Latest in-camera write-speed Compact Flash benchmarks - 54 MB/s

[Eug]

SanDisk, Transcend and PhotoFast roll out speedy cards up to 64GB

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (in-camera write speed)
--------------------------
Photofast 533X - 45.8 MB/s
Transcend 600X - 43.2 MB/s
SanDisk Extreme Pro - 41 MB/s


ExpressCard CF Adapter (read speed)
----------------------------
SanDisk Extreme Pro - 96.8 MB/s
Photofast 533X - 77 MB/s
Transcend 600X - 74.3 MB/s

EDIT:

The Transcend 600X gets ~ 54 MB/s in my Canon EOS 7D.

 

[rivan]

So the question now is: is there a chart to tell me how fast my camera will go?

Though I'm not sure it'd make any difference to me - I'm not sure I push my 30D so hard I'm waiting for my card anyway.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: rivan
So the question now is: is there a chart to tell me how fast my camera will go?

Though I'm not sure it'd make any difference to me - I'm not sure I push my 30D so hard I'm waiting for my card anyway.

Yes. Although these cards haven't been tested on the 30D, we already know the 30D is the bottleneck, not current cards. See here. Your 30D never gets past 7 MB/s regardless of the card used.

For other cameras, look here.

 

[ElFenix]

SanDisk's list of 64GB-incompatible cameras includes the following:
Nikon D300
Nikon D2Xs
Nikon D3X

wtf

seriously, that's some fail right there.

 

[Eug]

And we've found these cameras to be 64GB-incompatible also:
Nikon D700
Nikon D3

Personally I wouldn't care that much. I wonder if a firmware update can correct this, but even if not, 2 x 32 GB is fine.

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: rivan
So the question now is: is there a chart to tell me how fast my camera will go?

Though I'm not sure it'd make any difference to me - I'm not sure I push my 30D so hard I'm waiting for my card anyway.

Yes. Although these cards haven't been tested on the 30D, we already know the 30D is the bottleneck, not current cards. See here. Your 30D never gets past 7 MB/s regardless of the card used.

For other cameras, look here.

Much as I expected.

Thanks for the link.

 

[Shimmishim]

I wouldn't want to shoot with a 64GB card... imagine if that card failed and you were in the middle of shooting a wedding...

 

[Eug]

Well, one thing to note... Just one hour of video is 20 GB. So, a 64 GB card is a little over 3 hours of video.

I too would prefer two 32 GB cards though, or maybe four 16 GB cards. Well, actually, probably just one 32 GB card or two 16 GB cards for now.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
I wouldn't want to shoot with a 64GB card... imagine if that card failed and you were in the middle of shooting a wedding...

Well that is what I said when I bought my 2 gig cards with my 6MP K100. 250 photos in raw per card.

Now in my K-20 with the same card you know how many photos i get in raw+jpg? 50.

 

[Eug]

ARRRGGGH. I was just about to order the 600X 16 GB Transcend CF, but it's suddenly disappeared off the Newegg.ca website.

Dunno why, considering it's still on the US site.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: Eug
ARRRGGGH. I was just about to order the 600X 16 GB Transcend CF, but it's suddenly disappeared off the Newegg.ca website.

Dunno why, considering it's still on the US site.

NO CF CARD FOR YOU!

 

[akugami]

Just wondering how much those higher speed rated cards really help. Especially on cameras with a relatively large buffer.

I own a couple 266x Kingston Ultimate CF cards and on my 50D it seems plenty fast for me. I'm surprised at the bad rating on it. Unless I'm snapping bursts of RAW shots I rarely run into buffer problems. Doesn't hit the buffer limit on JPEGs when I was playing around with it. I've mostly taken RAWs with it.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Adul

Originally posted by: Eug
ARRRGGGH. I was just about to order the 600X 16 GB Transcend CF, but it's suddenly disappeared off the Newegg.ca website.

Dunno why, considering it's still on the US site.

NO CF CARD FOR YOU!

Heh. My local store has ONE left at another site so I've asked them to bring it in. More expensive, but it seems to be the only place in Canada with the card. Last one in Canada? Hope I get it.

Originally posted by: akugami
Just wondering how much those higher speed rated cards really help. Especially on cameras with a relatively large buffer.

I own a couple 266x Kingston Ultimate CF cards and on my 50D it seems plenty fast for me. I'm surprised at the bad rating on it. Unless I'm snapping bursts of RAW shots I rarely run into buffer problems. Doesn't hit the buffer limit on JPEGs when I was playing around with it. I've mostly taken RAWs with it.

With a fast card and some cameras you can basically take JPEGs forever. RAW is the bigger issue, and lately I've been taking more RAW than JPEG. (Mac OS X has native RAW support, so you don't have to pre-convert the image to look at it.)

It's actually not a huge issue on the 7D since the thing has a 15 shot RAW buffer, but still with a slow card it can take just about forever to clear the buffer.

If I can get 40ish MB/s out of the card I'll be happy enough. If the shots are 28 MB each, 15 RAW will take less than 10 seconds to clear after a 2 second burst.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: akugami
Just wondering how much those higher speed rated cards really help. Especially on cameras with a relatively large buffer.

I own a couple 266x Kingston Ultimate CF cards and on my 50D it seems plenty fast for me. I'm surprised at the bad rating on it. Unless I'm snapping bursts of RAW shots I rarely run into buffer problems. Doesn't hit the buffer limit on JPEGs when I was playing around with it. I've mostly taken RAWs with it.

With a fast card and some cameras you can basically take JPEGs forever. RAW is the bigger issue, and lately I've been taking more RAW than JPEG. (Mac OS X has native RAW support, so you don't have to pre-convert the image to look at it.)

It's actually not a huge issue on the 7D since the thing has a 15 shot RAW buffer, but still with a slow card it can take just about forever to clear the buffer.

If I can get 40ish MB/s out of the card I'll be happy enough. If the shots are 28 MB each, 15 RAW will take less than 10 seconds to clear after a 2 second burst.

That's the thing. Maybe it'd be different for sports photography where every split second counts but even when I was taking pictures at the Atlantic City Air Show I wasn't running into problems with getting a shot off. I tended to shoot single shots but also rapid bursts of shots for a second or two for faster planes such as the F-22 Raptor.

The Kingston Ultimate 266x cards are actually rated worse than the Kingston 133x CF cards and worse than a lot of the cards on the web site robgalbraith.com for use on the Canon 50D which I own. Makes me wonder how much use those faster (and more expensive) cards are and how much they actually help the average photographer.

 

[Eug]

You're right. Most of the time it doesn't matter that much. However, it should be noted that the 7D is more suited for sports photography than the 5D Mark II. The 7D has more (pseudo-)reach, and is over twice as fast. A 15 shot RAW buffer would be exhausted in less than 2 seconds. Usually that's good enough, but the clearing time is still important in some cases.

The 5D Mark II is only 3.9 fps, and with a 13 shot RAW buffer, that's over 3.3 seconds' worth.

The other issue is UDMA vs. non-UDMA. Most of the time it isn't an issue, but some people have run into problems with slow non-UDMA cards when shooting video. Most of the UDMA cards start at about 300X.

 

[Eug]

I'm getting 54 MB/s from my 7D and the Transcend 600X card.

It doesn't extend the buffer size, but it does really speed up the memory clearing time.

 

[Koing]

It doesn't extend the buffer but it clears down faster so you can shoot the next frame faster then if you say got a budget card

I paid £45 for a San Disk IV that is rated at 45MB/s but also to note it'll be faster to transfer the images off your camera to your Mac if you have a fast card reader.

Koing

 

[Eug]

Buffer clearance times (after buffer is exhausted, but writes actually start once the 1st picture is shot):

Transcend 600X (UDMA 6) ~ 8 seconds
SanDisk Extreme III (UDMA) ~ 21 seconds

I do have a Firewire 800 card reader, but my hard drive is actually probably the limiting factor now. It's getting close to full and it's a 3 year old model.