CF Cards for 7D

sbeecroft

sbeecroft

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Stephen
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I have eventually made the decision to purchase a Canon 7D. I am now working out what I need to buy with it. As I currently have a 450D so have loads of SD cards. I am wondering what speed of CF card that I need. I understand that the the faster speed the better but I am wondering what speed is actually necessary, basically what can I get away with buying as the Cards jump in price quite a bit.

Also if somebody could recommend a brand of CF card to get.

Thanks in advance.
 
Hi Stephen
I don't have a 7D (wouldn't mind one though) but I should think unless you are shooting the cam flat out for 10-15 seconds then any decent CF card should suffice. There's a big buffer in the modern camera, especially the 7D so I suspect you should have no problem with something that writes at least 20Mb/sec.

I'm sure some 7D owners will jump in and let you know what they use, my preference for my 40D is the Integral i-Pro cards, I get them from memorybits they are not too expensive either. The Sandisk Ultra's are also good and they write upto 30MB/sec

here is an interesting read about CF/SD Cards LINKY
 
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You only need the fastest UDMA cards for 8 FPS. If you not worried about getting the absolute max from the body in terms of frame rate most any card will be ok.
 
7dayshop are excellent for good prices for all Sandisk cards.
 
Basically the speed of the card only really comes into it once the buffer is full. Until this point the buffer will let you shoot at top speed without any problem, but the faster the card, the faster the buffer will flush and the more speed you can maintain after this point.

I use two 32GB Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s cards but they ain't cheap.
 
I use a Sandisk Extreme III 30MB/s and I've never had a problem with high speed shooting. Would recommend one.
 
I have a couple of Sandisk 30mb/s and a highspeed Transcend card and they do just fine on my 7D :)
 
I use a couple of older Sandisk UltraII which I think are 15Mb on my 7D and unless you are really trigger happy they are fine I've never run out of frames yet.
 
Any card is fast enough if you do not fill up the buffer, which is quite large on the 7D. If you do fill it up then you will see the difference. And I do fill it up when shooting fast moving subjects or when I need every possible frame for a customer to choose from.
 
The newer sandisk and transcend cards are what I used. No a problem and the speed is more than enough for a D3!
 
Any Sandisk Ultra or Extreme will be fine. A word or warning though, dont buy from Ebay, or a re-seller on Amazon (though if they are sold by Amazon direct they are fine) as you may be unlucky and get a cheap card fraudulently branded as Sandisk.

Best Buy and Tesco actually do good deals on these!

I use a Sandisk Ultra (30mbs) which works fine on full burst with my 50D.
 
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nigpd said:
This is the card to get :thumbs:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Extreme-Compact-Flash-Cards/dp/B002NO7Q26/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=computers&qid=1302006107&sr=8-2
Click to expand...

Depends. If you're shooting RAW then an 8GB card is only going to hold circa 300 images which isn't many if you're trigger happy to shooting sports on high-speed. If you're only using JPEG or not taking many shots then fine but otherwise a larger card may be benefitial.

Also bear in mind that the issue of filling the buffer doesn't just apply to 8fps shooting. I often have the camera in single-shot mode but fire off multiple shots rapidly with individual presses of the release. If you have a slow card and are using RAW, then you can find the buffer fills up as you're still taking shots faster than it can flush them to the card, then you suddenly find the camera won't take another shot when you want it to as the buffer is full.
 
DucDuc said:
You only need the fastest UDMA cards for 8 FPS. If you not worried about getting the absolute max from the body in terms of frame rate most any card will be ok.
Click to expand...

Card speed has zero impact on frame rate until the buffer is full (15-20 raw images).
 
Vertigo1 said:
Depends. If you're shooting RAW then an 8GB card is only going to hold circa 300 images which isn't many if you're trigger happy to shooting sports on high-speed. If you're only using JPEG or not taking many shots then fine but otherwise a larger card may be benefitial.
Click to expand...

I understand and agree with your comments regarding number of images and the speed at which this card could get filled up if trigger happy.

My advice of getting the 8Gb card is based on three things. Firstly, my view that I dont want to "put all my eggs in one basket" with a larger card. Cards do fail, albeit very very infrequently. I'd rather have two 8Gb cards than one 16Gb card

Secondly, I think its a good compromise of Gb/£ and isnt a big initial outlay for a new 7D owner compared to going to a 16Gb card or even higher

Thirdly, if i know I only have approx 300 images to a card, it mentally makes me more circumspect with my shooting, going for fewer but more quality bursts rather than the machine gun approach
 
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Hi, Welcome to 7D ownership!
I bought mine in February and got two transcend 8gb 133x cards from mymemory. However, they seem to be out of stock at the moment.
From a usage point of view (shooting Raw) I find they are perfecty sufficient - no problems
 
I love my Sandisk Extreme Pro 64gb 90MB/S. It cost the earth, but I've never come close to filling it or regretting the purchase in 2 years!
 
Vertigo1 said:
If you're shooting RAW then an 8GB card is only going to hold circa 300 images
Click to expand...

If you said that five or six year ago they would have thought you were :cuckoo:
just goes to show how much technology has moved on.
 
16 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro 90MB/s UDMA works for me with EOS 7D
 
nigpd said:
I understand and agree with your comments regarding number of images and the speed at which this card could get filled up if trigger happy.

My advice of getting the 8Gb card is based on three things. Firstly, my view that I dont want to "put all my eggs in one basket" with a larger card. Cards do fail, albeit very very infrequently. I'd rather have two 8Gb cards than one 16Gb card

Secondly, I think its a good compromise of Gb/£ and isnt a big initial outlay for a new 7D owner compared to going to a 16Gb card or even higher

Thirdly, if i know I only have approx 300 images to a card, it mentally makes me more circumspect with my shooting, going for fewer but more quality bursts rather than the machine gun approach
Click to expand...



You know there's an argument that says having more small cards increases risk of a failure. First there's more chance of having a dud card with a defect. Second the card is most likely to have a problem caused by external factors when you replace it and forget to switch off power etc. There's more opportunities to drop, damage, accidently overwrite a full card etc. when you are changing out cards more often.

Of course if a card fails and you can't recover any of the files with a bigger card you lose the lot instead of just that card, so I understand the reasoning.

Personally that's why I like dual card slots for backup. Even if one slot only saves jpg so I can fit all the duplicates on a single card, its still better than trying to explain to a client that my card failed. I hope nikons replacement for the D700 has dual slots for this very reason, I was going to get one for my backup camera but I'm hanging on to the d300s as my backup for this very reason.
 
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