SDHC Reliability

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Anthony McErlean

With your guidance Marcus I for one went with the MxM ATP combo.

You should be fine - my own experience with MxM and ATP is also flawless.

[Anthony McErlean]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

You should be fine - my own experience with MxM and ATP is also flawless.

Glad to hear that Piotr.

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by John Peterson

One could also interpret that as: "Who was the bigger thief" ?

Both ended up cutting the margins with the advent of SDHC solutions. I have no idea what the markup was / is for SxS and P2 cards. But I don't think it would be a stretch to surmise that it was outrageous and possibly still is.

John

Sony are still up to their tricks with their SDHC adaptor as I was looking at buying one in for review purposes.

£70 ex VAT UK price compared to £35 for an MxM from the same retailer. I was prepared for £45 or £50, but £70? Either there is a substantial difference in the internals of these adaptors or they have very high markup.

And I don't accept the "cost of research and development line", MxR & MxM have done all the R+D on this occasion and yet they are selling their adaptors for half the price.

[Vincent Oliver]

I only paid £14 each for my four Kensington adapters. Never had any problems with them either. £35 for a holder is also bit steep, no public comment on the Sony one at £70

[Jeff Wallace]

I can attest to the reliability of the MxM and ATP 16GB class 6 combo. I've shot about 10 weddings on these cards, which basically involves running the camera for 8 hours straight and filling up each card. I've given them a pretty good workout and had ZERO problems.

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Vincent Oliver

I only paid £14 each for my four Kensington adapters. Never had any problems with them either. £35 for a holder is also bit steep, no public comment on the Sony one at £70

I can't speak about the Kensington adaptors, but the latest MxM adaptors I've tested were faster than the first adaptors I purchased. My tests on the old firmware revealed a difference of between 6 to 8 frames per second which meant more headroom.

I'm sure either of the two adaptor manufacturers for the EX series can probably confirm their latest cards probably have subtle differences from the Kensington's in performance and in the internal design.

As for price, Kensington will have a far larger market and can leverage this for a low price point. It's like when you have DVD's produced, a large quantity is far cheaper per unit.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I would not recommend anyone use SD cards for day to day use.

It is quite conceivable that a user will not be able to afford enough SxS cards to shoot long enough to go without downloading until they are in good conditions. That could force a download situation in circumstances where attention would be better spent on other matters. Using SDHC may allow enough memory to be bought to avoid that situation, it can also enable the possibility of workflows such as shoot to SDHC, hand over card with rushes at end of shoot.

When "reliability" is spoken of, it's things such as equipment failure which always get thought of first, it's extremely important to also consider human factors. In this case, I suspect more material gets lost through human error than card failure, be they SxS or SDHC.

At least anyone with an SxS camera has the choice of which to use, you don't with P2.

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by John Peterson

Just tried the Class 10 Transcend 16GB cards. I got them from Newegg.

Newegg.com - Transcend 16GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Flash Card Model TS16GSDHC10

They worked flawlessly just like my Class 6 Red and Blue stripe Transcend cards do. I put them in the camera and let them roll until the time ran out. No errors.

I originally had ordered blue stripe Class 6 Transcend cards from the BUYDIG website, but they sent Red Stripe ones instead.
Transcend 16 GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Class 6 {TS16GSDHC6 } | BuyDig.com
I sent them back just in case newer Red stripe ones have been the issue here. The Class 10 cards were around the same price anyway. They worked for me in my Kensington adapters with firmware 1.11 on my EX1.

This is just to add to the record. I am not one of these people who likes to suggest that if I am not having a problem you shouldn't either.

I have to follow up on this. After testing these Class 10 16GB Transcend cards at home with no errors I took them on vacation last week and BOTH gave me repeated Media Restore errors. I ended up using my other cards. I am returning them and I would recommend that you not buy them at all.

John

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by John Peterson

I have to follow up on this. After testing these Class 10 16GB Transcend cards at home with no errors I took them on vacation last week and BOTH gave me repeated Media Restore errors. I ended up using my other cards. I am returning them and I would recommend that you not buy them at all.

John

Thanks for letting us know. Out of interest, which firmware are you on?

[John Peterson]

Thanks for letting us know. Out of interest, which firmware are you on?
======================
Firmware 1.11

John

[Marcus Durham]

If that's an EX1 then you really need to be on 1.20. I'm not sure what the latest version is for the EX3 but it might be 1.10.

So it really hinges on what camera you are using. If it's an EX1 you might want to try a firmware upgrade. But as I said before, I do have my reservations about certain popular brands because of variations in the manufacturing processes.

Not to mention just how many counterfeit cards are being sold. These cards look the part but are a far cry when it comes to performance. You could check the serial on the Transcend website but I'm not even sure that is a guarantee as any savvy counterfeiter would surely just produce their cards using a serials taken from a legitimate card.

[Jim Snow]

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it's all about margins. One-off anecdotal stories about cousin Fred's success with the Belchfire brand of SD chips is meaningless. If all the elements in a SD card application aren't right, there is a risk of a problem because the timing may be on the edge of not working. I still believe the combination of the latest camera firmware coupled with the Sony MEAD SD adapter and the SanDisc Extreme Class 10 cards is a very safe way to go with plenty of margin to assure proper performance. All of the stories that start off with, " I know a guy who uses ........", or "What I have been using is ........" are one-off anecdotal stories that aren't statistically valid with any indication of how repeatable the performance may be with other parts of the same brand etc. If you have a combination that works, that's great but the next guy who tries that combination might not be so lucky because the margins on the same parts might not be the same which could result in a problem.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Jim Snow

I still believe the combination of the latest camera firmware coupled with the Sony MEAD SD adapter and the SanDisc Extreme Class 10 cards is a very safe way to go with plenty of margin to assure proper performance.

If you have a combination that works, that's great but the next guy who tries that combination might not be so lucky because the margins on the same parts might not be the same which could result in a problem.

Well, I'll tell you this much. The Sandisk Extreme Class 10 didn't exist when I bought my cards. Nor did any Class 6 cards. So I'll put my faith in the combination thatt has worked flawlessly for me for nearly two years over unproven combinations that MAY work.

I do believe that the Sandisk brand has been the most successful for people. And their Class 10 cards should provide excellent performance. I don't know about the different adapters these days. That's a mystery to me.

Best of luck to anyone trying to ply these waters now. But you may find, just like us early adopters of this solution, that you'll have to do some hard trials before relying on the cards. For what it's worth, I don't trust the SxS implicitly either as I've seen them fail as well.

[Dean Harrington]

I've been shooting on kensington 7-in1 and M&M adapters (EX3) with sandisk ultra2 (class 4)16gb, sandisk extreme (class 10) 32gb and transcend 16gb (class 6). I had only one problem with the transcend 16gb not re-formatting via the camera after having re-formatted on my Mac. This was fixed with the software upgrade. I had not had any other problems with these SDHC cards or adapters for over the last year. They have performed very well.

[John Peterson]

My preliminary testing of the 16GB Class 6 SanDisk Extreme HD Video SDHC card (Model Number SDSDRX3-016G-A21) have been positive:

Purchased here:

Sandisk 16 GB Extreme III Secure Digital HC Memory Card (SDSDRX3-016G-A21) | BuyDig.com

1. Loaded into Kensington 7-in 1 adapter and inserted into Ex1 with firmware 1.11

2. Camera called for format. Formatted card.

3. Shot around 35 minutes with the card occasionally turning the camera off and switching the adapter from one slot to the other a few times. Turning camera on and off many times between shots varying between 10 seconds to 3 minutes or so. Recording a few times before the green "ready light" for the slot came on.

No errors.

4. Reformatted the card and repeated the process again for 40 plus minutes. No errors at all.

Will update if I run into any problems.

John

EDIT: (Note) The successful SanDisk Ultra II (class 4)16gb card is no longer made. The Ultra II designation has been changed to Ultra and the card internals have changed.