Compact Flash Cards. Your take on speed and size:

I'm in the market to purchase some additional compact flash cards. I currently have a 2GB Kingston 50x card which I can get about 239 shots in RAW format with my Canon Digital Rebel XT.

My debate really is in size and speed of the cards.

I've been thinking more 2GB cards would be great because that way, not all of my eggs are in the same basket. Although a 4GB card is not that much more.

After I decide on the size, I have to figure out the speed. I'd like at least 133x but I've got to decide on 133x, 150x, and 266x I don't think I need the 300x quite yet. My camera probably won't fully utilize the 266x but it would be nice to have that.

What brand is good is the last question that is an extra.
I know Lexar is a top rated brand and Sandisk Ultra IIIs and IVs are good. But there are other cards like the PNY Optima 133x and Optima Pros 266x. But what about the Transcend Brand. They have both 133x and 266x cards and are the lowest priced out of the bunch. The reviews are pretty good on those. I don't see any bad comments on them really other than them being MLC's.

I've used Transcend and Kingston before and have had no problems. So I'm just sort of wondering.

My major reason for so much debate is that I'm traveling to Boston in March 2008 and since it's my favorite city, I'm dieing to get some great pictures of the trip. I'll be hiking around the city all day, probably without a laptop to move pictures off the cards and I want a card(s) that are reliable and fast.

Now, I also know that it won't really improve the cameras shooting speed by getting faster cards, except for multiple shots per second. But I shoot single shot mode about 99% of the time.

I usually use SanDisk Ultra2 and Transcend 266x without any problems. I like the size of 4gb cf cards, and probably will not go with 8gb because if that fails I could use a lot of good pics....I think 4Gb cards are my preferred size...

If you want speed for the future, then I would say buy the fastest (Sandisk Extreme III? IV?), however, prices will probably drop between now and whenever you would buy a camera that could handle that speed, so I would advise against it unless the price difference was not that great.

It seems that with Extreme IIIs, the Rebel XT has a write speed of around ~6.2 MB/s, and with slower 80x cards, the speed is still around 5.8 MB/s. Thanks to the buffering in the dSLR and since you shoot single mode, the write speed should not be a big dealbreaker.

Personally I use a mix of 1, 2 and 4 GB cards. I have a 4 GB Crucial CF card ($45) and several 2 GB cards. I use Kingston, Crucial, and Lexar cards, they have all been great.

Also, nice to know there's a Boston fan out there. I'm from the city so I probably have the whole jaded Bostonian thing going about this city.

I use to live in Bellingham MA. I think the reason why I love Boston is the History, and the Architecture to the city. Plus I LOVE Clam Chowda!

Buy the fastes card you can afford.
You won't increase your shooting speed by going from 15x to 266x, but you'll notice it when you're using a card reader to copy the pics to your computer.

I purchased a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III for $62.04

ShepsCrook said:

I purchased a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III for $62.04

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I use the Extreme IIIs myself. Granted mine are SD but, they transfer the images much faster to my computer than the Ultras in my experience.

Joves said:

I use the Extreme IIIs myself. Granted mine are SD but, they transfer the images much faster to my computer than the Ultras in my experience.

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Yeah, I have an Ultra II and an Exterme III sd and they are just so much better than the regular. I use the III most since I do sometimes take a lot of consecutive shots and it really does go faster. Transfering to the computer at higher speeds is nice but eh. I can go do something else while it does it's stuff.

The x value is pretty useless IMO as most cards do not perform as to what they say. Best thing to do is look at speed tests from Rob for your camera

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

Faster is better usually for transfers to your PC as said...but at the same time it depends a lot on your card reader as well.

ShepsCrook said:

I use to live in Bellingham MA. I think the reason why I love Boston is the History, and the Architecture to the city. Plus I LOVE Clam Chowda!

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lol im in Franklin...the best thing to shoot in Bellingham is dirt bike riders at the sand pits behind Home Depot

ShepsCrook said:

I use to live in Bellingham MA. I think the reason why I love Boston is the History, and the Architecture to the city. Plus I LOVE Clam Chowda!

Click to expand...

I really think Boston is one of the most beautiful cities that I've ever been to. Vienna is right up there, and so is Munich.

Clam chowdah is the greatest stuff on earth. Period, end of story

As far as fast cards go, it won't matter very much if you're doing single shots, really. The only difference I notice is when I slap the card in the lappy and get the pics off the card. Can be a little slow using a Sandisk SD Ultra II 1GB. I may get one of the 4GB extreme cards, as I just moved up to a 10MP body.