5D + memory cards

With a 100,000 difrent brands, and write speeds on the market how do you know which to buy? I just purchased a 5d and only have a 2 gig card, which for what I do has always been fine. I'm going away on a 1 week trip and am going to pick up a 2nd card...should I go after a 2,4, or 8 gig card? And how do you know if it's fast enough? Any advice is helpful

For a 5D speed really isn't a huge issue so the Sandisk Ultra II or Extreme IIIs willl be perfect, the only speed issue will be on downloading to the computer, so get the fastest you can afford. I stick with Sandisk personally and use 4GB cards, 8GB still seems a bit like putting too many eggs in one basket.
For one week though it does depend on how trigger-happy you are. For instance I took 70GB in a five day holiday last week. Perhaps investing in a storage device would be good.

Sandisk 4Gb Extreme III's are my fav as Chris said above.. I like to carry two just in case. Have a 2Gb lying around and seems to be enough for two days worth of shooting in RAW.

I'm bringing a laptop so I'm not overly concerned about downloading...it's more for being out in the field all day and having a backup for when a racoon runs off with it to show his other raccoon buddies us city folks have high capacity CF cards... (lame joke but I tried)

Go with a couple of 4GBers then, they are cheaper than water at the moment.

I have found the web site listed below to be very helpful with respect to quantitatively comparing camera memory cards in terms of performance, etc. Keep in mind that the 5D does not have the very latest memory card technology and thus may not perform quite as fast as some of the newest DSLRs. The card reader to PC transfer speed is also important and I believe this web site also contains test data for this transfer.

http://robgalbraith.co​m/bins/multi_page.asp?​cid=6007

Good luck with your purchase decision. I hope this additional information is helpful.

I agree with the others. Go with several 4gb cards. They are really inexpensive. I remember buying a Hitachi Microdrive 2gb few years back for $160!!!