Compact flash adaptors

Fatsam82

Fatsam82

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samuel
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Morning all

Just after some advice. My canon 400d uses compact flash memory. And just seen on the old faithful amazon that you can get a cf adaptor so you can use a sd card.
Has anyone ever used this?
Does it slowdown the writing speed of you take lots of pictures.
Are they any good?
Cheers for any advice
 
How many, how big, how fast are your SD cards?

CF cards are cheap, wouldn't it make sense just to buy a couple of small CF's? The 400d doesn't have massive files and a couple of 8gb cards would hold loads of images.
 
It's mostly to transfer easier to iPad. But have recently been informed that iPad doesn't support RAW images just jpeg
 
Fatsam82 said:
It's mostly to transfer easier to iPad. But have recently been informed that iPad doesn't support RAW images just jpeg
Click to expand...

I've taken photos in RAW and imported them on to an iPad 2 using the camera connection kit. No idea what the iPad does to them in terms of storage, but i have certainly been able to view the pictures and edit them using Snapseed. I'm guessing it probably stores the edited pics as jpeg though.
 
I only use CF adaptors and nothing else, they work great as long as you don't stick eye-fi card into them. Never had any problem and allows me to get use £24 32GB SD cards rather than £60 CF cards.

I also use iPad a lot. it can view RAW files but due to the size of iPads, it's not really usable to store RAW files after each day. My 16GB version with 4GB free gets filled after 1 day. So I bring a cheap and cheerful netbook for backup, I shoot RAW+JPEG and then only transfer the JPEG onto iPad for reviewing.
 
I've just been thinking about getting one of these, I've just got a new laptop and it's got an SDXC reader built into it. I'm going to shoot with my 5D3 on CF to raw and SD to Jpeg and see how I get on with it before getting any adapters though.

I don't machine gun usually so I might be ok, I've already got some good, fast SDXC cards for the 5D3 and had a couple of extras when I had a 60D.
 
why not just connect your card reader to your tablet through a connection cable.
there is no internal reader on an ipad so no need to restrict yourself to a format.
I read from an external card reader onto my Nexus tablet quite often
 
I wouldn't risk using an SD adapter - that's just adding another link in the chain that can possibly introduce reading errors.
Just get a CF card reader or better still a card reader that has slots for various card and be done with it.
There wouldn't be much difference in cost.
 
DizMatt said:
why not just connect your card reader to your tablet through a connection cable.
there is no internal reader on an ipad so no need to restrict yourself to a format.
I read from an external card reader onto my Nexus tablet quite often
Click to expand...

philwillmedia said:
I wouldn't risk using an SD adapter - that's just adding another link in the chain that can possibly introduce reading errors.
Just get a CF card reader or better still a card reader that has slots for various card and be done with it.
There wouldn't be much difference in cost.
Click to expand...

iPad has a very low drive current, not even standard USB key drives will work. so getting a card reader to work through USB connection kit will fail spectacularly.

There's absolutely no reason to look down on CF-SD adaptor. They work and there's nothing to go wrong.
 
wuyanxu said:
There's absolutely no reason to look down on CF-SD adaptor. They work and there's nothing to go wrong.
Click to expand...
Connection from SD card into CF adapter into cable into port of whatever it's being downloaded (computer/iPad or whatever) to is an extra link that can cause read errors and corrupt data.
Not saying it will, saying it CAN.

Any time you add another link or variable in the chain increases the posibility of an error occuring.
 
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philwillmedia said:
Connection from SD card into CF adapter into cable into port of whatever it's being downloaded (computer/iPad or whatever) to is an extra link that can cause read errors and corrupt data.
Not saying it will, saying it CAN.

Any time you add another link or variable in the chain increases the posibility of an error occuring.
Click to expand...
The camera doesn't have SD slot, use the CF adaptor for writing. Why would you continue to use CF adaptor when reading? iPad camera connection kit have SD card reader.

Questions being asked:

Fatsam82 said:
My canon 400d uses compact flash memory.
Click to expand...

Fatsam82 said:
It's mostly to transfer easier to iPad. But have recently been informed that iPad doesn't support RAW images just jpeg
Click to expand...
 
and again, putting a CF adaptor into the camera, then a SD card into the adapter is adding another link.
A bad connection between the adapter and the SD card will possibly cause errors in the images on the SD card.
Why increase the possibility of errors occuring by adding something that doesn't need to be there - ie: the adapter?
Eliminate all possibility of errors happening rather than increasing it.
Obviously, your view differs.
 
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The chance of CF-SD adaptor failure both mechanically and electronically is much less than flash memory going corrupt. There's more chance of flash memory dying after too many writes. I've had flash died of too many writes but have never had SD connector or CF connector fail.

The weakest link is the most likely failure, adding a reliable link doesn't change the total strength of the chain.

Buying quality branded cards should be higher in the priority list, and replacing them after so many photos (eg 2 camera photo number tick overs).


However, having said all that, you got to watch out what type of CF card your camera support. Some older cameras only support Type 1 CF cards, whereas all adaptors are thicker type 2 variant.
 
I've also used them extensively for similar reasons to what others have mentioned (iPad use and having a number of SD cards which are cheaper than equivalent CF cards, as well as having other cameras that only use SD).

I've had one or two error messages when inserting (but then I can also remember getting an error message from a cheap CF card), but always with cheap SD cards. While using branded cards like Sandisk I have never had a problem.
 
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