I often get asked by beginners what cameras, lenses, or camera bags I would recommend for them.
For those questions, I wrote a couple of blog post already.
Now I want to give my suggestion on a little piece of equipment that gets neglected most, but for me is one of the most important piece of equipment you should have.
I present to you the humble Memory Card.
The memory card is the "film" of your digital camera: it's where the photos get recorded to.
Without it, your cameras are useless.
I'm listing below some pointers to help you buy your memory card.
Know what memory card your digital camera uses.
Common sense, right? Unfortunately, I've had some newbies on ask me what SD card to use for their 40D.
With all humility, I said I don't know because the 40D uses compact flash cards.
Another time I was buying some blank CDs at a store that also sells memory cards.
I overheard a lady complaining that the SDHC card they bought didn't work on her camera.
The sales lady then asked what camera model and year was camera.
It turns out that she had a Canon Powershot A70 circa 2002 that can only use SD cards.
Lesson learned: to avoid looking stupid, know what memory card your camera uses.
Choose established brands of memory cards.
There may be a lot of cheap unbranded (or less known) memory cards out there, but based on my experience, these cheap cards tend to have lower quality and some have inferior performance.
Even worse, you may even get fakes.
Scammers and malicious sellers often sell fake cards online, in flea markets or small stalls in malls and shopping centers.
Famous brands Ridata, Sandisk, Kingston, and Transcend are safe bets.
Other brands are out there like Patriot that also have good feedback.
I personally use a 16Gb Patriot SDHC.
Again, do note that the more popular the brand is, the more fake copies of it are out there.
I once bought an 8Gb SD card from an eBay seller from China.
After using the card and testing it, I found out it's only has 2Gb capacity and that the manufacturer hacked the firmware to make it appear as 8Gb in Windows Explorer.
Caveat Emptor.
Buy from reputable sellers.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of scammers out there selling fake memory cards.
To be safe, buy from sellers with physical stores and shops instead of small stalls that can easily disappear.
I'm not saying that all those small stalls are selling fake memory cards, but once you have problems with you cards, you're not sure you'll find the same stalls again when you claim your warranty.
Don't buy the cheapest you can get.
"You get what you pay for" is usually true especially with memory cards.
I bought 2 cheap store brand 8Gb class 6 SDHC cards from CD-R King, a well-known cheap electronics store in the Philippines, to use with a Canon EOS 550D.
When I used it on the 550D, I had a problem recording video, and I can only record 5 seconds of video.
When I tested the card's data transfer speeds, it was way below the data transfer speeds specified for a class 6 card.
I went back to the store and had the 2 8Gb class 6 cards exchanged for one Kingston 16Gb class 4 card.
I never had recording problems again.
Buy the fastest cards you can afford.
You may think that the data transfer speeds of memory cards are not important, but when it comes to performance, you'd want the highest data transfer speeds you can get.
The logic is simple: The faster the transfer, the faster you write and read data.
This is especially important when you usually do continuous shots or shoot video: any slow down during the shoot can affect or even corrupt your images or video.
Be careful with the memory capacity.
More storage space is good, right? Not really.
There are a lot of debate about whether buying bigger capacity cards is good or bad.
Both sides of the debate have good points, but I'll just list here the ones that I think you should consider:
But considering the above mentioned pointers, you'll hopefully invest wisely on your memory cards because if you think about it, the memory card is your most important equipment.
Without your memory cards, it's pointless to take photos or videos.
To get more practical beginners photography tips and common sense advice for newbies, go to http://www.
beginnersphotographyguide.
info.
For those questions, I wrote a couple of blog post already.
Now I want to give my suggestion on a little piece of equipment that gets neglected most, but for me is one of the most important piece of equipment you should have.
I present to you the humble Memory Card.
The memory card is the "film" of your digital camera: it's where the photos get recorded to.
Without it, your cameras are useless.
I'm listing below some pointers to help you buy your memory card.
Know what memory card your digital camera uses.
Common sense, right? Unfortunately, I've had some newbies on ask me what SD card to use for their 40D.
With all humility, I said I don't know because the 40D uses compact flash cards.
Another time I was buying some blank CDs at a store that also sells memory cards.
I overheard a lady complaining that the SDHC card they bought didn't work on her camera.
The sales lady then asked what camera model and year was camera.
It turns out that she had a Canon Powershot A70 circa 2002 that can only use SD cards.
Lesson learned: to avoid looking stupid, know what memory card your camera uses.
Choose established brands of memory cards.
There may be a lot of cheap unbranded (or less known) memory cards out there, but based on my experience, these cheap cards tend to have lower quality and some have inferior performance.
Even worse, you may even get fakes.
Scammers and malicious sellers often sell fake cards online, in flea markets or small stalls in malls and shopping centers.
Famous brands Ridata, Sandisk, Kingston, and Transcend are safe bets.
Other brands are out there like Patriot that also have good feedback.
I personally use a 16Gb Patriot SDHC.
Again, do note that the more popular the brand is, the more fake copies of it are out there.
I once bought an 8Gb SD card from an eBay seller from China.
After using the card and testing it, I found out it's only has 2Gb capacity and that the manufacturer hacked the firmware to make it appear as 8Gb in Windows Explorer.
Caveat Emptor.
Buy from reputable sellers.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of scammers out there selling fake memory cards.
To be safe, buy from sellers with physical stores and shops instead of small stalls that can easily disappear.
I'm not saying that all those small stalls are selling fake memory cards, but once you have problems with you cards, you're not sure you'll find the same stalls again when you claim your warranty.
Don't buy the cheapest you can get.
"You get what you pay for" is usually true especially with memory cards.
I bought 2 cheap store brand 8Gb class 6 SDHC cards from CD-R King, a well-known cheap electronics store in the Philippines, to use with a Canon EOS 550D.
When I used it on the 550D, I had a problem recording video, and I can only record 5 seconds of video.
When I tested the card's data transfer speeds, it was way below the data transfer speeds specified for a class 6 card.
I went back to the store and had the 2 8Gb class 6 cards exchanged for one Kingston 16Gb class 4 card.
I never had recording problems again.
Buy the fastest cards you can afford.
You may think that the data transfer speeds of memory cards are not important, but when it comes to performance, you'd want the highest data transfer speeds you can get.
The logic is simple: The faster the transfer, the faster you write and read data.
This is especially important when you usually do continuous shots or shoot video: any slow down during the shoot can affect or even corrupt your images or video.
Be careful with the memory capacity.
More storage space is good, right? Not really.
There are a lot of debate about whether buying bigger capacity cards is good or bad.
Both sides of the debate have good points, but I'll just list here the ones that I think you should consider:
- The larger the capacity, the larger the amount of data you can store, but,
- If you lose a large capacity card, or it gets corrupted, you lose a large amount of data.
- Smaller capacity cards are easier to transfer to your computer.
- If you're shooting a lot, you need to pause often to change memory cards.
- There have been cases when large capacity (8-16Gb) cards are full or near full, they get corrupted.
- Smaller capacity means you have to bring more memory cards: that means you can potentially lose one or more when you move from one place to another.
But considering the above mentioned pointers, you'll hopefully invest wisely on your memory cards because if you think about it, the memory card is your most important equipment.
Without your memory cards, it's pointless to take photos or videos.
To get more practical beginners photography tips and common sense advice for newbies, go to http://www.
beginnersphotographyguide.
info.
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