Best Compact Flash Card

Hello,

I am not a photographer, but would like to get my wife a new compact flash card. I am in desperate need of your expertise and was wondering if the following card would be a good purchase.

Transcend 32GB Compact Flash (CF) 400X Flash Card Model TS32GCF400

It gets good reviews, but I'm not sure that having that much capacity is a good thing due to the possibility of it failing and losing that much data as opposed to 8GB or 16GB. It just seemed hard to pass up due to the $69.99 price tag.

She loves photography so much and I want her to be happy with the equipment she has since I can't afford to get her the actual camera that she wants to upgrade to.

Please help!!!

What camera does she have now (and what does she want to upgrade to)?

She currently has an XTi and I can't remember the model of the new one...maybe a 50D or 5D?? I know there's a big difference between the two in price and I can find out for sure, but all I know is I almost passed out!!!

She's also been renting lenses and she just finished with one that she loved (Canon EF 28mm f/1.8) so I'm curious if anyone has had extensive experience with this lens. I know she loved it, but wasn't sure if she would keep loving it since she only had 2 weeks of use.

Nothing wrong with a big CF card, just empty it every night and format each time you empty it.

It's better to have 750 shots' worth of space left on your card at the end of a day than to run out of space at a crucial moment.

So do you have any experience with the below Transcend card or recommend another brand?

Transcend 32GB Compact Flash (CF) 400X Flash Card Model TS32GCF400

People have said a lot of good things about the Transcend cards... I personally use SanDisk Extreme CF cards. They have been very good for me.

I don't have any personal comments good or bad about the Transcend CF Card, but the 400X is quite fast and should work quite well on any camera.

I have ordered and will receive next week a new SanDisk 16GB Extrememe CF card. It is 60/mb/sec (400X equivalent I think) and uses UDMA and goes for about $87 on Amazon. I've always had good experiences with SanDisk and it got really good reviews.

I briefly looked at the Transcend on Amazon the reviews are mostly positive, although I didn't see in the technical section that it uses UDMA (which lets the card do some of the work of writing) but maybe that isn't a huge deal. It is considerably cheaper in actually price and retail than SanDisk.

If you get one, let us know how it works. I may get one as a back up for long trips at those prices.

Thanks to everyone for the input. If I decide to go with the Transcend, I will post her opinion on here.

Merry Christmas!!

To Spimman...I did a little more looking and below is what was listed:

"Supports Ultra DMA mode 0-6"
"Note: Default setting: Ultra DMA 6"

Is that the UDMA you were referring to? Just curious.

Thanks!

I own a 16GB transcend and it has worked quite well for me. obviously in some ways you have less risk by using multiple cards because if the card failed, you would still have images on the other cards - but cards rarely fail so badly that nothing is recoverable. As far as toughness and quality I would rate card makers as follows:

Sandisk
Lexar
Transcend
everyone else

I have the Transcend 16gb 400x and it's a great card. No hiccups, no issues. Fast as advertised. Buy with confidence.

kshillings9213 wrote in post #11423912
To Spimman...I did a little more looking and below is what was listed:

"Supports Ultra DMA mode 0-6"
"Note: Default setting: Ultra DMA 6"

Is that the UDMA you were referring to? Just curious.

Yeah that's it, I guess I didn't read far enough down. Looks like a good card, I'm sure she'll enjoy it!

I've been using Transcend cards for well over 2 years now and > 40k shots, and never had a problem with any of their cards. I recently bought a couple of 16 gig Sandisk cards because they were cheap (60mb) and it would be easier to distinguish what came out of which of my 2 bodies.

By the way the Transcend 16 gig 400x is noticeably faster than the 16 gig Sandisk 60mb/s cards...at least when transfering to disk using a USB card reader.

transcend never cause me any problems

I've been using Transcend for years, including a Transcend 400x 32Gb card for about a year now. Not a single problem.

"Best" is subjective, of course. In my opinion, they're the best value you're going to get.