Not really adding anything, but in my personal experience, I have learned the hard way to stick to the name brands, Lexar and SanDisk. You might think you are saving a $20 now on a discount brand, but you will regret it if you get in a situation where you lose important data because of card failures. Even if you never have a failure, you will probably have some doubt and worry about it.

adamz said:
sandisk, lexar - don't bother with anything else, it may look tempting in price, but it's one of the stuff that you pay for what you get.

+ 1

sandisk, lexar - don't bother with anything else, it may look tempting in price, but it's one of the stuff that you pay for what you get.

"S"an"D"isk and Lexar are generally considered 'name brands'. For some reason Kingston, who are well known for their computer memory chips, dont seem to have a good reputation. When buying cards, some fairly helpful questions to ask yourself are:
1) Have I heard of the brand before?
2) Have I had, or do I know people who have had good experiences with the brand?
3) Does the manufacturer offer a worthwhile guarantee on the card? (top of the line cards can be very expensive, knowing that you'll get sent a free replacement if something goes wrong, goes SOME way to making up for the problem).

This doesn't mean to say that cheaper unknown brands CAN'T be reliable, but depending on what you're shooting, can you afford to take the risk? As has been said before, this is one area that seems to confirm the theory of "you get what you pay for". Funduro's comment about eBay is well put, I do buy my cards from there as most high street stores use small accessories like these and filters, to earn most of their profit. Buy from a well established and well regarded and reviewed seller (normally from HK) and you should be O.K.

Thanks for the excellent advice.

Funduro,what are the top brands of memory cards?

(40X to 660X)= nothing. Marketing gimmick. Although I like Lexar cards, I hate that number.

Look for Class 6, 8, 10 cards or 30mb/s, 45mb/s, 60mb/s.

Personally I have 1 4gb of each SD & CF cards that are 45mb/s for fast captures for my cameras. You can get a little over 500 photos on a card with a new 14-16mp camera. (I don't shoot RAW for Burst-Spray n' Pray - I don't see the point in wasting space and it is faster shooting JPGs.)

I just use normal 15-30mb/s 8gb & 16gb cards for everything else.

i have shot soccer in 14bit raw with a sandisk extreme cf on my d700 with grip. it was easily fast enough. realistically you wont take more than 5 or so shots in a burst, rarely would you take 20+ in one burst, so the sandisks are easily fast enough.

by the way. you don't need to shoot 14bit for outdoor sports, but for indoor it may be a good idea.

Stick with the top brands. I have seen the results of write speed tests, top brands usually are close to rated speed, but the no names are not. google it. This is one item that you get what you pay for. Same for external readers. BTW eBay is rolling in fakes of the top brands. Top brands also give you recovery software. Class 6 should be fast enough. Your camera's buffer will limit your FPS.

it all depends on which body You using and either You shot in RAW or not. IMHO Sandisk Extreme is enough for most sport/wildlife shooters (60MB/s), but as I said, card is just a one piece of the whole puzzle.

My son is getting more involved with sports and I also want to do some wildlife photography. I know the write speed of the memory card could limit ny shooting since I will be using a continouse shooting mode. I looked at memory cards and saw a wide range of write speeds (40X to 660X).
Does anyone have any recommendations on write speed? Should I get the fasted write speed available?