Avoid Dane-Elec SD Cards

While doing the R3 on the Porter Cable C6110, I had a malfunction with my DSLR SD card. After I took the SD card out of the computer, to put back in the camera, it wouldn’t stay in. I would push it in, but the camera would just reject it. I’ve never seen this before, and it’s especially weird because SD slots are mechanically secured, not electronically, so it’s like the SD card wasn’t compatible with my camera (all the sudden).

It was at this point I remembered when I first got this camera, the SD card had a chunk of plastic break off at the end. I thought it was a cheap SD card, but didn’t care to replace it because it still worked. You can see where this chunk went missing from the card here:

Well, upon investigation, it turned out that the Dane-Elec SD card broke off another piece of plastic, this time inside my DSLR body. See that little blue piece of plastic lodged in the back of the slot? That completely disrupted the mechanics of the SD securing and ejection mechanism. If my DSLR doesn’t have an SD card in it, it won’t work, so this completely paralyzed my nice camera setup.

I used my point and shoot (and Zebralight H51!) to get these shots, so I apologize for the quality. You can see that the card is literally falling apart. I am even able to lightly bend the reader end of the card back.

I eventually got (lucky) it out with a toothpick and some help from gravity. This little piece of plastic rendered my DSLR useless.

I have never seen this happen with any SD card in my entire life. Not even early versions of the SD card fell apart like this. Dane-Elec makes a terrible product, and I recommend you avoid them. Had this piece of plastic lodged itself beyond the mechanism, or had the slot been damaged from recovery, it would have all been because of this poorly made SD card. That would have sucked.

Use Transcend if you need a quality deal, otherwise stick with SanDisk.

Update, 11-1-2011

It turns out that the fractured Dane-Elec SD card permanently damaged my DSLR. All SD cards that were inserted were not picked up by the camera and instead displayed a frustrating “No card in camera” error message, rendering the entire camera useless. The camera has been sent in for repair at Canon, on my own dollar. Thanks again, Dane-Elec.