CF Cards for 50D - 7D

[Tabazan]

Hello to all,


Regarding comfortable continuous shooting, fps capabilities and buffer available, which CF card do you use for theses two cams ?


I use a San Disk Extreme III on the 50D but sometimes it blocks (or the buffer blocks).


One told me to go with Extreme IV (45Mb/s) or Pro (90Mb/s) but the prices are ...(45 or 90 is not a bit too much for the price)


Other brands ?


Other experiences ?


Thanks !

[Brendan7]

I use a SanDisk Extreme UDMA 60mb/s for my 7D. 90mb/s is too much for most uses and very expensive, I considered the 90 but I am very pleased with the 60 and in my limited experience it represents a good balance between price and speed. How bad is the "blocking" you experience? I'm not sure just how fast your card would have to be to prevent it.


As for other brands, there are some other ones that make CF cards but SanDisk is the largest, (dare I say best), supplier of disk memory. Bryan uses their cards, and at least for me that's a good reason to get them.


brendan

[Tabazan]

How bad is the "blocking" you experience?

Well during (fast mode) burst shoot (sport action), I hear the interval between shoots slowing suddenly after 10-15 frames. Then stop/wait a bit and you need to retrigger to shoot. So 50D fault, card fault ??


I don't know if it's the card or the buffer. I learned to prevent it in releasing my finger and press again after 5-6 frames (making shorter sequences) . But that's not a way to go for a long quick action phases.


That apart, I find the 50D not bad at all at burst shoot, and at most things too. I don't feel the same with my (fabulous 5D mk II - love it so) with its bizarre and slow feeling (soft cha-clunk sound) during standard one shot (AND slow burst capacity (but it's not built for that)


Dummie question : the UDMA works on 50D / 5D mark II too ? What does it brings more than the standard card system ?


Thanks Brendan, and happy Easter

[Chris White]

Tabazan,

the UDMA works on 50D / 5D mark II too ? What does it brings more than the standard card system ?

UDMA stands for "Ultra Direct Memory Access". It is faster than D(irect)M(emory)A(ccess), hence the U(ltra) added. What it does is write directly to the memory without going through the host device's CPU. Since it writes directly, skipping in effect an additional transfer to and from, it is much quicker. UDMA is @ twice as fast than DMA. Standard cards, i.e. SanDisk Ultra II, are written to through the unit's CPU. That is why if you check you will find all of the new cameras with the high frame rates have UDMA. As the sensor sizes increase it is the only way to keep and increase speeds. If you do not use an UDMA enabled card your speeds will be will be much slower.


As to your original post, I also have a 50D and I use SanDisk Ultra III(30MB/s) and IV(40 and 45 MB/s) and Lexar Pro 300x(45MB/s) cards. In my shooting, I find very little noticeable difference between the four cards. If you are shooting RAW, then depending upon your situation that is the limit of the camera. Bryan lists the 50D at Max RAW at 16fps and the 7D at 15fps. Using a 45MB/s will add a little, but not a lot before you hit the buffer limit.


I was curious also about which cards would give me the best speed and I found some very useful information at Rob Galbraith's site. He has results for your 50D and 5D Mark II, but not Brendan's 7D. Here is a link to the 50D page:


http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9672


I shoot a lot of school basketball and soccer and I have come to use the same technique you have learned, series of short bursts. I have done it so much that it is natural to me now. I hope this helps you.


If it is any consolation, even the 1D Mark IV slows down, it just takes 35 or so frames before it hits the wall. Someday.... [:P]


Happy Easter to all,


Chris

[TucsonTRD]

I use a Lexar Professional UDMA 300x. I am very pleased with it and I don't think it was outrageously expensive for what you get. I have never pushed my high speed continuous shooting to the camera/card's limit. I always try to keep bursts under 10 frames as I haven't come across a need for an extended burst. So I can't tell you how the camera acted when it reached the limit of it's buffer.

[wusstigphoto]

I shoot HS and club sports over at 10fas.com (shameless plug I know ... use a 30D (8Mb)@5fps (40Mb/s) but I only have a (100x) 8G PQI card thats about 3 yrs old. What ever you use, you learn to deal with it as others mentioned by shorter bursts and technique.


That said, I just ordered a 7D (18Mb RAW) shooting at 8fps (Wooot!). So needing a 144Mb/s write speed compact flash to shoot indefinately, I ended up ordering the 16Gb Sandisk Pro (90Mbs) to minimize the write time lag. This should keep up at 5fps bursts... so if I try to maintain my current techique, the faster Shutter speed should yield me a higher percentage of 'keepers', and I should never see the write lag I see every now and then.


So I just paid ~$239 for the 16 Gb (90Mb/s) over at newegg.com ... retailers want $350+. I wanted a 16Gb CF cause sometime I shoot 3 games in a day so between 600-800 pics and dont want to change cards exposing stuff to the AZ elements (waay dusty).


A Sandisk Pro 8Gb CF Card (90Mb/s) will run you around $130 with the Transcend brand currently running at $192 (16Gb) and $101 (8Gb) @ 90Mb/s.


whatever you get will work just fine and will be outdated in a mere 3-5 yrs anyhow :-)

[Brian Kreitman]

Any idea when SanDisk will have their multiplier rebates again? I could use a pair of 16GB Extreme cards ( 60MB/s ) for my 7D, but they are fairly expensive now. My current Sandisk Extreme III 4GB cards (20mb/s, the older ones), can keep up with the 8fps for about 20 shots, but the cards fill up very quickly.


There have been enough stories about getting fake/mis-labeled CF cards, that I will only buy from the two biggies (Lexar and SanDisk), and even then, only buy from a large, reputable dealer, B&H is my favorite.

[shutr]

I've been useing Extreme IV in my 5DII with good results, plenty fast.

[Najib]

I think we need to know what format you are using for you're files (Raw or JPEG), before qualifying the performance of a CF card.


On my 50D I always record full raw 15MP + 8MP Jpeg. I had a 16GB Sandisk Extreme III and could get only 10 pictures before waiting for the buffer to empty. I acquired a 32 GB Pretec 567X, but did not see any improvement.

[crosbyharbison]

Just get a card that is x300 (45mb/s) <span>or faster and then the bottleneck will be your camera not your card. The 90mb/s models will generally justspeedup importing when going through a firewire 800 card reader.