i decided to buy the fz18. It should arrive on thursday. Now i need to purchase memory cards. I have been looking all over the internet. Transcend is asking $41 (without tax) for a 4gb card. Is Transcend a reliable brand? To me this seemed like a good deal.

Transcend and Ridata are my two favorite cards in fact I have a new Transcend on the UPS truck as I type.......I bought a 8gb from Newegg.....actually I got it for my D80 but it will also work in my FZ18 ,I am sure........The insert with the FZ18 recommends a card at least 66X and I would buy faster if it were me.

133 or 150 X or at least a class 4 SDHC card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...mp;srchInDesc=

Thank you genece.

A faster card is worth the little extra money. We have three Panasonic cameras at our house, FZ5, LZ1 and that dang little one(can't remember the model number) my daughter uses to show me up with all the time. Anyway, my son's LZ1 doesn't seem to care what speed the card is but the wife's FZ5 only likes faster cards. The FZ5 will take up to 2-5 seconds to record each picture on a 60x speed card but no record lag using a 133x speed card. Not sure how the FZ-18 will react to slower cards but why take chances with memories.

Good information Calicajun. Thank you for sharing.

I looked around and decided on 2 ATP 4 GB 150x Class 6 SDHC cards. I hope those are fast enough.

I purchased a sdhc as well from the egg but,
if you don't have google check out yet
get it then goto buy.com get a free 1gb sd card its not big but, its enough to be free.
passwird.com is the source link

tinkerbell wrote: They are fast enough for sure......

and Calicajuna 60X card is plenty fast enough for a FZ5...... if the one you have is not ,its a bad card and you should try formatting it or see about exchanging it.....I have 32X cards that work just fine in the FZ5 and all previous FZs.

Think about it. you want SOME slack like a little more that is it.
Say for giggles the file size is 3mb just to say it.
And the camera shoots 4 shots a second. also for giggles.
that is 12mb a second your camera can shoot out. Now double that. 24mb a second is what you need for the card. Unless you are shooting
10mb files and 14 a second then I don't think the fastest one is needed. Altho even the class 6 is getting cheap and that is what I got