I'm not a cheapskate but...

[the captain]

hello,
I'd dont like to skimp on things, the phrase 'you get what you pay for' is a definite truism. But... would you buy one of these Compact Flash cards? :

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/prod...ducts_id=99834

they get rave reviews and nobody appears to have any faults except maybe the odd person picking up on slower read/write speeds. I'm not a wildlife photographer nor sports so that doesnt really concern me.

Any thoughts?

Cheers
Rhys.

[behibehix]

If other 2Gb cards were, like, 4-5 times the price, then I'd go for this one for sure. But the fact is, other "branded" 2 GB cards such as Lexar or Sandisk are literally only a few more pounds more expensive than this 7 day shop one. These companies did not acquire their reputation overnight - they clearly make flash cards that store data more reliably, can handle more read-write cycles, etc. Whereas the 7Day shop 2GB cards could be cards that were rejected at the manufacturing stage, and may not work for you as long. Just my 2p worth of course, but why take the risk of buying all the expensive digital camera equipment only to skimp on the "film"? I just dont think it's worth the risk just to save literally 2-3 pounds.

I lost almost all my Malaysia holiday pictures a few years ago and can't help but think it was because I bought an off-brand SD card...

Again, this is all my personal opinion of course... I am sure many people have used unbranded cards with a lot of success...but why take the chance?

[Edward T Harris]

I wouldn't take the chance.

[Bill Roberts]

7dayshop have been around for a while. I've never had any problems with anything that I've bought from them and I very much doubt that they would knowingly sell junk.

However... the card is a diffferent issue. It's of indeterminate make, unspecified performance, and may or may not even have a label on it (or so the blurb says). And you're going to use this in multi thousand pound kit as the primary (well only) means of keeping the image safe until you download it to your computer? Not for me Rhys!

The same firm are doing 2Gb Sandisk Extreme III for £12.49 which sounds an awful lot better deal to me. It's not that any card can't fail, because obviously they can, but stick with a known make and decent spec.

I'll get off the soapbox now

cheers

[tdodd]

I have bought a few things from 7dayshop in the past and will continue to do so, but do not depend on the honesty of the customer reviews. I bought 16 of their own brand 2800mAh batteries in January this year. I have an expensive and highly regarded intelligent battery charger. The best of their 2800 mAh batteries would only take 2200 mAh of charge and the worst of the bunch would not make it to even 2000. Other batteries I own (Panasonic and Energizers) seem to conform to spec, so I'm sure the charger is performing correctly. I wrote a negative review about the 7dayshop batteries back in January and it has never appeared on their website.

That said, I have been happy with their BP511 replacement batteries and their laptop memory, at unbelievably cheap prices. I can't speak for their flash memory but I would think paying a little more for genuine Sandisk is probably worth doing. If a battery loses power early you stick another one in. If a flash card goes bad you've potentially lost hundreds of pictures.

[TeeJay]

I had reason to doubt the decision to purchase an "unbranded" card this weekend.

I was using a "low cost" SD card in my camera - 120 shots later, came to view them and it reported a card error!!!

Fortunately I was using my 1D, which has two card slots, and I always use the setup that utilises the second (SD) card as a backup. The images on the CF card were fine.

But it does underline the fact that cards (and maybe especially unbranded one) can fail.

TJ

[the captain]

Hello all,

Thanks for the advice.
I have now decided NOT to buy any of these! Instead I've gone for my usual Sandisk ones, only a little bit more expensive but at least I know what I'm getting (hopefully!).

Thanks for the comments

Rhys.

[rklepper]

I value my photos too much to try to skimp on something that is so cheap to begin with.