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Where is best place to buy CF cards? (1 Viewer)

senatore

senatore

Well-known member
Having recently run out of space on the CF card when out using my 350D I reckon I need to get a 1 MB card.

Can anyone let me know what is the best type to get and where a good deal can be got ?

Max.
 
I've got Kingston 50x in 1 GB and a Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB. Prices are so low now it's worth getting higher capacity. Maybe the 2 GB would be more appropriate.

I tend to buy off Ebay.
 
I use Sandisk extreme 3 Lexar and Kinston pro all 1gig not noticed any difference in either in a 20d so would recommened the Kinston pro EBUYER.CO.UK were doing the 2gig for about £38.
 
I've been using the Integral I-Pro 2gb card (40x - or a write speed of 6mb per second, which probably tells you more) from www.digitalmediastore.co.uk for a while now and it's absolutely fine - more than fast enough for me, especially as the 30D I'm using it in now has a big buffer, but it was just dandy in the D70 and D200 as well, even using 5fps.

In fact I'm heading over there right now to buy another one.

£35 - pretty good.
http://www.digitalmediastore.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=103_118&products_id=372

£46 will get you a 100x version:
http://www.digitalmediastore.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=103_118&products_id=372
 
senatore said:
Having recently run out of space on the CF card when out using my 350D I reckon I need to get a 1 MB card.

Can anyone let me know what is the best type to get and where a good deal can be got ?

Max.
Click to expand...

In deciding on the best value for CF cards there are several points to consider.
1) Construction: does the card have a Single Level Cell chip (SLC) or a Multi Level Cell chip. MLC. The former,SLC, are more durable, have higher write speeds and lower power consumption but are more expensive. All the best CF card producers such as Lexar, Sandisk, Transcend etc use SLC.

2) Temperature Limits. The majority of cards work between O degrees C and 70 degrees C. If however you live in North Dakota, and I believe some people do, the an Extreme card such as the Sandisk Extreme III which works between 0 degrees C and 85 degrees C would be more appropriate.

3) Does it have FAT 32 format.

I have been using Lexar X80 and Transcend X80 1 GB cards which in a Canon 350D at the Large Fine jpeg setting will hold about 290 images. I have refrained from using larger, as so much material would be lost if something untoward should occur.

However, with a new operating system in my computer and a new 500GB external hard drive I am thinking of going to RAW/jpeg images. As these total some 12 MB, a 1GB card would only hold about 82 images so I will have to go to 4GB cards.

In my opinion the Transcend X120 4GB is the best value for money at £78 from emartbuy.co.uk, you could probably get the X80 at a lower price. The extra speed of the X120 compared with X80 is lost on the Canon 350D.

Transcend are one of the largest CF card manufacturers in the world, and one of the most progressive. Look up their web site.
 
Does anyone really worry about construction techniques and temperature limits???

Just buy the best-priced "known" card with the speed and capacity you want.
 
Last edited:
70C is 158F, I pretty sure the photographer will keel over before the CF card at such temerature.

Interestingly too, if you click on the properties of different cards you may well find that they are all made by the same manufacturer.
 
nigelblake said:
70C is 158F, I pretty sure the photographer will keel over before the CF card at such temerature.

Interestingly too, if you click on the properties of different cards you may well find that they are all made by the same manufacturer.
Click to expand...

There was an error in my earlier note, Sandisk Extreme III works between
-25 degrees Celsius (not 0 degrees Celsius) and 85 degrees Celsius. It is not the upper temperature that is important but the lower. Remember 0 degrees Celsius which is the lower limit of most cards is only freezing point and the temperature often goes down to that, even in East Anglia. Hence my comment about North Dakota, where my wife lived as a child, when the outside temperature in mid-winter could drop to -40 degrees Celsius.

As for the comment made by someone else over the construction not mattering. It does, if SLC cards are better than MLC cards, then why not use them. Look them up on Google.

I forgot to mention, I purchased my Lexar X80 cards from Amazon.co.uk as they were the cheapest then.
 
Just successfully bid for a 4Gb San Ultra II on E-Bay for £62 incl. postage from Hong Kong. Seller had about 5000 positive feedbacks and 50 negative so I reckon they should be OK - I paid via Paypal as well.

I've bought Hoya filters the same way and they arrived after about a week no problems, so fingers crossed.
 
After reading various articles on pirate CF cards I managed to test my "SAN Ultra" card in a friend's PDA and of course my 'bargain' is in fact not a SAN card at all but a Redstone or something and a lower spec than the SAN.
The problem is you can't read the card's identifier from a PC as it seems to stop at the card reader device, and then it just says 4Gb removable storage or something. On a PDA where the reader is built in, you can then access the card's 'hidden' details.

I would strongly recommend looking up "fake CF cards" in google to see how to spot a fake, and would never ever buy off E-Bay again, unless I could see the said card first and even test it in a PDA before buying.
 
senatore said:
Having recently run out of space on the CF card when out using my 350D I reckon I need to get a 1 MB card.

Can anyone let me know what is the best type to get and where a good deal can be got ?

Max.
Click to expand...

Initially I started with Lexar x80 1GB CF cards, which were cheapest at Amazon at that time. I have never had any problems with my Lexar cards.They have the advantage of coming with Recovery Software. However more recently I have been using Transcend x120, and I have been totally satisfied with them. Now that I am shooting in RAW, I am using 4GB cards. At the moment the prices are approximately 1GB £19, 2GB £34, 4GB £63 and 8GB £120. There are several suppliers including DealTime, Orca and Amazon. You can easily find them by putting in 'Transcend CF cards' into your browser.
You can find all about Transcend if you go to their own website.
 
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