QuestionMemory card prices have gone nuts. Where are you buying CFexpress?

Went to pick up a second 256GB CFexpress B for the Z8 before spring migration and about fell out of my chair. Same card I bought last year is close to double what I paid, and I saw a headline claiming some cards have tripled in a few months. Something about all the memory going to AI data centers.

So where are folks buying now? Is anybody trusting the cheaper brands off Amazon, or are those a gamble with your files? I shoot a lot of bursts at the hummingbird feeders so I go through space quick, and I'm not looking forward to paying this much for a card I could drop in the brush.

• Walt

Oh no, I need one too! I've been putting it off since January and it's only got worse. Should have bought in the fall when you were all telling me to. I'm going to be very intrested in where you all land on this Walt.

In Germany the same. I bought two cards for the A7 V in December, before the worst of it, and now I am glad. The same card is much more now at the shop I use.

My advice: check speed tests from people who actually measured sustained write in a camera, not the number on the box. The box number is the best case for a few seconds. For long bursts what matters is the speed after the cache is full, and there the cheap cards and the good cards are very different. I tested mine with long bursts at home before using them for work.

WaltK_AZ said:

I saw a headline claiming some cards have tripled in a few months

SD cards have gone up as well, not as bad, but the V90s are noticeably dearer than last summer, glad the R7 takes SD and not those CFexpress things tbh, my local shop said they've stopped stocking the big ones because nobody's buying at these prices

It's DRAM and NAND demand, not a conspiracy. Data centers are buying everything the fabs can make and consumer cards are at the bottom of the priority list. I wouldn't expect it to reverse this year, and I'd be surprised if it reversed next year.

The cheap no-name CFexpress cards are a gamble on sustained write speed more than on reliability. The box number is a peak figure; some of them fall a long way once their internal cache fills, and in the camera that shows up as the buffer clearing slowly and the camera stalling mid-burst. If you shoot long bursts at feeders, that's exactly the situation where you'd notice it.

Buy one name-brand card from a reputable dealer, not a marketplace seller, and offload more often. Two smaller cards you rotate are also cheaper per GB than one huge one right now, and you don't lose everything if one goes missing.

rawtherapist said:

Buy one name-brand card from a reputable dealer, not a marketplace seller, and offload more often.

That's probably where I'll land. I carry a laptop in the truck anyway. Still stings. A card I can't afford to lose is a card I won't take into the canyon.

• Walt

rawtherapist said:

Two smaller cards you rotate are also cheaper per GB than one huge one right now

This. I've got a 128 in the first slot and SD in the second. Not paying daft money for a 256 I'll never fill at the football. Second slot's just a backup anyway, cheapest decent SD I could find.

WaltK_AZ said:

Is anybody trusting the cheaper brands off Amazon

Do not buy the very cheap ones from marketplace sellers. Many are fake capacity: they report 512GB to the camera but after 64GB they start writing over the old files, and you only find out when you get home. My friend had this with an SD card from an unknown seller, he lost half of a family wedding.

The cheaper brands that are real brands are a different thing. Some are fine, some are slow after the cache fills, like rawtherapist says. But they are what they say they are.

Easy test: when you get any new card, fill it completely with files on the computer and check the last ones open. Takes one evening. Then you know.

How many photos are you actually keeping from those bursts? Genuinely asking.

mfrost said:

How many photos are you actually keeping from those bursts?

Two, maybe three out of a few hundred. You've made your point. I'm still buying the card.

• Walt

mfrost said:

How many photos are you actually keeping from those bursts?

Shoot fewer frames. Problem solved.

5amJim said:

Shoot fewer frames.

Says the man who told me he fills a card every Saturday morning!

Paid £90 for a 128GB SD card yesterday that was about £40 when I bought the last one. honestly at this point the cards are costing more than some of my vintage lenses. Tom will be along in a minute to tell me his Helios cost less than a card, and he'll be right

Closing the loop. Bought one 256GB from a big name dealer, paid more than I wanted, offloaded to the laptop every evening on the trip. Didn't run out once. Hummingbirds were worth it. Two of the shots are already printed and on the wall.

• Walt