Centon SDHC Card: Go/No Go: NO GO

[Robert Rogoz]

Nathan, sorry to burst your bubble, but a boat is not so tough location to shoot. For some reality check I would advise you to haul your stuff to 14 000 or 20 000 ft with temps 20F to -20F (and wind) and see how much downloading are you able to do? I spent 6 days on Rainier this summer, also one week in Denali range and 2 weeks in Canadian Rockies shooting a documentary. I had one person as help (as permits allowed), so maybe you can explain it to me how to implement a workflow with a computer in the field?

[Craig Seeman]

Try shooting in a dark presentation room with internationally noted dignitaries speaking for over five straight hours and being located in a packed elbow to elbow press area. A bright laptop screen is not acceptable. There is no place to place the laptop. I use a very small dim LED light to check the camera and change the card.

Try shooting in a public area in which there's no place to securely place a laptop.

Try doing a small corporate shoot under crazy tight deadline with extremely fast location moves. That laptop becomes a real boat anchor if one person must pay attention to it constantly and carefully verify copies.

I spent the first year I had the EX1 (Dec 2007-Dec 2008) using the laptop method (no other choices) and the 2nd year (Jan 2009 to present) carrying enough SDHC cards to feel secure in not bringing a laptop or tying up an assistant or worrying the file copy had an undiscovered issue. The latter was a major relief.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Nathan Hudson

Not necessarily saying that 1st party is the only way to go, but most everybody who bought into the whole SDHC idea knew what they were getting into. I don't buy knowing that it may fail or mess up on me.

While your point on quality media is well-taken, we are not convinced that the flash media in Sony SxS is better than Sandisk media. The cost of the SxS is the on-board memory controller that probably handles two banks of flash memory. The real gain in SxS *was* its read speed or 40 MB/Sec.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by William Griffin

I shot this week with my EX3 and used 1 red striped 16gb Transcend card and 5 green striped 8GB Transcend cards using a KxS adapter, with no problems. But with all the talk of the red stripe Transcend card failing and with media errors, I need to look at other cards that I can buy locally.

William, why do you need to buy them locally? I just did a shoot with a mix of one San Disk Extreme III 30 MB/sec and two Transcend Class 6 16 GB Green stripe . Both Transcend cards, which had worked in the past, showed the Media Restore error.

Originally Posted by Nathan Hudson

Trying to convince me, that I'm not justified in saying you increase your risk and you dumb down your initial investment by buying this cheap media, is the wrong way of going about it. I never said it doesn't work. I'm saying, why take the risk, especially spending the money you have already spent. Also, I never said I would never use alternative media, just not for money and when things are on the line. It's not worth it. I get paid a lot of money to do my job, but it's because I can produce with 100% satisfaction and I know I am secure. I take no risks.

While there may not be a defense for the SDHC manufacturer criticized by William, it is not clear to us that cheaper flash media equals lower quality. Samsung, Toshiba and SanDisk are three major flash manufacturers. Since you never see Samsung or Toshiba selling flash cards, where does their product go? It's in their OEM flash disk drives and the flash cards sold by Transcend, Pretec, Lexar, et al. A lower flash card price also reflects lower distribution costs, fewer product offerings and overall, the price structure of an efficient company.

We should be distinguishing single-level cell (SLC) industrial grade and multi-level cell (MLC) consumer grade:

http://www.supertalent.com/datasheet...whitepaper.pdf

[Chris Hurd]

Just a quick housekeeping note: I have cleaned up this thread somewhat.

For future reference, when a thread is high-jacked, please report it using
the Report Post function (it's the little "!" icon found to the left of every
post). Thanks in advance. Proceed with caution. Thanks William for your
patience.

[William Griffin]

Thanks Chris.....no biggie, as life is what it is.......but I will remember the little red button in the future.

[Nathan Hudson]

Gints, points well received. Thanks for sharing.

Robert, Never said I shoot tough locations. Craig suggested that I probably only shoot studio, so I clarified. Thats all.