Multiple CF cards or one big one

Hello All,

I just shot my first hockey game (pick-up) and with the help of POTN had some great shots (will post in an upcoming thread). But what I noticed that shooting in continuous mode you take A LOT of pictures I have a 4gb Lexar 133x and a small SanDisk 2gb Ultra II. I filled up both cards pretty fast (shooting RAW) and found myself looking through the pics and deleting bad ones to make some room.

Now I'm looking to get another CF card but don't know if I should just go for one big one (16gb SanDisk Extreme III) or two small cards like two 4gb or 8gb.

What's the pors/cons of each if there are any?

TIA

Get a couple smaller cards in case one goes bad. It would be really bad if you shot up a card full of images and the card gets corrupted and stops working.

If you shoot RAW, I would get two big cards, two 8G's or even two 16G's. I have a 5D2 and shoot RAW 21MB files. The cards fill up. And with the video feature, they fill faster.

You're buying now for what you'll need in the future. I always have gotten the highest configuration in a computer, for example, with the knowledge that things will develop over time that will utilize what now seems like wasted speed or space. I feel the same is true of CF's.

I use 3 different 2 & 4 gig cards and alternate between them when I have time if the shots are really important. Then if one goes bad/lost/stolen, etc I have some on each of the cards.

I would go with multiple medium size cards. These days medium is about 8 gigs. Don't put all your digital eggs in one basket, things can always fail. And as any pro will tell you, it is imperative to have backups, backup bodies, backup cards, etc.

I like the smaller cards, like mentioned above having to many pics on a card can spell disaster if it got corrupted, I have 10 1gig cards when and I have 10 2gig cards, and I will change out CF cards when they are half full.

If you have only one card, one of these days you'll leave it in the card reader at home and not know it until you are 40 miles away taking your camera out to shoot an event. Oh yeah - that was me, except I had three more cards in the camera case.

Lol @ SkipD
Thanks guys. You put this more into perspective. I never thought about cards going bad and such. But doesn't it concern you that when swapping out a card you might miss that one in a life time shot?

Not really. It doesn't take long, and you can usually choose your moment anyhow. But I find it takes forever for Downloader Pro to update when I change destination directories if I have over a couple of hundred files on the card. Plus 4 GB backs up nicely onto a single DVD when traveling.

I graduated into 4x 8GB and have 1x 4GB and 2x 2GB.. I love using the 4GB cause they are the same size as a dvd and it is a quick backup. I do believe in not keeping your eggs in one basket. Ive had many SD cards fail but have had good luck with compact flash.

My 2 cents: buy one more 8 or more gig card. you have 2s and 4s already and make sure you but a name brand (sandisk ExtremeIII or equiv). When you know you will be shooting a lot use that one. In the last 6 years of shooting digital I have never had a card fail. maybe it's just luck, but I have ran more than one through the washer and dryer and never lost an image. I still use one of them!

I have 3 4GB and 1 8GB. They hold plenty of photos, 300(+/-) was too little though on the 40D so I went to an 8GB which gives much more than 400 like a4 GB on the 20D, but still I don't feel too much. It's good enough for weddings and any event.

This is like the filter thing, you will have the 'dont put all your eggs in one basket' people and the 'i've never had a card fail' people. I happen to be one of the latter, but I still carry at least a spare card in my bag, and I just about always have my laptop with me, so I pretty much always have a device to back up to. It really boils down to personal preference, I happen to hate filling up small cards and having to swap, specially with large cards so cheap now a days.

I prefer a handful of 2/4GB cards...but for my P&S I found a crazy deal on some 16GB cards and got those...but mostly 'cuz I'm planning on doing a lot of video with that one

You could just back off the shutter a little bit.