Card Check

A couple of new things going on for me in the near future. I am going to most likely be using a Nikon D800 camera body. I always wanted to shoot a camera with a really high pixel count. I know that is contradictory to what most other photographers are talking about. They really like things like low light performance, fast shutter counts, and great focusing. Even though the D800 has a slow shutter I think Nikon has handled all those other issues well enough to make the D800 a very good choice for bird photography. I have had the chance to shoot next to D800 owners a few times recently and I can say that I am impressed with the results. I am thinking that super clean sharp 36mega pixel images are going to make some fantastic images. Nuff said about that now to the heart of this post, cards.

The other thing I am going to do different is that I am going to use my memory cards as an additional form of back up on trips. That means that I am going to need storage space for every single image I make. That also means that I am going to need to buy a gang of new cards. Although I don’t like them at all both the D300s and the D800 use SD cards as a second form of storage so I can buy large, cheaper SD cards and use them exclusively for back up. 

There are so many cards to choose from though. Seems like all the manufacturers have a different standard by which they rate their products and it can be confusing. Seriously, you guys may sell a few more cards if you go easy with all the “X”s and zero’s and just tell people what works best with each body. The fact of the matter is that if you have the fastest card in the world it does you no good if the camera does not match the performance so rule one is to match performance standards. In the case of the D800 the standard is “SD/SDHC/SDXC UHS-I compliant”. So if in the future someone releases a new say SDXXX card that is 10x faster than any previous card = not going to make any difference to me.

While the price and capacity of memory cards is always changing usually in favor of lower prices, you can spend a lot of money on cards so careful shopping is a must. For the most part you will be looking at two different styles of cards SD and CF. The CF or Compact Flash style is the professional choice and is the primary storage for most pro bodies. Many like the D800 have a second slot for a SD card. CF cards are far more durable but don’t necessarily perform better and are also more expensive. A couple of other things to think about when looking for memory cards.
They all have a lifespan so there is a time when they should stop working but it is a lot of cycles and if you keep track of those things chances are it is going to be a very long time, but you should replace cards from time to time before they fail.
Look for name brand cards from name brand retailers. This is important because there are a great number of counterfeit and defective cards on the market and if you shop the lowest price you just my wind up with one of those.

Well,thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed my Great Blue Heron picture today. That guy was particularly friendly and seemed to enjoy his portrait session. I wonder if he would want to buy some prints?