SD cards

[Wormdrowner]

Just purchased my first digital camera. Wondering if all SD cards are created equal or are some of better quality. Will only be used casually, what size would be best. Thanks

[Steve Foss]

I'd stick with the better brands, like SanDisk or Lexar. Even if it's casual use, it's better to pay a few dollars extra to drop the risk of the card going bad. The price of memory cards is at an all time low, so that's good.

How big a card you need depends on a few things. How many megapixels is your camera? How often are you willing to download images to keep the card freed up? Are you going to use it for digital video? RAW takes up a lot more memory that JPEG, but since you've mentioned casual use I assume you'll be using JPEG.

[Dbl]

I agree with Steve on the brands. I use SanDisk myself. I don't like the larger cards, I like to split them up a bit so if one should happen to die I don't have all my photos on one card.

A SanDisk Ultra II is 10MB/second read speed which should be fast enough for casual use. A 2g or 4g size should be all you need for card size.

As Steve said they are dirt cheap right now, the above card in 2g size is running under $20. If you step up to the Extreme III (little faster read time and file transfer speed) they are around $32. The 4g cards are around $40 in an Ultra II.

[Wormdrowner]

Thanks guys, you got me into this photography thing, now I'm going to make you pay with all these questions. Thanks again, I'll be back.

[Steve Foss]

Wormdrowner, without answers to my questions I'm shooting a little bit in the dark here, but as a reference, it will take about 500 large JPEG files from my 8 Mp cameras to fill a 2 Gb card.

I'd bet a 2 Gb card will be plenty for casual use. And if you end up going on a long trip and don't have a computer to bring along to dump your pictures, you can for very little $ pick up a second card. Then you'll have double the capability and a backup in case one card gets lost or corrupted.

Hope that helps to some degree.

[The_Lee]

There are better quality ones... SOme people may argue with me, but when it comes to electronics... Price matters. The more you spend, the better quality you will get.