Warning. The cheaper the card the harder it is to recover. There is NOTHING worse than having a card write failure. I had an assortment of cheapo cards and one locked up during a shoot but my cam kept taking shots so i didn't notice it. I lost potentially the best image i've ever shot because of this. I destroyed those cards very soon after this. Another point is that many modern cam's rely on the cards for their speed and performance. Get a cheapo card you will get cheapo performance. My cam shoots 9 FPS in RAW with Sandisk Extreme III but only 5FPS with a chinese cheapo. I have NEVER had a Sandisk card write failure.
First thing i do is download my pics.
You only need to format a card every now and then. I don't use the in camera format very often. Only if i'm forced to in the field. Otherwise i'll delete the file on my PC. Don't bother with deleting the images-you need to delete the file they are in otherwise you'll end up with the index still left on the card, this is where you get write failures from. When an image has been taken and there is an old index still on the card and it tries to write the image to the old index.
In the camera world 'you get what you pay for' is very, very true.
Packhorse mate, don't use the in camera format. You'll find if you do you'll erase another batch by accident. The only time i use it is when i first get a new card and i format that or when i'm in the field and download images to my laptop. I don't want to waste the laptop batt so i format in cam.
Valuable lesson learnt there though aye mate.
