Memory Card

Thomasofmel

I have Canon 400D SLR and am looking to get a further compact flash card - current one is 2GB Ultima. There are 16GB Transced cards for around £25 for sale on the web. Are these any good, or should I invest more? Lexar 16GB cards around £65...

Zillah

Transcend are crap, read the Amazon reviews, loads of people saying the card died within weeks/months. Cards are small so you feel they should be inexpensive, but it's worth paying for a decent one.

Thomasofmel

That's what I thought - cheers

NakedDex

Transcend are cheapy generic cards. They're fine for someone who just wants a card for their cheapy compact for a night out, but I wouldn't use them in anything more.
I'm a big advocate of the SanDisk Extreme range. Both the Extreme Pro and the slightly cheaper Extreme III cards are the most trustworthy I've used. The Extreme III are fine for 95% of things, but the super-fast write speed on the Extreme Pro are my favoured ones when I'm shooting sports.

Thomasofmel

Cheers ND - Just want a second spare one when travelling -will have a look at Ebay, Amazon and other UK suppliers

pixbyjohn

Thomasofmel wrote: »

Cheers ND - Just want a second spare one when travelling -will have a look at Ebay, Amazon and other UK suppliers

www.shop4memory.com are in Celbridge and free delivery.

I have a "MyMemory" generic 8GB card, that's outlasted a Kingston 8GB card (both were bought about a month apart. The Kingston's seen feck all use, but I tried to use it last week and it was knackered).

The MyMemory card is still banging away without a bother in the world.

The reason I'm posting is to say that unless you've got lots, and lots of money, or genuinely need ridiculously fast write speeds, a cheapo card may just do the job for you fine (though if you're photographing important stuff, or stuff that you can't risk losing, then splash the cash somewhat, of course).

Don't buy memory off eBay. Have had no issues myself, but always hear of problems on the net and know people in real life who have had problems. Stick to a reputable site.

City-Exile

Zillah wrote: »

Transcend are crap, read the Amazon reviews, loads of people saying the card died within weeks/months.

NakedDex wrote: »

Transcend are cheapy generic cards. They're fine for someone who just wants a card for their cheapy compact for a night out, but I wouldn't use them in anything more. .

You two are comical!
Transcend are far from crap & represent the best value I've ever got in a memory card.
I have a pair of 4GB 266x cards, that I've absolutely hammered for the past 3 & a bit years. Not once have they given any problems. They're better than the SanDisk EXtreme IV cards I had before them.
The cards are mainly my backups now, as I use Lexar Pro 600x, simply because the 7D produces such large Raw files and I sometimes shoot Raw for sport. I have greater capacity & write speed on the Lexar Pro.

My advice, a 16GB Transcend card for £25 is a no brainer. That's about 1/5 of what I paid for the Lexar Pro cards.

NakedDex

I used to work in electronics repair. Transcend and AData cards were the two most fault ridden cards we'd see, in every variation, size and capacity. Like many all memory, there are good and bad examples of them (I've had bad Corsair and Crucial RAM cards, for example, but still rate them highly). Overall, however, my experience with them personally and professionally has been dreadful.
SanDisk cards produced the least trouble of any manufacturer I'd come across, with Lexar just barely behind (mainly because of Lexar's biometric USB keys sometimes going a bit haywire).

If you had good experience, well then congratulations, but I cannot recommend them for anything beyond consumer grade use after the number of failures I've seen.

City-Exile

NakedDex wrote: »

If you had good experience, well then congratulations, but I cannot recommend them for anything beyond consumer grade use after the number of failures I've seen.

Plenty pros using them at the Aviva Stadium last night.
All the cards looked like they were well used.

For the guy who wants a bit more memory, I would happily suggest spending a mere £25 on 16GB.