[Peter Zack]

A reason why cheap cards are a mistake.
I shot a wedding yesterday and used an 8GB Duracell branded SD card in one of the K20D's. I have 8 Extremes III's and should have known better. After quite a bit of shooting, I took a test exposure shot and looked at the histogram. To my horror, the LCD showed "Memory card error". I changed cards and continued working.

At home last night I put the card in the computer and sure enough. No images where there. I knew it had to have 300 shots on it. My recovery software was able to restore everything (311 RAW files) overnight.

The card is in the trash.
Normally I use 4 GB Sandisk Extreme III's only. But I lost a card case with 8 of them recently. The local shop does not carry these and in a pinch, I bought this card to tide me over until the replacements arrived.

This card is branded as Duracell Pro Photo class 6 8GB SDHC. I find out on Duracell's site that they make no mention of having memory cards as a product. Same for the P&G site (parent company). A company named Dane Electric makes them.

Anyway, it got me to thinking. There is a K-x post about a $40 card and if it's any good. You can see my cautionary reply there (before yesterday's incident) and a few members felt I was being overly cautious.

So lets look at this logically. You spent a small fortune to buy a nice camera and some lenses, flash etc. You could easily have a couple grand invested. Then you save a couple bucks on a cheap card vs a quality Sandisk Ultra or Extreme. Is there any logic in that whatsoever? IMO nope. I'm an idiot for even having this card in the case after the replacement Sandisk's arrived. Would you buy a K-7 and only buy a used Albinar lens to shoot with? Of course not. The lens is crap and you'll get crap shots from it.

If you are going to bother taking the picture, get a decent card to actually be able to see them. Anything else is foolish given the money spent on the gear.

I got lucky today because some brilliant software guy somewhere saved my a$$. it will never happen again!


Note: there's really no correct forum for this post and too many people steer clear of GT, so I'm going to leave it here.

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Last edited by Peter Zack; 07-25-2010 at 06:16 AM.

[blackcloudbrew]

Wow, words to the wise.

[ducdao]

A reason why cheap cards are a mistake.
I shot a wedding yesterday and used an 8GB Duracell branded SD card in one of the K20D's. I have 8 Extremes III's and should have known better. After quite a bit of shooting, I took a test exposure shot and looked at the histogram. To my horror, the LCD showed "Memory card error". I changed cards and continued working.

At home last night I put the card in the computer and sure enough. No images where there. I knew it had to have 300 shots on it. My recovery software was able to restore everything (311 RAW files) overnight.

The card is in the trash.
Normally I use 4 GB Sandisk Extreme III's only. But I lost a card case with 8 of them recently. The local shop does not carry these and in a pinch, I bought this card to tide me over until the replacements arrived.

This card is branded as Duracell Pro Photo class 6 8GB SDHC. I find out on Duracell's site that they make no mention of having memory cards as a product. Same for the P&G site (parent company). A company named Dane Electric makes them.

Anyway, it got me to thinking. There is a K-x post about a $40 card and if it's any good. You can see my cautionary reply there (before yesterday's incident) and a few members felt I was being overly cautious.

So lets look at this logically. You spent a small fortune to buy a nice camera and some lenses, flash etc. You could easily have a couple grand invested. Then you save a couple bucks on a cheap card vs a quality Sandisk Ultra or Extreme. Is there any logic in that whatsoever? IMO nope. I'm an idiot for even having this card in the case after the replacement Sandisk's arrived. Would you buy a K-7 and only buy a used Albinar lens to shoot with? Of course not. The lens is crap and you'll get crap shots from it.

If you are going to bother taking the picture, get a decent card to actually be able to see them. Anything else is foolish given the money spent on the gear.

I got lucky today because some brilliant software guy somewhere saved my a$$. it will never happen again!


Note: there's really no correct forum for this post and too many people steer clear of GT, so I'm going to leave it here.

Honestly, it's not the $20 card the problem, it's the brand that you bought. I for one always bought proven and known brands (Sandisk, Lexar and Kingston) for my SD cards and I got them cheap. For $20 these days you can get pretty decent Class 4-6 8G card from any of those brands. Perhaps, not Extreme III but is it really needed especially with Pentax DSLR? I have 2 x Class2 Lexar 8G and never had any write speed issue in my K10D and I only shoot RAW.

Glad you were able to recover your files, I find those recovery software very useful and fortunately I never had the need to use them...yet.

[Nowhere Matt]

And one could argue quality control issues in many forms. Even the $700 camera and Pentax. I have taken thousands of images on cards like pqi without any issues whatsoever. I've trusted $9 cards in $900 cameras time and time again. Weddings, family reunions, simple snapshots.

[ivoire]

Honestly, it's not the $20 card the problem, it's the brand that you bought. I for one always bought proven and known brands (Sandisk, Lexar and Kingston) for my SD cards and I got them cheap. For $20 these days you can get pretty decent Class 4-6 8G card from any of those brands. Perhaps, not Extreme III but is it really needed especially with Pentax DSLR? I have 2 x Class2 Lexar 8G and never had any write speed issue in my K10D and I only shoot RAW.

Glad you were able to recover your files, I find those recovery software very useful and fortunately I never had the need to use them...yet.

Agree... its the quality of the brand, not the price. But even the best brands can have some duds due to mfg/handling defects. I have a 4gb card that failed for 3 critical images out of 50. It is relegated to file xfer 'at home duty' where backups already exist. It will never be used for first run anything.

[Ira]

This might sound retarded, but I'm paranoid about how ESD (electrostatic discharge) can damage a card.

People have to be extremely careful not to touch the metal parts, and they should actually touch a ground to discharge any charge build-up on the person's body before handling.

Regardless of the a quality of a card, an ESD event can turn a card into toast.

[macTak]

There are also problems with fakes of some of the best brands of memory cards (inc. Sandisk) floating around out there, so buy only from a reliable source.

[CarbonR]

I can use a $1000+ and rely on a $4 film without any problems

[Kerrowdown]

I've only ever used Sandisk Extremes and never had even a hint of a problem, tales like just remind me to carry on the way I have been.

Peter, just out of interest, what recovery software was it you used, that gave you your good result?

[Ira]

Peter, just out of interest, what recovery software was it you used, that gave you your good result?

On a Mac, you just use the included Disk Utility software. The card is basically treated like a hard drive, on both Macs and PCs, and any utility that at least gets it to mount will allow you to retrieve your files.

The files aren't usually damaged on a bad card. That's why you were still able to write to it.

It's just that the freaking thing won't mount.

[RonHendriks1966]

And one could argue quality control issues in many forms. Even the $700 camera and Pentax. I have taken thousands of images on cards like pqi without any issues whatsoever. I've trusted $9 cards in $900 cameras time and time again. Weddings, family reunions, simple snapshots.

Good to hear. I have two SanDisk cards extreme III old card 8 Gb 20 mb/s and a 16Gb 30 mb/s. I recently bought a class 10 pqi 32 Gb card because I needed it for a project and had no time to order it online and no nearby store carried the class 10 SanDisk on the shelfs. It's a good brand I think, they actually make more memory divices also for PC-use. It works fine for now. Wich is probably the thing about these cards, you start complaining and thinking on the day that they fail to work.

With a fast card it is less waiting shooting a full buffer on Hi-continued mode shooting.

[GeneV]

I wonder as well if it couldn't have happened with a Sandisk just as easy as a Duracell. For all we know, they are made in the same factory.

I've used all kinds of cards in all kinds of cameras, and the only one that gave me trouble was an A-data 8gb that did not work from the moment it was first inserted. Another that I bought at the same time worked like a champ.

Why is Sandisk less likely to fail? Is it just that they promote their brand and charge more? Are there some tests of QC that can help us? (I've bought into this, too, and have four of their cards, but I've come to wonder) One also wonders why more DSLR bodies don't offer an option for dual cards.

[tibbitts]

I don't think it has much to do with the brand or the price paid.

It's a risk you run, just like you used to run the risk that the lab or post office would lose your film, or that you'd get distracted and pour in fixer and not developer, or whatever.

You can use smaller cards and increase the odds of losing any one card, or use larger cards and risk losing all your images due to corruption or something else.

If you can take a break from shooting for a few minutes you could dump to a backup device.

Paul

[GeneV]

I don't think it has much to do with the brand or the price paid.

It's a risk you run, just like you used to run the risk that the lab or post office would lose your film, or that you'd get distracted and pour in fixer and not developer, or whatever.

You can use smaller cards and increase the odds of losing any one card, or use larger cards and risk losing all your images due to corruption or something else.

If you can take a break from shooting for a few minutes you could dump to a backup device.

Paul

I've tried to find any test of reliability, and I can't. Sandisk guarantees the card and will replace it, but the cost of the cart isn't the issue. I've built a couple of dozen computers over the years, and had the same experience with computer memory. I found that "brand-name" memory was just as likely to fail as OEM products. Again, most of the failures occurred within the first few minutes.

[ducdao]

I don't think it has much to do with the brand or the price paid.

It's a risk you run, just like you used to run the risk that the lab or post office would lose your film, or that you'd get distracted and pour in fixer and not developer, or whatever.

You can use smaller cards and increase the odds of losing any one card, or use larger cards and risk losing all your images due to corruption or something else.

If you can take a break from shooting for a few minutes you could dump to a backup device.

Paul

I disagree re brand. Top brands spent enormous amount of money and effort to build their branding through product quality and after sale services. Granted, nothing is error proof, even the best brands out there can't claim that but going with known and proven brands you put all the chances on your side.