Let’s talk flash cards.
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Most digital SLR cameras are going to take CompactFlash cards. I usually go for the faster-writing cards, because I don’t want to have to slow down my shooting to wait for my camera to write my images to the card.
There are tons of brands and options out there. I usually go with SanDisk, because it’s a well known brand and they’ve always worked well for me.
Here’s my tip on selecting a flash card — while it may seem tempting to go with a card with a ton of space, in my opinion, that’s not the best option. This practice carries over from my wedding photography days, so take it with that in mind… but here’s the deal:
Flash cards are going to go bad sometimes. It happens. For whatever reason, your card may corrupt. That means you lose pictures. Now sometimes, you’ve downloaded them already (awesome), but sometimes you haven’t (bummer). While there is recovery software out there, it doesn’t always work on a corrupt card.
What’s the point?
I would much rather a 2 gig card go bad than a 16 gig card.
If I’m shooting a lot of pictures, say a family reunion, or a birthday, or whatever, I’d rather have to change out my card a couple of times because it’s full than lose everything to a corrupted card. At some point, your card will fail. It’s going to happen. I’d rather it happen to 2 gigs of data than something larger.
So, that’s why I choose mostly 2 gig cards, with maybe a couple of 4 gigs thrown in there for good measure.
Just my friendly little photography tip of the day. Bigger is not always better.
AMEN!