Blogalicious: a philippine photo odyssey

Approved Memory Cards for D80

Approved Memory Cards for D40

Some popped the question ” is it ok to use MMC for nikon d80 or d40?”

My answer: before you rely heavily on the MMC card, please check manufacturers recommended memory card specs for your camera and check speed if your card… sometimes it may work for awhile but eventually breakdown because it cant handle the continous write speed of the camera.

After thinking about it, I did a little research on SD vs MMC

Maximum transfer rates of SD are faster than that of MMC. SD has the capacity of being 4 times as fast as MMC. Whereas MMC can transfer data at 2.5MB per second, SD can transfer data up to 10MB per second.

SD cards have a thicker casing and means that the SD card are more durable and resistant to electrostatic discharge, dust and damage.

SD cards have an erase-protect tab that you can slide to prevent accidental erasure of your data.

Point and Shoot Camera Manuals indicate (like this one SD500) that they can use MMC and SD CARDS… but none of the DSLR Manuals say that MMC is ok to use… I would think they would be ok to use for emergency purposes but in the long run with all that wear and tear with the faster write speeds of the DSLR.. they are probably bound to fail.. but am sure they work well with cellphones, pdas, point and shoot cameras.. so i guess it would be safe to say that high performance Digital SLRs are better off using high performance, high speed SD Cards, why risk loosing all those precious moments?

With the prices constantly dropping, SD cards will become more affordable..

Will it be safe to use other Brands like Ridata, Simple Tech, Kingston, Transcend?

Yes it would as long as you use the recommended specs using the higher speed cards.. 80x, 150x or better yet, using the “pro” versions of the memory card. I once tried using the ordinary Kingston 1GB Card on a D70… and it failed on me.. couldnt recover anything.. I wrote the manufacturers and they replied that I should send the card back to them for replacement.. They also said that I should have used the faster card or their pro version (which wasnt available at the store) because the card failure probably came from the camera writing too fast to the card.. and maybe overheated the card? hmm.. possible?
Supply of cards will depend on your location, Here in the Philippines the brand of memory cards that are readily available are Sandisk, Ridata, Kingston, Lexar, Transcend.