give me your opinion on mem cards.

[vpnd]

Sprawlmart has 16 gig PNY cards for 40 bucks. Has anybody had good or bad experience with "off brand" (meaning not Lexar or Sandisk) economy cards. Just to add I would maybe have one for backup. Since I use a body with a digic 2, won't just about any card work for speed? 2 cents please....

[yogestee]

Yep,,been using Apacer Photo Steno 133X CF cards for about 12 months now..About 20 bucks for an 8GB card.. Work great,,never any problems..

Sandisk of any high GB are hard to find here and as dear as poison..

[Cyrix_2k]

PNY isn't an off brand...

[tkbslc]

I would not call PNY an off brand. They have been around for a long time. Currently I use a PNY class 4 and a Sandisk Ultra II and I cannot tell the difference at all. My other PNY went through the washer and Dryer and still worked fine, but I threw it away because it made me nervous. So I think they are good cards.

[CanonHowitzer]

PNY makes computer memory as well as camera memory cards.
It is a solid brand.

:)

[dipps]

i would stay away from the PNY cards. i grabbed a 4gb 2-pack from walmart the other day for $20 when i mistakenly left my sandisk extreme III card at home in the card reader, and they did not perform nearly as well as my sandisk cards. while trying to shoot jpeg+RAW for a family portait for my side of the family, the "write" times to the card were painfully slow. i had never even noticed write times with my sandisk extreme III, but the PNY was a whole different animal. i actually thought my rebel xsi had frozen up at one point while waiting for it to finish up the write process for a single picture.

i'm not even sure i want to give these things to my kids as backup cards for their P&S cameras. maybe they'll work fine for when not shooting jpeg+RAW.

[tkbslc]

Sounds like your buffer kept filling up and was taking a few seconds to empty. That is pretty normal. The write speed of the card can determine how fast the buffer empties, but it has little effect on how fast it fills (maybe 1-2 extra shots, tops). But really you were comparing basic Class 4 (or maybe even class 2 if you got them for $10) to some of the fastest and most expensive available. I imagine if you compared a Class 6 from PNY, that the performance would have been very close.

Anyway, I don't shoot RAW+JPeg very often, but I have never noticed a difference between my Class 4 PNYs and my Sandisk Ultra IIs (also class 4).

[dipps]

Sounds like your buffer kept filling up and was taking a few seconds to empty. That is pretty normal. The write speed of the card can determine how fast the buffer empties, but it has little effect on how fast it fills (maybe 1-2 extra shots, tops).
all i can tell you is that i was doing the same thing the weekend before with my wife's side of the family, and had not run into any such issues (with my sandisk card). i didn't even notice a write time with that card, doing the same exact thing (jpeg+RAW). the card was the only thing that changed between the two shoots. i don't shoot jpeg+RAQ all the time, but i wasn't impressed by my experience with PNY cards.... i'd rather spend a little extra on the sandisk extreme III's ($30 for an 8gb card on amazon).

[DisrupTer911]

I've been using 6x Kingston 4gb 133x cards in my 1D2 and 30D for 3 years now without issues.

no corruption or lost data. reliable cards IMO.

someday i'll upgrade to larger capacity but for now, 4gb is easily managed.

[gasrocks]

I have a total of 188 GB in CF cards. Most of them are Transcend that I bought at Newegg.com. Lexar and Canon have issues. I do have some Sandisk cards. Kingston are not bad either.

[Cyrix_2k]

^You're comparing apples to oranges. PNY, like most manufactures, sells different grades of CF cards. If you "grabbed a 4gb 2-pack from walmart the other day for $20," you got the normal slow cards. If you used the normal Sandisk cards, you'd experience the same thing. Sandisk is a larger company than PNY (much larger actually), but PNY & Lexar are more or less on the same level.

In car terms, this would be like calling a Mustang slow because you drove the V6 model and compared it to a Camaro SS.

[Cyrix_2k]

BTW, see here...
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9784

PNY, Transcend, Sandisk, Lexar, etc are all in the top of the list for speed.

[tvphotog]

all i can tell you is that i was doing the same thing the weekend before with my wife's side of the family, and had not run into any such issues (with my sandisk card).

I think the solution for the op is to use the Sandisk cards and become the personal photographer for your wife's side of the family.

[dipps]

I think the solution for the op is to use the Sandisk cards and become the personal photographer for your wife's side of the family.
why's that? care to expound on that comment?

[r.morales]

It depends on your camera . Newer cameras can use faster cards .
You can walk somewhere but it's almost always faster to drive . Cheaper to walk but slower .
I have probably 30 cards from 8mb to 16 giggers .
The buffer on my camera starts loading up after 3 or 4 rapid shots [ panoramic , weddings , dances ] - does not matter weither I am using sandisk III or Transend , 133 , 166 or 233 .
I shoot raw + jpeg . [ sometimes with fill flash ]
I have not noticed a difference in downloading pictures except when I use the USB 2 card reader . I generally use a 400 firewire . If I use the 800 frirewire on my new mac , it is faster than the 400 , but have only used sandisk II / III cards .
Wallmart is known for low prices - you get the lowest quailty / 2nds / 3rds if the price is really low .
--
BTW - small size cards are good for taking to store and having pic made , loaning out and comparing shots at the camera store - IE the difference between lenses , cameras , ISO's and filters .

[tvphotog]

i would stay away from the PNY cards. i grabbed a 4gb 2-pack from walmart the other day for $20 when i mistakenly left my sandisk extreme III card at home in the card reader, and they did not perform nearly as well as my sandisk cards. while trying to shoot jpeg+RAW for a family portait for my side of the family, the "write" times to the card were painfully slow. i had never even noticed write times with my sandisk extreme III, but the PNY was a whole different animal. i actually thought my rebel xsi had frozen up at one point while waiting for it to finish up the write process for a single picture.

i'm not even sure i want to give these things to my kids as backup cards for their P&S cameras. maybe they'll work fine for when not shooting jpeg+RAW.

all i can tell you is that i was doing the same thing the weekend before with my wife's side of the family, and had not run into any such issues (with my sandisk card). i didn't even notice a write time with that card, doing the same exact thing (jpeg+RAW). the card was the only thing that changed between the two shoots. i don't shoot jpeg+RAQ all the time, but i wasn't impressed by my experience with PNY cards.... i'd rather spend a little extra on the sandisk extreme III's ($30 for an 8gb card on amazon).

Sorry, it was meant as a joke. Things worked great while shooting your inlaws, the problems seemed happen when you were shooting your side of the family! So instead of using a PNY card, the OP should stick with shooting your wife's side of the family...as if the problem was the subject of the photos, not the card.

Perhaps the humor was too obscure, but it's hard to make funny associations when dealing with a bunch of spread-out posts.

[dipps]

Sorry, it was meant as a joke. Things worked great while shooting your inlaws, the problems seemed happen when you were shooting your side of the family!
ah, gotcha. sorry, took that the wrong way. in my defense, both sides of the family were very happy with all of their portraits :) (and, also in my defense, i was volunteered for the shoots, unbeknownst to me, by my wife.... i think i was the last person in both families to know :mad: ). lol

fwiw, the PNY i have/used is a class 4, and i believe that the sandisk extreme III that i normally use is a class 6, so there is some difference there, but i honestly didn't expect the sort of performance difference i saw with the PNY (i actually waited a good 3, 4 seconds for one particular write to finish up, before the camera was ready to go again).

[tkbslc]

fwiw, the PNY i have/used is a class 4, and i believe that the sandisk extreme III that i normally use is a class 6, so there is some difference there, but i honestly didn't expect the sort of performance difference i saw with the PNY (i actually waited a good 3, 4 seconds for one particular write to finish up, before the camera was ready to go again).

I am not arguing with your personal experiences, but I just wanted to point out that that is fairly normal when the buffer fills. Perhaps you normally shoot 1 shot below buffer on the Extreme IIIs and with the PNY you would have hit the buffer

Check out Dpreviews performance tests:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos450d/page13.asp

It shows with one of Sandisks fastest SD cards that after 7 frames of continuous RAW bursts the buffer fills and it takes 4.6 seconds to clear. On the more basic Lexar they got 6 frames to fill buffer and 5.7 seconds to clear. If someone normally shot 6 frames in burst and then paused for a second to reframe, the buffer would never fill with the Sandisk, but would with the Lexar. So maybe something like that is going on and it would happen even sooner with RAW+JPEG.

[r.morales]

How much charge is left and the kind of battery can slow things down .
I read that somewhere and bought the hi capacity singertec batteries .
There is a big difference between a 720 ma canon and a 1700 ma singertec .
Charging time is almost double .
I have a grip and a pair of canon 720 ma , 1000ma and the 1700 ma singertec . I change as a matched . pair .

[Tumeg]

I have a total of 188 GB in CF cards. Most of them are Transcend that I bought at Newegg.com. Lexar and Canon have issues. I do have some Sandisk cards. Kingston are not bad either.

Really? This is the first I've heard of this...
I recently bought 3 of their 300x UDMA 8GB CF cards (under their rebates), and haven't had a chance\reason to use them yet (I only have my 40D right now, so my SanDisk 4GB Extreme III is fine, but I bought these cards for the 5D Mk II that will be arriving at my door tomorrow :cool:).
Could you explain?

[Jon]

Back when Lexar had their proprietary, and licensed-only, speed-boosting technology (I forget what they called it), the cards didn't get along with Canon cameras (Canon didn't license the technology, as would have been needed on the camera side). Lexar (not Canon; it was Lexar's non-standard interface that caused the problem) did a firmware patch to the cards to rectify this, but it left a bad taste in many of our mouths. It affected cameras up through, IIRC, at least the 20D.

[Tumeg]

Back when Lexar had their proprietary, and licensed-only, speed-boosting technology (I forget what they called it), the cards didn't get along with Canon cameras (Canon didn't license the technology, as would have been needed on the camera side). Lexar (not Canon; it was Lexar's non-standard interface that caused the problem) did a firmware patch to the cards to rectify this, but it left a bad taste in many of our mouths. It affected cameras up through, IIRC, at least the 20D.

So would they all be fine in my 40D and [soon to be] 5D Mk II?

[Jon]

I avoid Lexar since then; I trust SanDisk to have a standard card that won't have any odd little quirks. They may have given up this practice, but I'm just not ready to take the chance. We just recently had a guy with one of the older Lexar cards and a card reader for it asking about downloading; the card reader wouldn't handle standard CF cards, including new ones.

[vpnd]

Thanks, I'll look to see what class they are.

[Alamo Photography]

I've been using PNY and Lexar for over 8 years now and have never had an issue on several digital cameras. YMMV...

[vpnd]

Well I ended up buying a 16gb pny sdhc card. I looked and it is a class 4 card. I went home and tried it in my 1dsmk2 and it worked perfectly. ( I updated the firmware 2 summers ago.) I filled up the buffer and it is a little slower than my fast cards, but not too bad. It will work. Thanks for massaging my caution.