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Doug Pardee 3:06pm, 7 April 2007
The XTi/400D, XSi/450D, T1i/500D, and XS/1000D apparently can use any size card currently available. The original Digital Rebel (300D) and XT/350D can handle up to 8GB with no trouble.

For the XSi/450D, T1i/500D, and XS/1000D:

The XSi/450D, T1i/500D, and XS/1000D use SD/SDHC cards rather than CF—the size limit on those camera is not yet known, but probably is the 32GB maximum size that SDHC allows.

Important: if you use Windows XP and an SDHC card reader, you may have problems with cards over 4GB when you put them in the card reader and plug the reader into your computer. Microsoft has a hotfix for this which you should install.

For the original Digital Rebel (300D) and the XT/350D:

I do not recommend buying cards larger than 8GB for the DReb/300D and XT/350D, because the camera cannot format them. Well, it can format them, but it can only format 8GB of them. You'll lose the extra capacity.

If a larger card is preformatted, either by the manufacturer or with a computer, the camera apparently can use it; I haven't heard of any problems. But if you ever format the card in-camera on a DReb/300D or XT/350D, you'll end up with an 8GB card. Recovering the extra space requires a fair amount of computer savvy—you'll need to repartition the card and from what I hear this isn't as easy as it should be, especially on Macs.

If you have a DReb/300D or XT/350D, stay with 8GB and smaller cards, and you'll be fine.

Note: on the DReb/300D and XT/350D, the "estimated shots remaining" counter on the LCD only goes up to 999. If you put in a card that can hold 2000 shots, you'll see "999" until you've shot over a thousand pictures. This doesn't affect the number of shots that you can take; you just won't know how much of the card you've used so far until the counter finally drops to 998. This is not a problem on the XTi/400D, XSi/450D, T1i/500D, and XS/1000D.

On the original DReb/300D, cards over 2GB might be noticeably slower than 2GB or smaller cards. It seems like the original Digic chip doesn't handle the FAT32 file system used on large cards as efficiently as it does the FAT16 file system used on 2GB (and smaller) cards. For the microdrives that the original Digic chip was designed for, this probably wasn't a big deal.

A general caution:

Be careful where you buy your CF cards. There are many deals on eBay and the like that are too good to be true, and they aren't true. Almost all of the CF cards offered for sale on eBay are fakes—they might have less capacity than advertised, they might be slower than advertised, they might be cards that the manufacturer rejected as defective. More information here and here.

Philosophical notes about large vs. small cards:

At the moment, you'll probably get a better deal on smaller cards (4GB, 8GB).

Downloading many GB of photos can take a long time, especially if you use the USB cable instead of a card reader. Using smaller cards and a card reader can make downloading more pleasant.

I personally like to have more than one card, so that there can be a card in the camera ready for shooting while I've got another card in the card reader. (I actually have 7 cards so far.)

Many people are leery of "too many eggs in one basket", and prefer to have a number of smaller cards.

One problem with using a bunch of smaller cards is the possibility of bending one of the pins in the camera's CF card slot when inserting a card. The XTi/400D seems to be more delicate than earlier models in this regard—at least, I'm seeing many more reports of bent pins on the XTi/400D. A bent pin generally requires sending the camera back to Canon for repair. Please be careful when inserting your CF cards, especially on the XTi/400D. Bent pins aren't a problem on the SD/SDHC cards used by the XSi/450D, T1i/500D, and XS/1000D.
michael.morgan62 15 years ago
i just fixed 2 bent pins in cf slot of my 8 mo.old canon rebel xt,myself.email me at michael.morgan62@yahoo.com