Single large card or multiple small cards?

[Rustyk1]

So, I've just bought a new camera (Ricoh R6) in anticipation of my upcoming travels to SE Asia and wanted some advice.

Should I buy one (maybe two) 4GB SDHC card(s), or should I buy four (or more) 1GB SD cards. With the prices being how they are at the moment, cost isn't really a concern. The main reason for possibly buying many smaller cards is that if I were to lose my camera, I wouldn't lose ALL of my photos. I intend to upload all the photos to somewhere safe periodically as well. So do you think it's worth buying more smaller cards, in case I lose one, or one large card for ease of use?

TIA

[Speshal]

It'll probably vary with the camera but with a larger card you might also experience some slow loading times, this will obviously get worse with the amount of images it contains too. I'd probably go with multiple cards for that reason and primarily for the security of having multiple cards. Just be careful not to lose them and keep them safe in a case or something.

[Rustyk1]

I didn't realise that number of images would affect loading times, thats for the heads up

[neo2810]

I find having 3 or 4 2Gb cards is a happy medium. big enough to not be swapping cards all the time, but small enough to avoid losing too much data if lost.

[muttleymacclad]

I'm with Neo on this. Get a few reasonable size fast cards. Also depends what size files you / your camera chooses to save at. DSLR Raw files are almost 10meg each but I guess you'll be shooting jpegs so will get more on a card.

Also store the cards somewhere different from your camera when full in case you loose or get your camera pinched or damaged.

Another option is to burn the images onto DVD whenever you get the chance in a town on your travels.

MML

[BertRoot]

I always go for 2Gb cards and more of them. I always worry that one big card failing can be a pain and it has happened to me in the past. you can alos get speed issues with bigger cards when they become full but if you are using fast cards then that shouldn't be a bother. Worth checking how fast the camera writes to the card.

[tombott]

As other people have said, I would go with 2gb cards.
You will be able to fit a shed load of pics on a 2gb card.

[Rustyk1]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

The camera is 7Mp and only writes jpegs so they're always under 3MB each, normally around 2.5MB. I worry that with a 2GB card, if I lose it, I could lose as many as 800 photos. That's a lot of photos, thus might stick to 1GB cards.

How much will card speed affect the camera performance. All I have at the moment is a very old 128MB integral card. When shooting in burst mode, the shooting rate noticibly decreases over time. Would a faster card possibly fix this?

What is the difference between a SanDisk Ultra II and a SanDisk Extreme III, speed wise?

[tombott]

If you are really that worried then buy the 1GB cards, and pick up a Eee PC to dump all the images on! They only weigh 1KG

[Rustyk1]

Haha, would love to buy an Eee PC to take, unfortunately, finances don't permit such a purchase!

[[wingnut]]

How much will card speed affect the camera performance. All I have at the moment is a very old 128MB integral card. When shooting in burst mode, the shooting rate noticeably decreases over time. Would a faster card possibly fix this?

A lot, the camera shoots to a buffer internal memory until it writes to your main memory source, in your case the external card, if shooting in burst mode the image will be written to this memory then onto the card, a slow card will take longer to accept the image and reduce free space in the buffer, thus over the period of the burst mode shot it slows as it runs out of space to store the images before they are written to the card.

I have a 40d and run nothing but scandisk extremes now, used to use cheaper cards from a discount blank media supplier, but found they could not keep up with my 40d in rapid rapid shot mode. Also over time overall internal space of cards got smaller too!!
So yes a faster higher quality card will ease the slowing, and also reduce the risk of the card failing too. Plus data transfer rates between card and PC will be much faster too.

[{{909}}]

well wingnut is correct but rusty1k only has a ricoh point n shoot, not a bloody 40D!, its very unlikely the camera will be 1/4 as demanding on the memory speed as a pro dslr. The camera itself could have slow buffers/precessing times.

I would however say get good branded cards, cheapo ones are more likely to get corrupted, especially as you will be travelling in some hot and humid locations.

[Bodman]

Im with Neo as well, I run 4x2gig cards, then if I loose/break one I dont loose the lot

//Bod

[Rustyk1]

Hey guys, thanks again for all the help. Pretty much against everyone's advice I've just bought a 4gb card. I decided that I'll try to back up my photos (to xdrive or something) whenever I have access to the internet. This way, hopefully, I'll get the best of both worlds. I did a lot of reading up and found that the sandisk extremes are the same as the sandisk ultras in speed, the only difference being the heat tolerance of the extremes. Thus I got a sandisk ultra. It's one of the ones that also has a USB port on it, I thought this would be an easy way of transferring pictures.

Thanks again!