compact flash card - what size?

[chopperward]

hello there

i am thinking about pruchasing a canon slr 300. just need to know what type of compact flash to get etc.

how many photos can i take for say a size 1gb flash card??

list of diferent quality filming would help.

thanksa lot, martin

[Sebastian]

The specs for how many shots can fit on a card are found in the documentation for the camera, online or in the printed manuals. It will depend on resolution and compression selected.

As for card size, it depends. I prefer to shoot 512 meg cards because I would hate to lose a large card of images. I just don't like keeping all my eggs in one basket in case something goes wrong.

[DownByFive]

I'm not advocating the use of larger cards, but if you compare prices, buying bigger is a bit more economical. For instance, a 512mb card might cost $55, but a 1gb card (of equal brand/speed) may be $95 (found on www.zipzoomfly.com). If you want 1gb of storage, buying two 512mb cards costs you $15 extra. Plus, with lower capacity cards, you'll be switching cards more often, which may increase your chances of losing one. If you just have one 1gb, you never have to worry about it...Just my two cents.

[Peter_AUS]

Since I got my 1G card, I haven't needed to use my 256 meg cards at all, the wife uses them in the G3. I get around 160 images on my Canon 10D.

I do agree about the 512 meg cards and large cards risk of loosing files, but you can do that with 512 meg cards as well as any others too. It is a bit of a risk, no matter which way you jump, so cost becomes the main thing I would think, it certainly does for me.

[Lionheart]

hello there

i am thinking about pruchasing a canon slr 300. just need to know what type of compact flash to get etc.

how many photos can i take for say a size 1gb flash card??

list of diferent quality filming would help.

thanksa lot, martin

You should be able to get 100+ on a 1 gig card, depending on the ISO settings, shooting in large jpg mode. As far as brands, ask 10 different guys, and you'll get about 5 different answers. I'm partial to Sandisk, but that's just personal preference. Generally speaking, stay away from the lesser brands, the quality control isn't so good. I purchased a bunch of no name brands for the office cameras 2 years ago and all developed recording and formatting problems within weeks of initial use, and have since replaced each and every one of them with a Sandisk or Lexar CF card. The other guys make a good point of using smaller cards to spread out the liability of losing your pics, but during a wedding shoot, it is really inconvenient swapping out cf cards at critical moments. If you carry multiple smaller cf cards, number them and use them in sequential order during important shooting assignments to keep track of what's full and what's not.

[Firemedic478]

Hello,

I just purchased a Lexar 1GB 80x professional CF card for my Canon Digital Rebel. The card will hold 287 pictures with the camera being set on the "Large / Fine" picture setting. If I bump it down to the "Large / medium" setting it will hold 505 pictures (this is in the "fully automatic" camera mode). In the "Raw" image qaulity the card will hold 118 images. The high speed cards seem like they are well worth the cost. Having a high speed card really makes a difference when writing the images to the card. Hope this helps.

Ken

[Arctirus]

Personally I don't like anything over 512mb or even 256mb anymore. I had a 1gb card go bad when full and destroy all the photos on it after a full day of shooting at Prague castle. The smaller your cards the less eggs you have in one basket.

[another view]

Another thing about 512mb cards is that they can be directly burned to a CD which is 650 or 700mb. I can put over 200 high quality jpegs or 38 RAW files on a 512, more than that in one spot would make me nervous.