Flash Memory write speed

[rivan]

I've got a Canon 30D and my CF card might be dying, so I'm buying a new one.

How fast a card do I need to avoid limiting my camera while shooting at top speed?

For these cards, as an example. The Ultra II says 15MB/sec write speed, the Extreme III says 20MB/sec. Will the ultra max it out? Will the extreme?

 

[jpeyton]

DPReview showed that the 30D hit 5FPS with both the Ultra II and Extreme III.

Shooting JPEG (Fine), the Ultra II got a 35 frame burst, while the Extreme III got a 39 frame burst, before the buffer was full.

With the buffer full, the Extreme III could still shoot at 1.7FPS, while the Ultra II shot a little under 1FPS.

Writing to the card was roughly twice as fast on the Extreme III vs. the Ultra II with JPEGs.

For RAW, it was 11 frames for the Extreme III and 10 frames for the Ultra II, with smaller differences in buffer-full-frame-rate and write times (because of the larger file size).

Do you shoot a lot of stuff at 5FPS? Get the Extreme III. If you never fill your camera's buffer, the extra speed is probably not worth it. Downloading the files onto your computer will be faster with the Extreme III, but I spend way more time shooting than I ever do waiting for photos to download onto my PC.

 

[rivan]

I occasionally shoot at 5fps, but not for bursts that long.

Thanks for the info.

 

[twistedlogic]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
DPReview showed that the 30D hit 5FPS with both the Ultra II and Extreme III.

Wow, nice info. I asked this question on another forum and got no replies.