Help with compact flash cards?

I just purchased a Canon s50.I am entirely new to digital cameras.I am reading alot on this forum to try to learn.I would like to know what brand of compact flash to buy?Are they all about the same?I know some are faster than others,but what about reliability?My camera comes with a 256mb Viking card.I am not overly concerned with speed right now.I just read some reviews on amazon.com with people losing their pictures all together & having the card fail them.Are they doing something wrong?Please give me some advice as to what you think of this card & what if anything I can do to prevent card failure & losing all my pics.Thanks to everyone for posting alot of interesting things on this forum for me to learn from.And thanks for your help with this.

Your camera can not take advantage of the faster cards speed... so you are correct to focus on reliability

The Vikings are very sturdy cards.. (I have three,. one was dropped in the ocean,. and it still works! )

The popular cards are Lexar,, Sandisk, Ridata, and Delkin,.. and some of us like the Vikings

I vouch for the Viking cards as well.

I use a 256MB 'Crucial' compact flash card in my IXUS400 and have never had any problems with it. They're very good value too.

I'm using a SanDisk 256mb and could not be happier

Never had any problems with my SanDisk & Dane-Elec cards.

I only use Sandisk cards i got one 128 and one 256 MB

i have owned a Lexar to but i gave it to my dad when he got his Ixus400
never had problems with the lexar

Just bought the S410...seems to be a nice compact point and shoot.

The CF I bought (so it's too late to change) is a SanDisk Ultra. I picked Ultra because I thought the Ultra allows faster writing to the CF card with shorter time between shots BUT

Replies in this Forum that say some cameras cannot take advantage of faster speed cards.

Does the Ultra make any difference with S410? If not, why not, please.
Please note: Canon includes a "High Speed" 32 mb CF with the 410...so if high speed is of no value to an S410, why did Canon opt for "High Speed"?

Thanks
Richard M

I just got the San Disk 256MB Compact Flash card, the standard model. Some pros I know use the same card with their Nikon D100 and D70 with good results, so for me a faster card would probably be overkill. The price at Costco seems to be the most competitive.

In one informal test, it seems that a Sandisk Ultra card will enable my A70 in continuous shooting mode to take more pictures (10) at 2 frames per second before it slows down to about 1/2 frame per second. With the card supplied by Canon, that was about 3 frames before slowing.

One not-well-controlled experiment with one camera and two cards (of different sizes and speeds), but I'm definitely getting 10 frames in the first ~5 seconds.

-jeff-