One of my friends (co-worker as well) went to Burma and only used a single 32GB memory chip- well, you can guess what happen. The memory chip went south and she lost everything.  She came to me in tears- I am using my card recovery program on it and only got back 60% which I feel is not bad considering how bad the card was when I attempted to view it.   I've been told never put all your eggs in one basket - thus be careful when relying on just one big memory chip.  Lesson Learn the hard way...

Tom

Nikon D800
- 800 shots per battery
- RAW files can go up to 76MB

thats 60.8 GB

sure its safer to work with smaller cards but I would say the better deal is to transfer the files at the end of the day

any comments on brand or reason ?  Humidity ??

With the Nikon d7000 you can use 2 SD cards. I shoot raw in slot1 and jpg(normal) in slot2. Thank you Nikon 

1. don't buy cheap cards
2. transfer your files on external hdd or whatever at the end of the day

Similar to Perry. Memory cards are cheap.

On trips I use one 8GB or 16GB card per location per day. Sometimes getting through maybe 4 or 5 cards a day to download but I will only lose one location, not even a whole day's shoot - only one location, so I know what I would need to revisit if needed and I can try and fit it into that trip

In eight years I have had only one complete card failure (Sandisk). Nowdays I use Kingston Elite Pro cards - they have a fancy name, but are quite affordable and reliable, I have ten 16GB cards of various ages and speeds and zero failure.

Maybe it's me being old and been used to expensive film, but I think people are saving in wrong places. Many have a camera bag with $3000 worth of equipment, but they still think spending $300 for a set of memory cards is steep. In the good old days that would have been less than what a hobbyist would have spent in films and processing in just a year...

A few years ago I was reading the advice not to format the memory card when making it empty. Only to do this when it is absolutely needed.
Regular formatting should damage the cards over time. Don�t know if this is true, but since I only remove the images from the card when they are copied and backupped.
Never had problems with my CF cards by the way. Using Kingston, Sandisk and sometimes a few older (and slower) Dane-Elec cards.

A few years ago I was reading the advice not to format the memory card when making it empty. Only to do this when it is absolutely needed.
Regular formatting should damage the cards over time.

My understanding is you should always format the card (in camera, only) to empty it; never delete images one by one. That fragments it, and if you don't ever format it you're asking for problems.

I've always frequently formatted cards, and have never lost one image due to a bad card (fingers crossed).

I always format my card (using my camera). I haven't got any clue why this would be harmful to the card(?)

It's annoying that there's such opposite information out there.
At college I learnt to format every time I do a new shoot.
Download every day.
use a card reader, no connecting directly to the computer.
nothing about deleting in camera, which I do sometimes do when I'm running out of space (and my spare card is not with me)

Why would using a card reader be better than connecting directly to the pc? The reader in the pc is exactly the same as an external card reader?

Anyways....i format the card before every shoot and copy my images to my pc as fast as possible.

don't think they are more fancy than Sandisk

I just meant the "Elite Pro"-name, sounds kind of expensive, but aren't

Quote

Why would using a card reader be better than connecting directly to the pc? The reader in the pc is exactly the same as an external card reader?

I think they meant connecting the camera to the PC to transfer files.

  ok that makes sense. But i really hardly know anyone who still does this!