The Zoom H1 will be out in two days, and it retails at only $100. That's what I'm looking at for an audio recorder.

The 4gb limit is a 12 minute limit. Do you ever need to film for longer than 12 minutes? Like, really? Very seldom is that ever an issue. And yes of course you can use all the space on the card: they're just saved as clips instead of one continuous sequence. It's much better that way anyway, much easier to manage and edit.

When I bought mine the Canon rep (I fortunately went to the camera store while a big trades event was on) made sure that I knew that only class 6 SDHC cards would work on the T2i. I... don't know exactly why he was so adamant about that though. I did some research, and apparently class 4 is more than enough from a physical hardware standpoint to handle the data processing needed for writing HD video. And sure enough, I test out my camera using a few class 4 cards and there's no problem at all. In fact, the only time I ever had the card writing get backed up and I lost the file was using the class 6 card the store provided me (I still have no idea what conditions provoked the card to slow down then, it was very spontaneous).

The kit lens can do some great things, if you use it right. But it can be a little limiting at times.

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http://vimeo.com/corax

I don't know about class 4... Let's review:

Class 4 = 4MBps (which is 32Mbps)
Class 6 = 6MBps (which is 48Mbps)
Class10 =10Mbps (which is 80Mbps)

According to Canon's own user manual for the camera, the bandwidth is approx. 330 MB/min (which is about 5.5MBps, or 44Mbps). This means that Class 6 cards are barely sufficient to support sustained throughput at maximum average bitrate. This also means that Class 4 cards are too slow for reliable operation.

Corax, you may have been lucky with that Class 4 card you bought; it seems that it can support much more than what it's certified for.

It is possible that the DiGiC chip doesn't always push compressor all the way to the bandwidth limit. If the scene has little motion, it may throttle down the bandwidth, rather than throttling down the compression and using up the bandwidth (this doesn't make too much sense, though, but perhaps there's a plausible explanation). More likely explanation (in Corax's case) would be an extremely well-built Class-4 card, that seem to be able to handle Class-6 throughput well.

Standard AVCHD camcorders cannot go beyond 24Mbps (the bitrate limit for the AVCHD standard), which is clearly comfortably below Class 4 minimum throughput. However, Canon's DSLRs don't do AVCHD; therefore, they aren't limited to 24Mbps, and can (and do) encode at much faster rates (7D goes up to 48Mbps). That's great for cleaner fast motion video, but it does require fast cards. Since the throughput is very close to the Class 6 minimums, for critical work, better choice would be a Class 10 card.

Ah, good analysis Vasic. I'm only going off my practical experience here, and the build quality is the most likely explanation to my eyes as well. My class 4 (8gig) card is very nice, and my class 6 (8gig) is... well I've never seen the brand anywhere, not even on cheap sites.

So I suppose the lesson there is that, while you want the highest bitrate possible, don't sacrifice the manufacturing quality.

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http://vimeo.com/corax

I have a class 6 transcend card on the way. Does having a higher speed card aid the camera or prevent any possible problems, or is it a waste of chas to go any higher than a C6.

Tryin' to live the dream, any advice?

Well, that's what we were just discussing: a better, faster card will of course alleviate potential problems. I wouldn't say these problems are very common though. Again, only once have I ever had the card fail when writing, and for no apparent reason. If you're being frugal, I would fully suggest a class 6. If you want the extra padding the 10 would probably be worthwhile.

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http://vimeo.com/corax

Okay, I guess I'll buy a class 10 next time.

One other question, and I hope it's not a problem with my camera. When I was messing around with my camera earlier today, w/o a memory card in video mode, my camera kept turning off after 15-20 secs or so. I'm hoping this is just some random feaure that is freakin a noob out, does anyone know what's happening?

Tryin' to live the dream, any advice?

I assume you weren't recording, right?

Might want to check to see what your auto-shut-off is set to. 😉

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http://vimeo.com/corax

Is is by any chance overheating? It will shut down if you shoot too much video without giving it a break to cool down (summer temperatures won't help either). That is the one single thing I can think of that must be planned around when shooting movies with DSLRs.

Nope Corax was right, I did have noob freakout. It was just the auto-shutoff settings.

BTW do you guys have shorts or projects that you've recently completed or are working on with your t2i?

Tryin' to live the dream, any advice?

Sure! http://vimeo.com/corax/videos

Those four newest ones are all done on the T2i.

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http://vimeo.com/corax