CF card speeds versus various bodies

If I wanted to make a CF purchase right now, considering I currently onlyhave a 40D, what is the best card I can get? I know I am able to use the Extreme III, but if I wanted to get an Extreme IV for compatibility with future bodies will it work with my 40D? I am not worried about maxing that cards capabilities right now, but want to make sure it is at least compatible.


On a related note, will even a 1D Mark III really fully utilize the speed available on a UDMA card at 45MB/s, or is 30ish really all I would need even for that smokin' hot body?

This site has exactly what you want. Rob Galbraith benchamrks a number of flash cards with specific cameras including the 40D. Check it out.


http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257

As far as I know, the great thing about CF cards is that you can take an old device and use it with the latest CF card - thr only drawback is that the max speed will be set according to your old device (assuming that the new card is much faster). Also, you can take a new device and use it with an old CF card - again, you lose speed: the card's speed will be the speed you'll be getting (assuming this time the card is slower than the new device).


To sum it up, you can use new/old device with new/old CF card, the bottleneck will be the slower one between the two.

Thanks, guys. It looks like, based on that site, that the 1D Mark III isn't really faster as far as throughput than my 40D, at least using CF. The fastest Canons were the 50D and 5D Mark II, which makes sense.


I will have to bookmark that site soI can check in on it when a new camera comes out, but for now it looks like my idea of getting a SanDisk Extreme IV or Ducati Edition with 8GB of capacity will work, since it appears to be both PIO and UDMA compatible. That puts me in good shape for if/when I get a new camera body down the road.


It is very interesting to me that, on the 1D Mark III test, the SDHC cards all significantly outperformed the CF. I always thought camera manufacturers used CF because it was the fastest, even though it was bulky. Apparently that is not the case. Makes me wonder why any new camera would have CF, or at least not have both, when SDHC is cheaper, faster and smaller than CF cards. Is it just a quirk of the 1D Mark III?

CF cards have built in chips - that's also why they are bigger, but it also means that the camera doesn't need to have some special circuit for it. I ASSUME that this fact reduces, maybe, the already big DSLR in size. That's might be the reason why DSLRs use CF cards most of the time (I might be wrong maybe... there is probably a better reason LOL).

A year ago, I ran the numbers on the SanDisk rebate program of the season. Extreme III CF 8GB cards had the best MB/buck (after rebate, admittedly) of what they had, so I went with three of those. I picked up some Extreme III SDHC 4GB cards as well, and they're good, but to me not amazing. The amazing thing is how much faster the SanDisk SDHC reader reads them compared to my no-name multi-format (but not SDHC!) reader reads.