[croz]

I,ve just purchased a canon V3 and need a 512Mb flash card.
I can get a transcend card for $100 less than a PQI card.
Q: which one to get and why?

[Eug]

Some cards are faster than others. (I don't know which between those two cards.)

For a G3 (I don't know what a V3 is) I'd just get the cheaper card if it's that much of a price difference. Remember the camera already has a buffer, so unless you're in the habit of taking five shots in a row, the card write speed won't make a huge difference.

You will notice read speed differences when downloading the pictures, but that's only if you have a Firewire reader or something. If you're using USB to download the pictures, the USB connection is (painfully) slower than even the slowest recent CF card.

[nsxpower]

Tier I CF card makers: Lexar, Transcend, Sandisk
Tier II: Viking
Tier III: PQI, PNY, "First time I see this brand, but it is cheap".

Transcend makes some good/fast WA 40x cards. You should not need that kind of speed for your V3 and it probably can't even take advatage of it anyways. Tier I manufacturers are known to make more reliable cards, which is very important because if the cards craps out while writing photos to the card - camera will hang and you will loose the photo that was being written and everything in the buffer. I had that happen to my G3 w/ a PQI card !!! For most applications the only thing you care about is reliability. However, if you are shooting sports or anything that requires you to dump the buffer really really fast you want the fastest card possible.

My 0.02€

[Freeflyer]

Hi,

I bought a canon G3 and 2 256Mb flash cards a few months ago, one each from simpletech and viking (they had good prices and rebates) and then went on an extended trip to several countries.

2 weeks into the trip, the viking card died. The simpletech worked for the next 3 months as my only card. I had bought an xdrive to download to, as I was in places that I couldn't take the Tibook (trekking in the himalaya) and the xdrive allowed me to store many more photos than the card itslelf (20Gb Hard drive)

Upshot being, although viking have since replaced the card, I wouldn't buy another from them. Simpletech will get my business, but always make sure you have some redundancy by having several cards. The xdrive is the best storage value going, bar none. $170 for 20Gb.

Hope this helps,

J.

[croz]

thanks for the help team! I borrowed a friends 30x 512 Mb card for the weekend and found it to be quite fast and the price is right.
also the xdrive idea is a goodin!!