CF Cards

[ekkl]

[Ian]

Re: CF Cards

SanDisk Ultra is what used to be the high-speed product from SanDisk. These were later replaced by Ultra II. These cards are fine for standard performance cameras, but it's probably best to aim for the Extreme III type as these will let you download from cards at the fastest rate using typical card readers or when connecting your camera to your PC. They are at the sweet spot of price/performance.

Extreme IV cards are the highest performance cards supplied by SanDisk, but most cameras won't benefit from their performance headroom. Only the very latest cameras with UDMA support or card readers connected by FireWire 800 will show a useful increase in transfer speeds.

Ian

[StuartR]

Executive summary : I use cheap 2GB cards and they work fine in my 350D and new 40D

[Ian]

Re: CF Cards

Executive summary : I use cheap 2GB cards and they work fine in my 350D and new 40D

Actually, your new 40D is almost certainly a camera that will benefit from UDMA (266x and faster) cards.

Ian

[StuartR]

Re: CF Cards

Ian's right about the transfer speed of course, I forgot to mention that. However, I guess for the normal amateur, waiting an extra minute or so to copy files from a card to his / her PC is not a major inconvenience?

Just make a cup of tea while you wait

If you're copying from a card to an external drive in the field and you need the card back in the camera quickly then maybe the card's speed could be an issue.

[StuartR]

Re: CF Cards

Actually, your new 40D is almost certainly a camera that will benefit from UDMA (266x and faster) cards.

Ian

I didn't know that, is the math as simple as a 266x card will write twice as fast as my 133x ?

[Ian]

Re: CF Cards

Ian's right about the transfer speed of course, I forgot to mention that. However, I guess for the normal amateur, waiting an extra minute or so to copy files from a card to his / her PC is not a major inconvenience?

Just make a cup of tea while you wait

If you're copying from a card to an external drive in the field and you need the card back in the camera quickly then maybe the card's speed could be an issue.

Depends how big your card is. Let's say it's a 4GB card. A 66x or 80x card, like a SanDisk Ultra will transfer about 8MB/sec in real terms, or just over two minutes per GB, so nearly ten minutes for the whole card. A 133x (Extreme III) will halve that time to 5 minutes and a 266x (Extreme IV) will halve that time again to a couple of minutes or so. Double those times for an 8GB card and you realise speed matters

Ian

[StuartR]

Re: CF Cards

Double those times for an 8GB card and you realise speed matters

Ian

Agreed, but only if you're in a hurry (and have shot, in my case using a 40D, 1136 RAW images to fill the 8GB card!).

I don't remember ever shooting more than 200 pictures in one day but there will be several on the forum who have / do shoot more than that I guess, and for them I acknowledge write speed will be more important than it is for me.

Now, if speed affected image quality; then I would be buying the more expensive cards..

[Ian]

Re: CF Cards

Agreed, but only if you're in a hurry (and have shot, in my case using a 40D, 1136 RAW images to fill the 8GB card!).

I don't remember ever shooting more than 200 pictures in one day but there will be several on the forum who have / do shoot more than that I guess, and for them I acknowledge write speed will be more important than it is for me.

Now, if speed affected image quality; then I would be buying the more expensive cards..

I usually shoot RAW and JPEG and this can mean 20MB per shot

Ian