What SD Card do you Trust for Weddings?

[Kelly Langerak]

Originally Posted by Jamie Pippin

Thanks Kelly,

Do you run a continuous shot of the ceremony with the 32 gigs? I'm debating whether or not 32gb is an efficient amount of space to cover the average ceremony.

The 16 gig give me about 40 min so it is long enough to do a ceremony of that length. If you do Catholic weddings then figure about 60 to 80 min long needed.

If you ever plan on doing SDE's then you will want at least the 300x or 60MB/s speed. But with Mac's and PC's being able to transfer footage lighting speed real soon here then 233x is good too. I like the faster ones thou for now because I do a lot of SDE's and use the Firewire CF reader.

If you plan on doing just one SDE this year than the faster cards are worth it. You'll get anxiety with the slower cards.

[Travis Cossel]

Sandisk CF and SD cards in multiple cameras. No issues.

[Chris Harding]

I hate to burst the bubble now but I am doing a Realty Shoot (non critical) this morning and I just popped in a 16GB Transcend and the camera said "Check Card" ...then went to normal operation and formatted perfectly. Funny I think the same card gave a Check Card error for a moment between events at my last wedding too.

It seems to work OK but rather than take a chance at my next wedding, I will just replace the card ..!!

Anybody had a Check Card error that corrects itself????? At current card prices it's far easier to get a new one!!

Chris

[Kelly Langerak]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Sandisk CF and SD cards in multiple cameras. No issues.

It will be an issue thou when you are doing a single camera for the ceremony, bride getting ready or the reception. Especially during important parts like the speeches or first dance.

I think Sandisk is a great brand. It's all about luck thou in the end.

Tapes can have the same issue. I've heard of videographers documenting an entire wedding and to find out the record heads were faulty and nothing was recorded.

So if you can record theeee most important events with two cams just as a back up then do it. It saved me from a wedding i did recently. I would have lost all the speeches but having a sec cam saved my butt and money.

Every time a card has failed thou I've been able to recover using Aero Quartet

[John Wiley]

Chris, can I ask where you purchased your Transcend cards from? I can't find them anywhere in Brisbane or the Gold Coast or in any of the major online Stores here.

I was going to order them from B & H but the shipping was going to cost $60!

[Chris Harding]

Hi John

I get mine off eBay from a dealer called "SinceritytradingAU" from Hong Kong..now before you throw up your hands in horror muttering the words "fake cards" I took the trouble to check the card serials with Transcend in Taiwan (they have a verification page to identify fake cards) and these are genuine cards and you can also register with the manufacturer too. I don't think I would trust some China/HK sellers but these guys do sell the real thing and none have ever failed on me and my 16GB are not repacked 2GB cards like some floating around...he charges $32.99 for a 16GB Class 6 include postage.

I did buy a few Class 10 cards from another HK seller and they took twice as long to format as the Class 6 so they were labelled "suspect" .... If you are unsure about whether you are getting genuine cards ask for the card ID numbers (10 digits) and run 'em thru the transcend.com.tw website and you will soon see if they are authentic or not.

All purchases so far have been the genuine article. Ebay have a few Sydney sellers too that might be prepared to email/message you the ID numbers!!

Chris

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Kelly Langerak

It will be an issue thou when you are doing a single camera for the ceremony, bride getting ready or the reception. Especially during important parts like the speeches or first dance.

Good thing I've never done a single camera shoot then. d;-)

[John Wiley]

Thanks Chris, I'll look them up now.

The price was about the same from B & H but shipping was going to cost more than 2 16GB class 6 cards!

[John Wiley]

I just placed an order from the seller you listed Chris.

I only ordered one and I'll check the serial numbers when it arrives and also run some speed tests on it. If it all goes well I'll order another half-a dozen cards from them.

Thanks for the help.

[Randy Panado]

Sandisk + the OLDER transcends are what I use in terms of SD cards. When I first got my HMC150 (sold for a 5dmk2) the transcend 16GBs were all the rage. Then all of a sudden I read, either here, vimeo or on the other site, that they changed something in manufacturing and the cards were not as reliable or had some problems with them. I can't remember exactly the specifics but my older 2 transcends have given me zero problems. I only use them for audio now after moving to all DSLR in 2009 but they've been fine. My sandisk class 4's gave me zero issues with HMC150 and are also performing fine for audio capture. Purchased the transcends from amazon (and they came with a sweet SD card reader).