Canon's Suggested and Verified Memory Card List

[MichaelVadon]

I was looking to get memory cards for my Canon 5D Mark III. I thought it was about time to expand what I have which is purely Lexar. The Transcend cards are half price and the Lexar is just a tad cheaper then the San Disk.

I was told by a photographer I well respect who works directly with Canon and performs seminars that San Disk is the way to go. He put down Lexar and other brands. He said that while he uses Lexar 1000x for the speed, he is aware of his friends having failure problems with the brand.

So I looked towards the Canon website for their opinion on the issue and came up with the suggested memory card list:

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/suppo...IMEZONE_OFFSET=null&USERTYPE=1&isSecure=false

Technology will be getting increasingly complex so I will always buy the fastest memory cards possible so if I get another body in the future which is more complex the faster card may stand a fighting chance. Plus I love the speed of the fastest cards.

So, that said, Canon only suggests the following high speed cards for its Canon 5d Mark III. Keep in mind other cards do work, but these are the ones on the list. There are a few other lower speed cards on the list, but I have only included the highest speed cards as that is the only type cards I will purchase with an eye on the future:

CF Cards

SanDisk Extreme Pro- 16, 32 and 128gb

Lexar Pro UDMA- 8gb

SD Cards

San Disk UHS-1 SDHC - 32gb

Panasonic SDXC 48gb, 64gb

Toshiba Class 10 32gb

Now if you go to the San Disk website there is a tool which suggests memory cards for a particular camera. Here is San Disk's suggested list for the Canon 5D Mark III. Another short, odd list!:

http://pct1.sandisk.com/ProductList.aspx?DeviceID=18021

As you can see, San Disk has a very short list of cards it suggests.

I have no idea why Canon went with the Lexar Pro 8gb versus the 16gb for example. Did they simply not have the time or enough cards laying around at the time of testing? Did they find something during an instrumented test with the other cards they didnt like? For CF cards, only San Disk and Lexar seem to pass the muster whereas for SD cards they went with San Disk, Panasonic, and Toshiba.

In the future I will be buying the San-Disk 32gb cf card and the San-Disk SDXC 64gb SDXC to go with my library of cards. Furthermore, I will be making these cards my primary "go to" cards with the Lexars used as a backup. I mainly use the CF card in my 5D Mark III, but the CF cards make a great back-up fall back and also sometimes I like to put the jpeg on the SD card and the RAW on the CF card.

The ONLY place I buy memory cards from is B&H Photo video. I will not buy them off of Ebay or Amazon because there is a tendency for fake/bad cards on those websites.

 

[Victor Engel]

My preferred reference is Rob Galbraith's database.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page7de5.html?cid=6007-12452

 

[PenguinPhotoCo]

If you do video speed may matter, but for still photography not sure a faster card is going to do you much good unless a lighter wallet helps you move to the next shot quicker. LOL

Faster does give you faster DL speeds and my newer cards are a lot faster than the older ones i still have laying around. Not sure what speed they are...I got a couple of 16g sandisk included when I bought my last couple of cameras and have a number of 8gb sandisk I picked up at staples or some office supply store on a shoot.

I have a few old lexar cards that I forget where i got them, I'm talking 2gb cards so over 5 years old. I might have a kingston laying around..know i've had a couple in the past.

Never had a card fail (always format in camera before a shoot).

Always bought from reputable vendors...and see no need to get more cards anytime soon. I've got 2 -16s (weddings, larger sports leagues), 4 8s (weddings, sports leagues), 12 4s (used for hs seniors, portraiture) and a few 2s that I use for very small jobs.

AFAIK CF cards are rated for 1000 r/w cycles. I doubt any one card gets 100 of those a year with me..so should last 10 years, give or take.

 

[MichaelVadon]

I know about Rob's database, but I am wondering why both Canon and San Disk have a seemingly short odd list of tested or suggested memory cards. They tested the SanDisk Extreme Pro 32gb cf card, but what about the 16 gb cf card?

There might be practical reasons such as they didnt have one at the time to test, but could there be other reasons why its not on the list? What about San Disk's short list of cards? Lexar and Sandisk are the only manufactures on the CF card list while the SD card list has Sandisk, Panasonic and Toshiba. Lexar disappears off of the SD card list.

So what is the real logic behind these short odd lists?

My preferred reference is Rob Galbraith's database.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page7de5.html?cid=6007-12452

--
Victor Engel

 

[Joe Pa]

My preferred reference is Rob Galbraith's database.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page7de5.html?cid=6007-12452

 

[hotdog321]

Interesting. I also tend to go with the robgalbraith recommendations, even though it is outdated now. I've been using Lexar CF cards for almost a decade, and the Lexar 1000X UDMA 7 CF cards for the last couple of years. I've never lost a frame.

I would be curious to hear the Canon stories about these Lexar failures. I'm on DPreview quite a lot (more than I should be!) and often read about SanDisk issues, but only very rarely about Lexar problems.

Not saying they aren't there, but I sure would like to hear some objective first-hand info.

 

[Victor Engel]

If you do video speed may matter, but for still photography not sure a faster card is going to do you much good unless a lighter wallet helps you move to the next shot quicker. LOL

Unless you have a firmware hack that does uncompressed video, stills photography is more demanding than video is. The manual for the 5D Mark II states that all you need is a card that can sustain 8 MB/s. Faster cards will download the videos faster, but recording is done at a ploddingly methodical rate no matter the card used. If the card isn't fast enough, the camera displays a buffer warning image in the viewfinder, and if the buffer doesn't clear, recording stops.

Faster does give you faster DL speeds and my newer cards are a lot faster than the older ones i still have laying around. Not sure what speed they are...I got a couple of 16g sandisk included when I bought my last couple of cameras and have a number of 8gb sandisk I picked up at staples or some office supply store on a shoot.

I have a few old lexar cards that I forget where i got them, I'm talking 2gb cards so over 5 years old. I might have a kingston laying around..know i've had a couple in the past.

Never had a card fail (always format in camera before a shoot).

I had a card get a bad spot. I could keep using the card if I didn't delete the file using up the bad spot. But if I formatted it, I'd get the error on another file. By not deleting the errant file, the bad spot was ensured not to be used again.

 

[MichaelVadon]

In all the years I have been alive, the preference most people have is to blame other people and other things for their own failures. I am guessing a certain percentage of those stories is from operator error then equipment failure. On internet message boards there also might be a certain percentage of people who just make up stories for whatever reason.

Interesting. I also tend to go with the robgalbraith recommendations, even though it is outdated now. I've been using Lexar CF cards for almost a decade, and the Lexar 1000X UDMA 7 CF cards for the last couple of years. I've never lost a frame.

I would be curious to hear the Canon stories about these Lexar failures. I'm on DPreview quite a lot (more than I should be!) and often read about SanDisk issues, but only very rarely about Lexar problems.

Not saying they aren't there, but I sure would like to hear some objective first-hand info.

 

[hotdog321]

Yeah, I take on-line information with a large grain of salt and look for overall trends from a mix of reviews and first-hand stories from folks I respect. That's why your Canon post is so interesting.

Honesty, most of the SanDisk issues I've read about seem to be from copying images into computers with "ingesting" programs with direct connection to the camera rather than simple drag and drop using a card reader.

 

[Victor Engel]

Yeah, I take on-line information with a large grain of salt and look for overall trends from a mix of reviews and first-hand stories from folks I respect. That's why your Canon post is so interesting.

Honesty, most of the SanDisk issues I've read about seem to be from copying images into computers with "ingesting" programs with direct connection to the camera rather than simple drag and drop using a card reader.

Canon's own software updates the files on the card, for example, so that the software knows the files have already been processed. This way, files can quickly be excluded from importation. Lightroom, by contrast, apparently doesn't update them at all, so if you set the option to import only new files, first it has to read the files on the card. Then it has to check its own database to see if the files already exist.

 

[JimBob0]

The ONLY place I buy memory cards from is B&H Photo video. I will not buy them off of Ebay or Amazon because there is a tendency for fake/bad cards on those websites.

I've spent a lot of time with the low end cards, most sourced off Ebay, and have never had an issue with any of them. When I'm working I'm shovelling maybe 4-6,000 images per 32G CF card (TopRam and some others) and have never had an issue with any of them. Literally daily use for 3 months max'ing out a single card or two (or three some days).

Although everyone claims these fantastic download speeds, it's largely dependant on whether it's USB2 or Firewire reader. Haven't tried a USB3 CF reader yet.

The biggest problem I've had is that I've lost two 32G cards to my pitbull! Left both on the dining room table (months apart), and he goes past, checks the surface, long tongue comes out, licks the card up, does his naughty walk (the one where you know he's got something he shouldn't have), moves the cards to his back teeth - and crunch. One $40 card dead.

But I'm unable to blame Canon or Ebay sellers for that.

 

[Victor Engel]

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