SD cards

pasvorto · SD cards

Ok, I got the D40. I love it. Now I wish I had the D40x because, without a good telephoto, I find myself doing a bunch of crop and zoom stuff. I will probably get the 55-200mm VR lens before year end. Anyway, I digress.

Currently I have a 1GB SD card. I have the camera set to RAW + Basic JPeg. No problem. However, this winter I am going on a cruise. 1GB won't cut it. Particularly with RAW format. I am figuring on maybe 4GB. My last cruise I took over 400 pictures. The film developer liked me Smile

So, your opinion... 1 4GB card or 2 2GB cards? The 1st option is convenient, the second is more secure (I only lose one at a time). Obviously i won't be anywhere that I can unload the cards.

What do you folks do when you know you will be taking a lot of pictures while away from "home base"?

jonH

multiple cards.

i used to use 3x 512mb and now use 2x 2gb, with the 512 cards as extra space should i need it.

although these things are reliable, why take the risk of all your holiday photos on one card?

hil26

I have managed to work with 2 x 4gb cards (they were cheap enough), but did need to review images at the end of the day for the no hopers and delete them

Evolution104

I have 5 2G cards and 2 1G cards.

Personally, I think more is better (within reason). If a card goes bad, or you lose one, you haven't lost everything.

The downside is that I need to pay closer attention to the picture count on the camera's display. More than once I've found myself frustrated that pressing the shutter button does nothing at a critical time, only to find the card is full Evil

If you're shooting RAW + Basic JPeg, that can mean some really large files. You might want to get a few cards. Calculate the file size for that setting and figure out how many pictures you can fit on a 1G card (for calculation purposes). Decide on a reasonable number of pictures per card (I consider 125 - 150 about right for my needs) then buy cards of the right size to hold that many pictures. Buy enough cards to sustain you through the trip (plus one in case you find more great shots!!).

In my case, I can fit 72 raw images on a 1G card, or 144 on a 2G card.

So far, I've twice gone on 1 week vacations solely to take pictures. The most I ever took in one day was about 225, but I averaged closer to 100 a day. There were days when I took only 4 pictures. I get 144 raw images on a 2G card, so with 12G of storage, I can handle 864 pictures before I'm done. More than enough for a week in my case.

One really nice feature of my camera is that it accepts both compact flash and xD at the same time. If my CF card fills up, I can switch to the xD backup card via the camera's menu.

Oh - I also have a CF card case to carry the cards. So I can tell which ones are full, I insert the unused cards face up, and the used cards with the back facing. That keeps them nicely sorted so I don't grab the wrong card. I also pre-format all the cards before I leave on vacation so they are ready to use.

pasvorto

It sounds like the jury is in - multiple cards. I will get a couple more 2GB cards. When I am on vacation I will only be shooting RAW, even though it requires a lot more post processing.

Thanks for your insights.

creators

I don't, as yet do RAW, but I carry 3 x 2G cards. I just want to heap praise on the SanDisk Extreme cards, mine are ExtremeIII's and they are amazing, really fast in camera and for downloading. Can't shout their praises high enough. Been using SanDisk for a goodly while now and never had a problem with them.

jonH

Venom

Simonzphotoz

multiple cards is the way forward, 2 x 512, 2 x 1g, www.play.com are really cheap. also amazon have some great deals on every now and again.

pasvorto

Eveything appears to be in Pound Sterling. Shocked

Venom

If you double the price it's about what it is in $ so £15 = $30