Best place to buy fast CF cards?

chphoto

chphoto

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Chris
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I'll soon have a shiny new Canon 7D in my paws, and my CF cards from the 400D are going to be way too slow to keep up with 8 raw images per second, even in short bursts :lol:

I only seem to hear good things about 7dayshop, but are there alternative places with competitive prices?

Also, bearing in mind I do mainly sports and lots of burst sequences, would a 60mb/s card be able to keep up, or would 90mb/s be the way to go? I'm pretty set on a 16gb!

Thanks in advance :thumbs:
 
Amazon usually have some great offers, 8gb 60mb/s cards for ~£35 each a few months back, currently at £37.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext...7Q26/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297376919&sr=8-1
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I'll have a nose around...


I use the 60mb/s card in my 5DII and have no problems. 90mb/s starts getting pricy IMO.
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The 7D does 8 raw shots at 18mp per second, though...
8 photos per second x approx 20mb per photo = around 160mb/s :eek:

your 5DII is 3.9 shots per second x approx 25mb per photo = around 100mb/s
 
Cyprino said:
The 7D does 8 raw shots at 18mp per second, though...
8 photos per second x approx 20mb per photo = around 160mb/s :eek:

your 5DII is 3.9 shots per second x approx 25mb per photo = around 100mb/s
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Fair enough, if you're intended use is for multiple bursts then guess you'll need to be spending £100+ on each memory card!!
 
Cyprino said:
The 7D does 8 raw shots at 18mp per second, though...
8 photos per second x approx 20mb per photo = around 160mb/s :eek:

your 5DII is 3.9 shots per second x approx 25mb per photo = around 100mb/s
Click to expand...

You forget the buffer! Unless you really are machine gunning (and if you are I doubt you are actually getting the shots you want) you will never fill the buffer on modern cameras with a moderately fast card (30MBs+)
 
The speed of the card makes virtually zero difference to the number of shots before the buffer fills. So you can blam out 15 to 20 raw shots with any card.

After the buffer's filled the card speed does determine how quickly it empties. However, my testing has shown only a small difference using 45 MB/s and 60 MB/s cards (11 seconds vs 10 seconds). I don't own a 90 MB/s card but I'd be surprised if it's much faster - I suspect the camera's write speed may be the deciding factor.
 
Mymemory and memorybits are also good places to look for cards. I've used both.
 
i use 60mbps cards in mine and it flies .. i actually have to slow down because of me not because of the camera
 
I had thought about the buffer but was concerned it would fill in a similar time to my 400D, hence the need for fast cards. If a 'medium fast' such as 60mb/s will do the trick, I'll have me one o' those!
 
as i said i use sandisk extreme III 60mbps cards and its me who cant keep up with them .. not the other way round
 
SimonTALM said:
You forget the buffer! Unless you really are machine gunning (and if you are I doubt you are actually getting the shots you want) you will never fill the buffer on modern cameras with a moderately fast card (30MBs+)
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Thanks whiteflyer your YouTube link proves my point quite nicely. The chap machine guns away to fill the buffer, how many people will do that ever in a real life situation? Not many, one or two sports pros might once in a while but then the top end sports cameras have much meatier buffers!

600x (90MB/s) is wasted in the camera IMO. The only time they make sense is when downloading and you then you need a FireWire 800 reader to take advantage. USB2 is limited to about 30MB/s and that's if you have a UDMA reader or use your camera.
 
Cyprino said:
I had thought about the buffer but was concerned it would fill in a similar time to my 400D, hence the need for fast cards.
Click to expand...

The speed of the card has virtually zero bearing on how quickly the buffer fills on the 7D. You can have a 60MB/s card or a 1.5 MB/s card and you'll still be able to shoot 15-20 images before the buffer fills. Where the card does make a difference is in how quickly the buffer empties once you've filled it.

60 MB/s - 10 seconds
45 MB/s - 11 seconds
1.5 MB/s - 300 seconds

Here's some testing I did.
 
Well I've just got a 7D and will be replacing my cards but mainly because I shoot RAW so I need more space.

At circa 25MB/s a shot, 8GB and smaller cards really don't cut it anymore IMO so I'm planning on getting a couple of Sandisk 32GB 60MB/s ones, which Amazon have for around £127 atm.
 
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