Camera Labs

Hello all!

Well being my birthday today I managed to tie up my funds for the 40D I will be purchasing in the next few days (as shown in my signature).

I'm 90% sure at the moment that I will be purchasing from martinscamerashop as he seems to have very competitive prices, and I read good things in this forum about him.

One problem though is that the memory cards he sells are much more expensive than dealers like amazon.co.uk.

A local dealer (I live in Italy) sells "Team Group" CF cards for low prices (18€ for 4Gb), does anyone know if they are good?

A desciption of these cards is available here.

Will these do me or should is it really better to buy from SanDisk?


Thanks in advanced

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Canon EOS 40D + 10-22mm + 24-105mm L - Sandisk Ultra II 4Gb + Sandisk Ultra II 2Gb

My FLICKR

......SanDisk is my card of choice....

Most of the time, cards are cards, and there really is no difference.

Occasionally, there are those "bad" cards which take oh so long to process a file etc.

But through my experience, I've used CF cards, CF Adapter Cards for use with Memory Stick Duos, SD Cards, etc etc..

I'll be honest, I prefer Sandisk because I've never had any issues with it, it's never been slow, and overall a solid manufacturer.

Although, I think you should see what the write speed/transfer speed is for the "Team Group" cards, and other cards that are offered.

Best,
-Sean.

P.S. Just checked the Team Group site, from the way they advertise their 4gb CF, it looks to be just fine. With a 133x speed from the picture, it should be just fine. They also say that it is great for DSLRs so I think you should be safe.

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I use Peak 266x cards, i get them much cheaper than sandisk, seem pretty fast, empty the buffer about a raw file a second from my 40D. Dunno if its worth going to any faster a card, don't think the 40D supports UDMA anyway.

Try to get 200x or 266x cards.

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Ok thanks everyone for your help! I'll try a smaller TeamGroup card (they're pretty cheap anyways). At 150x write speed they seem to be pretty decent. If they're no good, I'll pick up some Sandisks when I go over to the UK.

Thanks

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Canon EOS 40D + 10-22mm + 24-105mm L - Sandisk Ultra II 4Gb + Sandisk Ultra II 2Gb

My FLICKR

About 4 months ago at a two-monthly computer fair I bought a 8GB CF-card (120x) branded MAXflash for a Pocket PC for 35 euro and two months ago I bought a 4GB SD-card (133x) with the same brand name on it for 14 euro for another Pocket PC I had just bought there from another stall because the one selling me the PPC had run out of 4GB cards. He (the PPC guy) told me this 'brand' has Samsung chips inside. From the conversation I had had with him he seemed quite knowledgeable. He said there are only a handful of memory chip manufacturers so all cards will have their chips inside.

There's also a controller chip in these cards which can influence performance. Most 'brands' you see are just cards bought from an OEM with a sticker on them trying to convince you it is brand 'X'. I always check that the speed is specified on the card and if that is the speed I want I buy it.

Next Saturday I'll be going there again. This time I'll be buying some extra SD cards for my camera I bought since.

And surely there must be hundreds of web shops in Italy that you can order from.

Ben

Hmm that certainly is interessting. Problem is though, the price of Sandisks cards is about 3x the price you pay at for example amazon.co.uk.

Thanks for the help anyways

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Canon EOS 40D + 10-22mm + 24-105mm L - Sandisk Ultra II 4Gb + Sandisk Ultra II 2Gb

My FLICKR

unless your going to save a huge amount i would buy properly branded and sealed sandisk cards from a reputable dealer.

Its true that only a few chip manufactures make chips and all the brands rebadge them ... im not sure if samsung make thier own i think they're probably produced elsewhere but that doesnt mean the you'll get the same quality from samsung as you would from 'unknown-Brand'.

Chances are if they're really cheap then they're low end chips that didnt quite pass quality assurance but still work.

This is all well and good but if you've gone out and got a couple uhndread really good shots over a weekend and the card dies when you plug it in at home you'll be pretty annoyed ... i've had a duff card before becuase i went for a cheap one .. i got a refund and lucky it was after only a few hours use so i didnt loose anything important.

Im not saying theres no risk of a sandisk card failing but its a lot less likely.

By all means give a cheap card a go just be wary!

Since in all likelihood the majority of memory cards is being sold in the budget price range under lesser known brand names that would mean that most of the chips produced would have to be of a type that barely passes quality assurance criteria. I don't think manufacturers work by such standards but try to get as constant a quality as possible.

In my experience if a memory chip is bad it is bad at the moment you buy it. I've never had a memory module go bad during use. What I usually do is put a new card in a card reader and check it as I would do a hard disk including a 'surface scan' where every memory address is being tested. You can also fill it to the brim with whatever files you want and then use a compare utility to check those files byte by byte against the originals on your hard disk. If it passes such tests I would be pretty confident that it will remain working reliably as long as I use it properly.

This is a hobbyist's approach of course. If I would be a professional photographer I would use different criteria.

Ben

I don't exactly buy memory cards very often so when I do I make sure they are good ones. SanDisk for me but I've heard good things of the Lexar ones.

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Graham
Flickr

Thanks for the helpfull replies. Seeing as I'll be taking these on holiday with longer periods of time without a PC or laptop I'll buy two 4Gb SanDisk cards, and keep one as a backup.

Can anyone reccomend any good sellers who will send to italy with good prices?


Oliver

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Canon EOS 40D + 10-22mm + 24-105mm L - Sandisk Ultra II 4Gb + Sandisk Ultra II 2Gb

My FLICKR

Why don't you check out ebay?

http://shop.ebay.it/items/___W0QQ_nkwZs ... Q_fromZR40

This is true in theory as there are no moving parts so generally if they're working then they will stay working but as you can see from my post its not always true. With voltage switching thousands of times in its life its entirly possible for circuits to burn out.

I've also had pc ddr die on me which works in a similar way and has not moving parts.

My point was for the sake of 5-10 id rather buy branded.