Best CF Cards

[magpieant]

Where would you say the best place for cheap CF cards is? And also, is there much difference between brands ?

I use SD in my d80, but have recently acquired a 40d - so I want to play with that too!

The sd cards I use range from Aldi £9 for 2 x 2gb up to Sandisk Extreme II - can't say I notice any difference between the 2 on the d80 - shooting in raw.

Cheers

Anth

 

[mastertrinity]

theres not really a bet place you just have to find cheap ones, and yes the cards do make a difference because its all down to read/write speed where one might be faster for those long exposures, and CF are better than SD because the CF can hold more even if they are the same GB and CF are about 3x as fast.

 

[photon]

CF are better than SD because the CF can hold more even if they are the same GB and CF are about 3x as fast.

What???

Smaller capacity cards from the same range are often a touch faster, but not enough to influence a purchase decision.

My tests on SanDisk Extreme III cards show that my SD cards are slightly faster than CF, but my newer CF card labelled as 30MB/s is the fastest (though take any manufacturer's speed claim with a large pinch of salt: all you can hope for is consistency).

Kingston 133x and even 100x are very close to Extreme III speeds. There have been reports of incompatability between high capacity Kingston CF cards and some cameras.

Some of the cheaper cards may have higher read speeds but slower write speeds than the more balanced SanDisk and Kingston cards. Approximately 50% higher and 50% lower.

My most recent purchase was from the cheapest Amazon seller. Card was genuine, service was crap, price was the best I could find.

 

[singlespeed]

You would only notice a difference in performance if you are actualy reaching the limit of one of the cards. If your shooting single frames and reviewing the histogram or recomposing, the image can be written to the card without causing problems (whatever write speed). Keep it on RAW to give a large amount of data to be stored. Then go for a burst of continuous shutter release and a faster card will start to show its worth.

A slow card will probably cope with a few frames before the buffer fills up and the fps starts to slow as the write speed starts governing the fps. Once the fps is being governed by the write speed, the difference between the different cards may be apparent.

If you don't need a large burst, a lesser card can be more than up to the job.


Higher read speed will show benefits when downloading the card as you could save a minute or two. As they say, time is money.

 

[magpieant]

Some nice answers - cheers folkies.

I tend to do one frame at a time mainly in RAW. But would like an 'emergency' card for burst shots.

Will probs end up going for Extreme III.

Cheers
Anth

 

[Al de Man]

I've only ever used CF in my DSLR, but in my experience, there isn't a huge amount of difference between the cards when waiting for a full buffer to clear.

As singlespeed says, the real speed difference comes into play when transferring the images from the card to your computer. A decent firewire cardreader can be three times quicker than USB if fed the right card which is significant when a full 8Gb card takes 20 minutes to download via USB.

You also have to consider the extra peace of mind afforded whilst using a reputable branded card.

FYI, I use Extreme III.

 

[photon]

I should add that my tests are with benchmarking software and a card reader/writer and I have non-camera uses for my cards where the differences are readily apparent.

Bear in mind that if a brand doesn't state its speed capabilities, it's likely it won't be up to much. Some brands, e.g. Pretec, I regard as fraudulent over their claims.

SanDisk cards from eBay sellers are more likely to be fakes.