# CF Cards - Where do you buy yours?



## expatinasia (Mar 8, 2013)

Now I have gone and bought the 1D X, I thought it would be wise to upgrade my CF cards and am now shopping around comparing prices.

According to my calculations, it seems the US is the cheapest place to buy them. The Lexar Pro 1000X for example costs US$ 133 / £ 135 for the 32 GB (US/UK respectively) US$ 289 / £ 280 for the 64GB.

That is quite a difference, and here in Asia CF cards are a lot more expensive than the UK price even.

In the past I have always purchased them in the UK, but am now looking a little further afield. 

For those not in the US or Canada, do you buy yours online and get them shipped over? The price difference is quite big.

And is there anywhere cheaper than the US?

*Edited*: _To make the question clearer, as it was too vague_.


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## TexasBadger (Mar 8, 2013)

Adorama


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## expatinasia (Mar 8, 2013)

Thanks TexasBadger, but I should have been a little clearer with my question. For those not in the US or Canada, do you buy yours online and get them shipped over? The price difference is quite big.


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## PureAmateur (Mar 8, 2013)

TexasBadger said:


> Adorama



Well, I am from Asia and had lived in US for a few years and now in Europe. US is still the cheaper place to buy the CF card (as well as automobile ;D).

Shop around Adorama, B&H and Amazon.

For the size of the CF card, it is some favors that you can ask your colleagues or friends to do for you. I had just ordered a pack of 2 Lexar 1000x CF from Adorama and asked my colleague to bring it over to me.


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## docsmith (Mar 8, 2013)

Amazon or B&H.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Mar 8, 2013)

docsmith said:


> Amazon or B&H.


Same Here, whichever has a sale.


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## WhoIreland (Mar 8, 2013)

i can't believe people use Lexar....

I've had 3 fail...and any other pro's i talk to have had same experience and lost stuff..

everyone (in ireland) using sandisk for a while now...


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## Drizzt321 (Mar 8, 2013)

WhoIreland said:


> i can't believe people use Lexar....
> 
> I've had 3 fail...and any other pro's i talk to have had same experience and lost stuff..
> 
> everyone (in ireland) using sandisk for a while now...



Not a 'pro' shooter, but I've shot some 10K or more spread across 4 Lexar 32GB 400x cards, and they've been perfectly good for me. Sandisk is of course great as well.

For me, generally B&H here in the US.


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## expatinasia (Mar 8, 2013)

Thanks everyone. Never bought CF cards from the US before but as they are so cheap compared to elsewhere will give it a go. Unfortunately do not have someone to carry them over with them but will see how the old delivery system works.



WhoIreland said:


> i can't believe people use Lexar....I've had 3 fail...and any other pro's i talk to have had same experience and lost stuff...everyone (in ireland) using sandisk for a while now...



I have never had a SanDisk or a Lexar fail yet (touch wood), but the difference in read write speeds between SanDisk's Extreme Pro and Lexar's 1000X is quite substantial.

When I was reading about the 1D X I think I saw it can write at something like 167MBps, which is still faster then the 150/142 MBps (read/write) of the Lexar.

I was mainly using the 400X before, but after making the 1D X investment figured I should upgrade.


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## CharlieB (Mar 9, 2013)

NewEgg, Amazon, B&H, in no particular order.

Very frequently, B&H has better deals than Amazon or NewEgg... just sayin'


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## curtisnull (Mar 9, 2013)

Back in 2000 when I bought my first Compact Flash cards, I was trying to decide which brand to buy. I was shooting Nikons at the time and the Nikon branded card that came with my camera was made by SanDisk. I decided that since SanDisk invented the CF Card, that was the brand that I would use. I have owned about 50 of them over the years and never had a problem.

I remember back in about 2003. I found the SanDisk 1 GB CF cards on sale. They were $250.00 (yes, you read that right) marked down from $500.00 (yes, you read that right too). I bought 2 of them and went out and shot a wedding with them the next Saturday. Everything was backed up to my PowerBook and iPod before I left the wedding, then to the server and DVD's when I got to the studio. Well, a couple of days later, mom was over at my house helping with the laundry and she found my two new 1 GB CF cards in the bottom of the dryer. She pulled them out and said, what are these? I was sick, I thought there was $500 down the drain. They had been through the washer AND the dryer. Well, to this day, they still work fine. I don't use them any longer because now they are so small. But after that, I was definitely sold on SanDisk.


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## expatinasia (Mar 9, 2013)

I think CF cards are very solidly built. Lexar just has the upper hand with regards to speed at the moment.

Still the difference in price is very large. US is about half as cheap as UK which is half as cheap as here in many parts of Asia. That is an enormous difference.



curtisnull said:


> I found the SanDisk 1 GB CF cards on sale. They were $250.00



Your story reminded me of the other day when I was clearing out my desk. I found a SanDisk 48 MB (yes MB not GB) CF card!! So funny. I will keep it just for sentimental reasons of what once was....


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## RGF (Mar 9, 2013)

Perhaps a bit OT but I have a 5DM3 and I notice with Lexar 1000x I may be a shot or two extra before I buffer out versus a Sandisk Extreme Pro. I think the extra speed does matter. Could a 1Dx owner confirm that the same is true for them?

As far as where I buy them, the usual mail order gaints (Amazon, BH, Adorama, ...) - who ever has the lowest total price (with shipping included). As a Amazon prime member I get 2 day free shipping and as an NAPP member I get free shipping from B&H and Adorama.


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## PureAmateur (Mar 9, 2013)

WhoIreland said:


> i can't believe people use Lexar....
> 
> I've had 3 fail...and any other pro's i talk to have had same experience and lost stuff..
> 
> everyone (in ireland) using sandisk for a while now...



Lexar must be not working well in Ireland, then! ???

I have used both Lexar and Sandisk and both work well! But I find that Sandisk just a bit over price because of the brand name. Of course I am not a pro, though.


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## 360_6pack (Mar 9, 2013)

I live in Perth West Australia. Bought 5D III May last year in Perth. Lexar 32gb 1000 cards were over $250 each here. I bought 2 from B&H on a sale acfter reading about it on this site. Paid for airfreight and had delivered within a week. Great service. I was able to track consignment all the way. Total $320. Definitely the say to go. At the time the B&H deal was $25 cheaper after adding in freight than Adorama and the freihht was quicker.


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## Stewbyyy (Mar 9, 2013)

WhoIreland said:


> i can't believe people use Lexar....
> 
> I've had 3 fail...and any other pro's i talk to have had same experience and lost stuff..
> 
> everyone (in ireland) using sandisk for a while now...



I'm Irish and 95% of my CF cards are Lexar, I have 1 Sandisk and 1 really old 2GB Fuji card.

I've never had a Lexar card fail on me. I buy all of mine from Amazon UK and they're the best cards I've ever had for such a stellar price.


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## Orangutan (Mar 9, 2013)

*Re: CF Cards - Test not Trust*

Here's my standard advice. Sure, buy a decent brand from a reputable dealer, but don't leave it there. I've bought mostly cheap cards from Amazon and Newegg (a lot of Transcend). But I always test them thoroughly before I use them for anything important.

The easiest way to test a new flash card is using a disk wipe program, such as DBAN. You make bootable media (CD or flash drive) and it wipes attached drives by overwriting several times. I typically do a 20-pass operation on each new card. If the card is good after 20-passes, it'll probably be good in the field (assuming you treat it with reasonable care).

*CAUTION!!!:* It's best to do this on a machine without a hard drive so you don't accidentally wipe your computer down to entropy.


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## expatinasia (Mar 9, 2013)

dilbert said:


> Is there some reason why Google won't answer this question for you?



Google does have the answer to most questions, doesn't it.

However, I had never even considered buying my CF cards from the US before, and only discovered they were almost half the price of the UK by mistake. That's why I wondered whether other CR members in Asia and elsewhere outside the US, buy their cards there. Google probably couldn't answer that question, though it might be able to once it finds this thread. I also wondered whether the US was the cheapest, or whether I had missed somewhere else.

In fact this little discovery (for me at least) means I might be buying a bit more than just CF cards from the US in future.


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