Just how good are memory cards?

I was asked on the most recent Live Cast did I think it was really necessary to buy expensive cards. I said no and I stand buy that. What you "may" spend the extra cash on is speed. Shoot video or sports, and there is a need. But memory is memory. For the most part. Please don't any of you tech heads send me email. The bottom line is, a 16GB Transcend 600x card is just as good as a Lexar of the same speed. Spend the money if you want to, but anybody with real experience with all of them will tell you that the label stuck on the outside does not make it any better.

After yesterday's story about a man who lost his camera in a creek back in 2009, and then recovered a big chunk of all of his images after it had been sitting in the water all that time, may be a hard sell for ignoring me. Why? Because Michael Comeau used a Sandisk Ultra II card. That is going to make a great comercial for the Sandisk brand, that is for sure.

It is a pretty good story, and you might want to check it out on your own. A Mr. John Noerr found the camera, pulled the card, and low and behold there were images. Although the camera was totally trashed.

Image by John Noerr

After browsing through the images, he figured there might be enough info to track down the real owner. After spotting an address, a house with a purple door, and a bagel shop, John begin to search on Google maps. A while later, and presto, he found the house. Then he did a tax record search, and found out who owned it. According to John, that journey took hours of digging.

The whole story is here, but I promise you this... The fact that those images remained on the card had nothing to do with the brand. Promise.