Svenler's Fashion & Commercial Photography Blog

A little while ago I had a discussion with someone about memory cards. In his opinion, all memory cards are the same and you should just buy the cheapest one. In my opinion, memory cards are different with respect to the manufacturing quality and the quality of the internal parts. In order to stop him from getting into a heated discussion about something neither of us had any statistical details, I decided to look up the difference between memory cards as measured in MTBF and operating temperatures. MTBF stands for “Mean Time between failures” and basically tells you how long a card will last till a card error ruins your pictures.

I have been using high-end cards like Delkin or Sandisk, because I believe that they offer the best quality for the money and I rather spend a few dollars more than lose important pictures. As it turns out, my assumption that the higher end cards would have a much lower failure rate and be operable at more severe conditions was spot on. Here is the data that I collected during my research:

MTBF Values (the higher the better):
Dolphin CF Card (low end): MBTF 500,000
PNY CF Card (medium range): MBTF 1,000,000
Delkin CF Card (high end): MBTF 3,000,000

Operating Temperature:
Dolphin: 0°C to 60°C
PNY: 0°C to 70°C
Delkin: -25 °C to 85°C

As you can clearly see, high end memory cards do not only last longer, they can also be used under much more severe cold and heat. I buy my memory cards from Amazon or B&H because both offer a fast turnaround and the lowest prices around.

If you use my links to order your memory cards, it helps me sustain this website and write more articles on issues that interest you.