burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You wouldn't put Chinese LUCKY brand film in a Leica, would you?

Don't skimp on SD cards. They are highly responsible for the performance of your camera. You need a card from a reputable manufacturer in the SPEED CLASS that is appropriate for your camera.

Read the manual for your camera to find the proper speed class. There may be a range, the top end of which is for video, and the lower end of which is appropriate only for stills. Faster cards will clear the camera's memory buffer faster after a burst, especially when recording both JPEGs and raw files.

SD cards are explained here:

https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/speed_class/

dave.m

I'm always somewhat surprised that people pay 100s or more often often 1000s for their photo gear and want to pay next to nothing for the memory cards.

If someone wants cheap get something unbranded from ebay. Go on the holiday of a lifetime or be photographer for a wedding and add spice to your life by finding out it the card still has stuff on it when you get home. (I once spent many hours recovering just 20 or 30% of the images from a friend's crashed card after an wedding anniversary crossing the Atlantic on the QM II - it wasn't that I couldn't locate the images, just so many were corrupted)

Alternatively buy a decent branded card from a reputable supplier.

For what its worth as a comparison, a 36 exp roll of branded 35mm film on amazon uk is about £4 or 0.20 per frame including dev costs (dunno about $ as the £ is a bit of a movable feast at present :)
A Sandisk extreme pro 16 or 32GB micro SD with adapter card will fit just about any micro/ SD gadget including a camera is £22 (32GB) and will hold thousands of max res jpeg or even a few thousand max res raw (depending on camera sensor size.) even if only a few thousand exposures, and you only ever used it once, it is fractions of a penny per frame.

For me its a no-brainer - buy cheap and add some 'will it, won't it' excitement to your life or buy high quality cards from a reputable supplier and take that uncertainty out of your photography.

If you want to save money on cards get the lower spec Extreme (or similar spec from other well established manufacturers) rather than extreme pro as it is about 1/2 the price, but remember read speed is convenient when transferring to your computer or whatever, but write speed is the key to reducing wait time when using hte camera.

Before I 'standardised' on Sandisk extreme or extreme pro I bought several small capacity good quality cards to test. I used an application called Crystal Disk mark and set it up to test multiple serial writes of the size of a raw on my camera (no point testing write of a 1kB file if your camera produces 20MB!) The results on read were reasonably consistent but the difference on write was often dramatic.

I did some further tests with an EOS 6D with the various cards and different versions of the class 10 Sandisk cards. On continuous exposure the 6D is said to be capable of 6 frames per sec (as I recall). The test was to see if the camera processing/ camera buffer/ SD card combination had any effect on the number of frames taken before the camera must flush the buffer to card before it can take more. This is important if you do continuous shooting when filming wildlife (or grandchildren who seem more unpredictable than wildlife :) The target was a clock with second sweep hand (so I didn't have to record time - just look at the frames :)

I don't have the results to hand but what I did find is that cheap cards brought the camera to a standstill when it wrote the buffer to card, while the good quality, class 10, high write speed cards had significantly less effect. ie when the buffer was full the camera must flush the buffer to card, but came back on line (red recording light went out) MUCH quicker. I also found that the maximum continuous frames for my 6D was about 18. Additionally I found the latency between pressing the shutter and the picture being taken was not as good as the Canon spec suggested (press the shutter for the first frame on an exact second point and check the time on the frame. The time difference is the latency.)

As the card is such a vital part of the photography process, for EVERY new card I purchase I test read and verify end to end with h2testw.exe. I have never had a failure of good quality cards.

My conclusion - the high write speed cards were faster than the camera processing, and therefore would never be the bottleneck when working.

If you shoot jpeg, stable subjects, and a few frames per hour than write speed really doesn't matter, although quality of card always will. I am not saying for one minute there aren't good quality unbranded cards out there. Just for the price difference I can't be bothered to hunt them down. Also there are a LOT of fakes, so buy from a well known supplier or someone with plenty of good feedback would be my sugestion.

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Check out Ebay or Amazon. As for the cheapest... if you mean junk you'll find them all over the place. If you want quality, I say to stick with original Sandisk cards.

jimpitt

Skip the cheapies. For brands, PNY and especially Ativa (owned by Office Max) are crap.
SanDisk is the standard of quality and there are several levels. Extreme Pro and Extreme Plus are the best with speeds up to 95. 32 GB is a good size, especially if shooting in RAW. 64 and 128 GB are available, but likely more than needed. The 32 GB should get you up to 4,000 images. My D5500 only has one card slot, unlike a D7100 and others, so dependability is important. If you do any video, the faster the speed the better. I just returned from 9 days vacation on the PCH and Napa shooting over 2,000 images, 24.5 MP, saving in both Fine and RAW and the 64 GB was more than needed. Watch Best Buy for sales.

Jim Bob

If the OP wants the cheapest let him have the cheapest. He didn't request a lecture on why he should not buy the cheapest. Why can't you UHH members provide a direct answer to a direct question?

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Why use the cheapest? They are nothing but problems. I tried one and ended up returning it since it wasn't dependable. It had a problem in that it insisted that the card was locked even though it was not. There are only about 5 flash manufacturers on the planet. But tons of companies that buy known good die and do their own packaging. I think that often the die inside is good. But everything else that surrounds it is compromised.

As for sending people the images, the images are often too large to email, but you can use www.wetransfer.com to send files to anyone you want for free. You can send anything up to 2GB for free. Use it as many times as you want.

jimpitt

Jim Bob - Why don't you offer some advice instead of criticizing. Your negativism is not appreciated. If you don't like what you read, get off the site.

Jim Bob

Why don't you learn to respond to the post? If you don't like being called on it, don't read my submissions. What is"negative" is a bunch of idiots thinking that the poster is a child who requires parental advice. By by the way, I suggested that the OP google the cheapest. You might also learn to read.

jimpitt

Jim Bob - To "google the cheapest" was dumb advice. Simply read what several others have said. Topic closed for me.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

This is exactly why I'm thinking he's/she's asking but not 100% sure. They do need to clarify.

AntonioReyna Loc: Los Angeles, California

At Costco, they are selling 64mb Sandisk for 14.99 or 32 Sandisk Extreme for same price. Memory is super cheap now.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Why provide an answer to a question that would take the OP down the path of unnecessary risk? All it does is make an ass out of the advisor who knows better, and a victim out of the unsuspecting consumer. That's like Microsoft giving you a technically correct but functionally useless error message when your computer crashes! It's arrogant as hell, pisses off the customer, and does nothing to ensure the customer has any trust or brand loyalty.

If you were starting out, and asked questions that resulted in technically workable purchases, but functionally risky operations and even dangerous failures, would you be satisfied with the results? I think a little guidance is welcome! I always look for it and EXPECT IT when I buy something I've never used before.

When I was starting out, at the age of 13, I had a couple of mentors who ran a camera store in my area. They very carefully guided me away from cheaper, inferior items that they knew from prior experience would be likely to disappoint me over the long term. I am grateful to this day, because they steered me down safe and correct paths that kept my gear working. I needed working gear, even that young, because I was the lone candid and sports photographer for my school newspaper and yearbook. I still have nearly everything I bought from them from 1969 to 1973, and although I don't use it, most of it still works! Only the cheap stuff I bought from Spiratone died, and I replaced it with good stuff!

Yes, you can find plenty of cheap SD cards. They don't all work. And the GOOD ones are inexpensive enough that you really should get the best. Some risks are not worth saving a few dollars. Some of us learned that the hard way.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

BINGO! Only fools shoot for free!

And "cheapest" = "most likely to fail at the worst possible time".

Oh, and the company's name is "SANDISK"... Not "Scandisk" or "Sandick".

johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

Far too expensive for 16mb, even if it was 16gb I still wouldn't pay 14.99

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

This is VERY GOOD advice!