Please comment briefly on your experience with higher capacity cards or any concerns you have about memory cards in general.

Please comment briefly on your experience with higher capacity cards or any concerns you have about memory cards in general.
Yes, I generally shoot with a number of smaller capacity cards to "spread the risk."
87% (408 votes)
No, I think those concerns are overblown and shoot with the highest capacity card my system can handle.
12% (56 votes)
My camera is a bit older and cannot handle the higher capacity cards, so this does not apply to me.
1% (5 votes)
Total votes: 469

COMMENTS
Donnie G.'s picture

To be honest, I favored the 4GB compact flash cards in the Sandisk Extreme series for their fast read/write speeds. Additionally, the 4GB capacities matched the 4GB DVD's that I was backing up my files to at that time. Kept my workflow simple. These cards have proven to be so reliable that I just haven't had any reason to purchase any of the higher capacity cards. However, when Sandisk decides to favor us with a 16 or 32GB compact flash card with 45mb per second read/write speeds, I'm sure I'll be one of the first persons in line, ready to hock one or more of my children, in order to own a couple of those cards.

James Martin's picture

I won't go with too high a capacity, but I prefer 8-16 GB cards. These are a real help when you're shooting a high number of photos.

John McMahon's picture

It's tempting, but I'll stick with my handful of 2 & 4 gig cards thank you.

Ken's picture

I still stick to a number of smaller cards. I have not yet been convinced to use the biggies. It's been a long time since I had a card go bad bit the what if question still looms.

Jay Bell's picture

After shooting a few hundred images, I take a few seconds and put in a new 2 gig card.

Kay's picture

I have had cards fail, I usually was not successful in getting those pictures back after the card crashed.

Gary Gnauck's picture

I am leaving on a three week wilderness canoe trip. I have a DSLR and am taking three 4GB cards rather then one 8GB or one 16GB one bad card could nullify my trip!

Jerry Block's picture

I have used 4 GB cards without a problem. I have 3 of the Sandisk Extreme III. They are very fast and the size is great for me. They have been dependable so far. Unless I go on an extended trip I would not need any more than that for my photo needs.

JW 's picture

Since I don't need to shoot RAW. The highest JPEG setting is fine. That being said. I would rather lose a few photos from one card, than ALL my photos from one card. This is why I use multiple cards. Canon 20D, SanDisk 2 GB Cards.

Hal Muhrlein's picture

I find that 4 gig cards work well for me. I use 4 cards which is more then enough for a days shooting so I will never loss more then 250-300 images with one card failure.

Mark Bailey's picture

I think the camera makers should have put two card slots in the dslr so you can save to both just in case. However, I have taken tens of thousands of images without ever having a card fail.

John T.  Marsh's picture

This somewhat depends on the way one shoots especially with high file mega sensors in raw. They require very large capacity cards to store only a couple hundred shots.

David Hammond's picture

I have had a card to fail, so I am pretty gun-shy about trusting them.

Joel Gilgoff's picture

I have been burned - so I use only 2 gig cards!

Guy Gervais's picture

I will never put all my eggs in the same basket.

Lauren MacIntosh's picture

I think the memory card business is trying to justify its self by makeing larger cards for the cameras.

Dave's picture

I have a Canon 1D Mark III and always capture images redundantly and write to both the CF and SD cards to minimize the risk.

Jeff Parrish's picture

I never use a card larger than 2gb. Not only do I worry about the possibility of lost cards, but stuffing that much data in the same physical space as a smaller capacity card could lead to data retrieval problems. I had an 8gb card fail this way, but I have never had a problem with a 2gb card. We used to change film after 36 exposures, is it really a big deal to change a card after 100 or 200 exposures?

David Jones's picture

Because DVD MAX Capacity is just over 4 gb. It is easier to split un-edited shots on 4 GB cards.

Sam Feder's picture

I have never seen a technology that does not fail once in a while. I would rather have several cards of lower capacity than one high capacity. Its called 'mean time between failures.'

Deano Givens's picture

We are taught the wisdom of having a backup for everything to minimize risk--camera, lenses, flash, batteries, etc. Short of owning a D3, a good way minimize loss of all photo shoot images from a single card failure is is to use several smaller cards.

deschap's picture

Especially since I copy images from my cards to a CD or DVD directly after exposures I limit the number of exposures to less than a hundred and therefore don't ever meet the 500+ exposures possible on my cards.

Kimball Orwoll's picture

If you need to take action shots at maximum burst rate such as at a sporting event and want to do so in RAW, the high capacity is very helpful.

Richard Monnon's picture

Gremlins do appear now and then. I would hate to lose one picture so I use smaller cards. Easy to store and easy to change.

Richard L.  Dawson's picture

Experience has shown that I need to use cards according to the type of shoot. If there are natural breaks that would allow me to change cards without missing any shots I do so. Otherwise I use a larger card.

Elizabeth Schultz's picture

Actually, my largest memory cards are 4GB and I find that they are usually sufficient for me. I stick with the 4GB cards not because I don't trust larger cards, but because I find that a full 4GB card tests the limits of my patience when I am transferring the photos to my PC. I'm afraid that if I had larger memory cards, I'd go nuts waiting for the photos to transfer.

Phil Phillips's picture

No matter what the arguments, peace of mind, dictates that I will never consider using one card on a shoot.

Glenn Fennell's picture

I like the smaller cards also so I can change when I am shooting differant scenes and areas.

John D.'s picture

Each shoot goes on one card. I've accumulated 70K images using three different CF cards. Not one single failure can be attributed to a CF card.

David Stanton's picture

Having lost photos on a defective memory card which could not be retrieved, I'll continue to spread the risk.

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