the price, then you should be OK.</p>

[eric_arnold]

<p>the reason i use 8g cards is because that's the right size for me. i shoot a lot of PJ stuff, often in jpeg simply because i don't have time to go through hundreds of RAW images and post-process every single one while on deadline. also, i need to keep my file folders simple; sometimes i may have to shoot 2-3 events in a day. with a 32g card it would take a while to fill it up, so i'd be tempted to not download until it is full. personally, i think 32g makes sense if you are shooting video or as a backup for vacation pics. but 8g cards are more swappable if you are shooting different things and want to organize your shoots. it's kind of a moot point since you don't have a d3s right now, but one setup might be to get 4x8g+1x32g, leave the 32 as backup, and swap out the 8g cards as necessary. you still have 64g total memory, but a lot more versatile setup.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>If you shoot sports, action or PJ type, I would say you are better off geting higher-capacity memory cards. In particular, if you have a D3S on which you can write to both cards, it eliminates all concerns about card failure. I have seen people running out of card space at the most critical time, and sometimes photo ops only last a few seconds.</p>

<p>For the OP's landscape photography, I would imagine that it'll take a long time to fill 8G of space, let alone 32G, especially with "merely 12MP" on a D3S.</p>

[bikealps]

<p>I have two types of CF cards:</p>

<ul>

<li>16GB SanDisk Ultra 30 MB/s</li>

<li>32GB Transcend UDMA 400x</li>

</ul>

<p>The transcend cards are supposed to be 2-3x faster for read operation (importing photos into LR). I'm not sure I see a difference.</p>

<p>I do notice one very important difference between the two. When I press the playback button on my D3, I get an image quickly if I am using the SanDisk cards and VERY SLOOOOWWWLLLYY if I am using the Trancend cards.</p>

<p>Normally, I run in overflow mode with identical cards in each slot. I recently tried backup mode with the SanDisk in slot 1 and Transcend in slot 2. I assumed I would get fast playback because the camera would check images recorded on card 1. Surprisingly, there was a long and annoying playback delay.</p>

<p>Something fishy is going on with those Transcend cards.</p>

[cyrus_procter]

<p>The speeds often times dictate a write speed, not necessarily a read speed, may account for the reason you don't see a difference despite the faster speed, as it may only be write speed, not read. One place where fast read & write comes in handy is in dumping, especially if you have 32GB of data to dump.</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>I'd stick with Transcend personally. They stamp a matching serial number on the card, on a label on the plastic keeper box and on the packaging, which is far more than any other maker appears to do to avoid fakery. Never noticed any slowness in playback or review speed with the Transcend cards myself.</p>

<p>I now avoid Sandisk like the plague, since IME they seem to either have real quality control issues or are widely targeted by counterfeiters. Whatever the case, why risk it when there are other options?</p>

<p>BTW, why go for 32gig cards? They're usually a lot more expensive per gig than smaller cards, and a 16 gig card stores several hundred RAW+JPEG shots. I find that if my cards are too big the task of downloading gets to be a real chore. Little and often seems to work best for me. </p>