Compact Flash Card "Speed"

stoofa · 21 Sep 2009 at 13:38

My wife owns a Canon 400d.
When I bought it for her a couple of years back, Compact Flash cards were quite pricy, so I bought as large capacity as I could justify.

Prices seem to have dropped now, so going to source a couple of higher capacity cards.
Is there a particular "speed" of card I should be looking at?

The Kingston 16GB 133x cards seem a bargain at around £27.
However I also see there are 233x and 300x cards available (for a lot more money, 16GB 300x at around £115).
Do I really need anything faster than 133x?

frosty03 · 21 Sep 2009 at 14:45

i asked this same question afew months back... essentially, card speed wont matter for the shooting, unless u shoot continously and saturate the camera memory... doubt most of us will...

will only be advantageous when u read off the card in a faster transfer speed....

i saved some dosh by just getting a 133x card rather than the fastest there is....

syke · 21 Sep 2009 at 15:06

I use 2x8GB Kingston 133x cards on my D200, shooting RAW continuous it seems fine, i chose two 8GB over one 16GB card, too.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 21 Sep 2009 at 15:30

no you don't really. if you need more than 133x speed then you are probably binning a lot of your shots. Its only really the need for people in the industry tracking sports or wildlife.

Or the resolution of your camera is plus 18mp

daven1986 · 21 Sep 2009 at 16:36

you can get a kingston 8gb 133x off an auction site for £12.50 - am waiting for 2 to turn up

balls · 21 Sep 2009 at 18:47

I bought a couple of 32gb Kingston one from the bay... x133 complete overkill, full wedding shoot was under 1/3 a single card raw+jpeg

The buffer of my 40D runs out much faster than with my 300x 8gb ones, but as said above I'm not covering sports/ Wildlife

A.N.Other · 21 Sep 2009 at 20:01

People buying them off ebay ... hope they're genuine

. Knock off cards are more common than legit ones on there

ChazHurst · 21 Sep 2009 at 20:29

A.N.Other said:
People buying them off ebay ... hope they're genuine . Knock off cards are more common than legit ones on there

if you do get a knockoff card and can prove it, you're covered by ebays buyer protection system so you can get your money back... or report them to the police!

ScarySquirrel · 21 Sep 2009 at 20:52

I just stick with x133, and I doubt I will buy anything more than 8Gb as I would hate to fill a 16 or 32Gb card up only to have it fail.

For that reason I have two 4Gb cards and one 8Gb card. If I start doing more weddings I may well get a couple more 8Gb ones.

Tysonator · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:44

CF 133 speed cards are fine. You really only need faster than 133 if you are continously shooting beyoud the camera's memory buffer, or if your DSLR mas HD movie mode which will need a high write rate !