What Brand Filters & Memory Cards You Trust?

[ColinG]

Filters and Memory cards:

Whats your train of thought here? Obviously, if you have a Ferrari you're not going to put cheap tyres on it, so does the same apply with filters? Who makes suitable filters and who's do you want to stay away from?

Are memory cards all the same as far as quality goes? Again, which ones are satisfactory and which ones do you want to stay away from?

I think that this will do it as far as my silly Q's go. I see these as little queries that I need to clear up and to be in the know about.

Thanks in advance.

[DigMe]

If you want the absolute greatest chance of reliability with memory cards I would go with Lexar or Sandisk. Having said that these memory cards are overall pretty reliable and aside from Sandisk I've also used Kodak and Transcend brands with no problem. There are stories of failures and the top tier companies will recover your data for you if their card fails.

One other thing thiugh is speed. Sandisk's class 10 card is faster than Transcend's and that has been proven.

I don't use a lot of filters but B&W and Lee are two of the big hitters and they have the prices to show.

[morech]

Originally Posted by ColinG

Filters and Memory cards:

Whats your train of thought here? Obviously, if you have a Ferrari you're not going to put cheap tyres on it, so does the same apply with filters? Who makes suitable filters and who's do you want to stay away from?

Are memory cards all the same as far as quality goes? Again, which ones are satisfactory and which ones do you want to stay away from?

I think that this will do it as far as my silly Q's go. I see these as little queries that I need to clear up and to be in the know about.

Thanks in advance.

I will preface this by saying that I am by no means an expert on filters or memory cards. I tend to stick with what I know on these two topics. You are right in what I assume what you mean by your analogy "you get what you pay for". There are many great filter manufacturers out there and there are many cheap companies that make sub-par products. In the filter world this his hard to know because you don't find many if any big name camera manufacturers making filters (or memory cards for that matter) under their names.
From what I have read when I did research many years ago your top three filter companies are: Hoya (HOYA FILTERS - The Difference is Clear), Tiffen (Tiffen.com), and B&W (Schneider Optics - Home). Others may tell you that there are other filter companies that they prefer, and they too are right. I personally only use a few filters (this is not something that I have personally chosen to load my bag with tons of). I am personally a Hoya fan. I only use CP, ND, and UV filters. I don't use many others as I personally do not have a need for them for the type of my photography. Before investing tons of money in filters, make sure you learn your camera equipment to the point you could operate it in the manual modes (Av, Tv, M, etc) without much thought. It is more important in my opinion to learn the basics of it all before complicating it with filters. This is to make sure you get the most from your camera. Technically you could mount tons of addons and customizations (probably even a latte maker)... but unless you know how to use it all, you will just have a fancy latte maker. Also keep in mind, that you are shooting digital. So some of the things that filters advertise to do you can do within your camera or post production software (warming, cooling, etc).
Here are some links to the basics of filters for you:
How to Use Filters
CameraFilters.com - Official Site


On to Memory Cards...
Just like everything else, you get what you pay for. I stick to SanDisk for my CF cards. I do not know off of memory what your camera takes, so maybe other people here can help you with brand. But there are things you want to stick to in cards and there are things that want to stay away from. Obviously, if you go and find 64GB memory cards for pennies... stay far away. Memory cards are often the underdiscussed. I would not scrap when it came down to the items that were holding all of my precious pictures. If you have a crap card, you will have crap ability in ensuring you stay error and loss free.
Ideally you want a reliable (not likely to corrupt files) and a fast memory card. The faster and more reliable, usually the more $$$.

Here are some things for you to read over:
Memory Cards Explained. Choosing the right memory card. - Park Cameras Online
Digital Camera Memory Cards Explained – PictureCorrect
Camera memory cards explained | Technology guides | Techniques | What Digital Camera

Hopefully someone here can explain the different "classes" of memory cards.

[auddii]

I personally am not using any filters right now, but I know a lot of people who never take them off their lenses. Like most anything else, there are at least three sides to the filter issue, with every side thinking they're right.

One school is that you paid $1k and up for a lens, and there's no way they are going to put an inferior piece of glass in front of it no matter what - they don't want to lose image quality. Therefore, they don't use filters at all or unless absolutely necessary (when an ND filter is required to have a slow shutter release on a sunny day to slow water movement, for example).

The second school of thought is similar, but they feel that the high quality (and expensive) filters are a good enough quality that it will not severely affect the quality of your images. They will only buy good quality filters, and will interchange them and often will leave a UV filter or something similar on to protect the front element of the lens.

The third school of thought thinks that even "low quality" filters will not significantly affect the image quality their lens can produce, and they will buy a fairly inexpensive filter to keep on their lens to protect the front element.

Personally, I'm not sure where I stand on this. I'm sure someone has done side by side comparisons of cheap and really expensive filters on the same lens. I have not tried searching for the info, but as I said, I also currently don't have a filter on my lens.

As for the memory cards, I use SD, and I only have lexar and sandisk. I did attempt to order some rather cheap ones off of ebay, and after a week, ebay sent me an email saying that they believed it was a scam, and paypal refunded my money. When I mentioned what happened on the forum, I got another warning that sometimes people will take cheaper cards and relabel them as the lexar or sandisk brands.

However, memory seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper, so I haven't tried to get the "ultimate cheap deal" anymore. That being said, I have an xsi, and imagine the fastest write speed is not as fast as some of the professional cameras. I have not bother to buy a class 10 because I don't think my camera can utilize the speed (and what's the point of spending all that money if it doesn't gain me anything). However, I have not looked up the write speed, so I don't know for sure.

I just checked my camera, and I currently have a Lexar 4g class 4 in it. A "slow" card. If I shoot in continuous burst mode, after about 6-8 photos I get a signal that it can't take anymore photos because it's "busy" writing to the cards. I do not frequently shoot in long bursts, so I think this has bothered me once since owning the camera (not quite two years).

Just my lowly opinions. Take them for what their worth, and remember no questions are silly or stupid! We all started out knowing nothing. :)

[crazeazn]

I only put expensive filters on my more pricier lenses to protect the front element. Yes I've chipped front elements with the hood on. No I have no idea how I did so.

1) Hoya HD or B+W FPRO (multicoated), there probably is a marginal IQ loss, but the security just makes me feel better.

2) Sandisk, Lexar are the top brands. You may want to get smaller multiple cards just in case one fails.

[DigMe]

Yeah, I'm not big on filters either. I have a 3-stop ND filter that I use when I want to open up my aperture in full sunlight, that one's a Marumi which I bought because of it's rep for great bang-for-buck in ND filters. Really the only other filter I use is a B&W UV filter that came with my used Tamron 28-75 f/2.8.

brad

[DougC]

Heliopan & B+W
Sandisk. We were shafted by Lexar years ago and I, for one, still remember and as such, will never buy their products again.

[Bob_S]

Even within brands such as Hoya, there are some really good and really bad examples of filters so unfortunately you can't just shop those by brand. There are a few filter review/comparison sites out there. I recommend reviewing them and seeing the differences in each of them before investing.

As far as cards, I bought Lexars when they were on sale and haven't looked back.