Extreme Pro 90mb/s Cards - Anyone used one?

davidsteward

davidsteward

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I recently moved from a 450D to a 7D. So I have 4+ 16gb SD Cards which aren't much use to me, yet I have only a single 8gb CF for my 7D.

As I understand, the xxD and xD bodies are sticking with CF due to speed and robustness. Which is fair because the 7D's 8fps sure needs a quick card to keep up with it!!

My question is, since Sandisk updated their cards from the 30mb/s Extreme III and 45m/s Extreme IV to the 'Extreme' 60mb/s and 'Extreme Pro' 90mb/s. Has anyone used either or both of these and are the results really noticable when dumping a buffer full of 18mpix+RAW?? :thinking:

(Any yes I realise the 64gb is £500+, 32gb is £300+ and 16gb is £200+ as I write this!) :gag:
 
Depends on a few things really:

1. Shooting speed of the camera
2. Buffer size
3. JPEG or RAW
4. Size of image files

For my 40D I find Extreme III cards to be more than adequate. On a 7D, however, the sheer size of the RAW files and the 8fps comes into the equation. I think the buffer can handle 15 RAWs, meaning after two seconds of high speed shooting, you've filled it. At this point, the speed at which the camera can flush images to the card becomes very important for sustained high-speed shooting.
 
Wow, yeah good point. I can fill my buffer in less than 2 seconds, at which point the cards going to be working hard. The Extreme III does a pretty good job, but these new Extreme Pros are 3 times the speed.

That's fast. :exit:
 
but they're so expensiiiiveee............

(writes to Santa)
 
what about just the new extreme cards? £45 for 8gb 60mbps is still pretty awesome, twice the speed of extreme 3's :D
 
Interestingly, DP Review had this to say:

At eight frames per second the EOS 7D is the quickest APS-C DSLR that we've seen in our labs so far. The frame rate is impressive on itself and even more so considering that with a very fast card, such as the Sandisk Extreme Pro, in JPEG format the 7D can maintain this speed indefinitely (well, we gave up after approximately 60 sec or 320 frames) and for 24 frames when shooting RAW. Surprisingly that's even better than the official Canon specification (126 frames in JPEG, 15 frames in RAW). The initial frame rate is still maintained when shooting RAW+JPEG but only for seven frames.
Click to expand...

I note with interest that they managed 24 RAW frames before the reduced rate kicked in, comparing that with the 15 that Canon claim.

What's obviously happening here is that the first images from the burst are being flushed to the card whilst the later images are being taken, so by the time the buffer filled with 15 images, these were actually images 10-24, the first 9 having already been flushed to the card.

They mention the Sandisk Extreme Pro card but not whether this was what was used for testing. Assuming it was, then the speed of it has immediately increased the 8fps burst from 15 to 24 RAW frames and would have a continuing benefit beyond this. A lesser card would see you filling the buffer after (probably) less than 20 frames and the onward speed would also be lower than the 4.5fps they saw with the Extreme Pro.
 
I found 30x and 60x to be enough so far. I don't usually shoot more than a second or so at high speed (a second is a relatively long time).

On a side note, have you considered an SD to CF adapter? Don't know how good they are, but might be worthwhile in the short term (~£20 from what I have seen).
 
That really isn't bad. But i'm trigger happy so 8gb is a little bit little for me in RAW :)
 
I'll save you the bother of trying, SD to CF converters are carp and very slow!
 
They should be bundling the extreme pro cards with 7Ds.

As usual, Jessops being cheap handing out Extreme IIIs to get rid of their stock rather than recommending cards that actually get the most out of the hardware being sold!
 
coldpenguin said:
I found 30x and 60x to be enough so far. I don't usually shoot more than a second or so at high speed (a second is a relatively long time).

On a side note, have you considered an SD to CF adapter? Don't know how good they are, but might be worthwhile in the short term (~£20 from what I have seen).
Click to expand...

30x or 60x is painfully slow...I've got one old 50x card and have to wait ages for the buffer to clear off jpegs after even a short burst :gag: and an sd to cf converter, coupled with the slow speeds of sd cards, will just be even worse.

Plus sd cards are many, many leagues below, in terms of durability and reliability... whereas extreme pro cards are some of the very best memory available today in terms of speed, durability and security :)
 
itsdavedotnet said:
30x or 60x is painfully slow
Click to expand...
I suspect he meant 30Mb/s or 60Mb/s :)

As always, it's a price/performance ratio that everyone has to weigh up for themselves. How important sustained high speed shooting is to you versus how much extra the speedier cards are.

All the money in the world won't buy you the shot you missed because your card couldn't keep up :)
 
I've got a 16gb Pro card, download to the camera (1ds mk3) isn't that much faster than the Extreme 8gb 45mbs it replaced, if at all. Transfer to the computer using a Sandisk 800 firewire card reader is noticeably faster, not that the Extreme4 caused any problems.

Has it improved the quality of my life, probably not but I needed a new card and I've now got one that should last me years.
 
Edtog said:
I've got a 16gb Pro card, download to the camera (1ds mk3) isn't that much faster than the Extreme 8gb 45mbs it replaced, if at all. Transfer to the computer using a Sandisk 800 firewire card reader is noticeably faster, not that the Extreme4 caused any problems.

Has it improved the quality of my life, probably not but I needed a new card and I've now got one that should last me years.
Click to expand...
Sounds fair. 1Ds doesn't have the highest FPS in the world does it? The quick cards are looking like a good choice for me ***....
 
Vertigo1 said:
I suspect he meant 30Mb/s or 60Mb/s :)
---
All the money in the world won't buy you the shot you missed because your card couldn't keep up :)
Click to expand...

Ah yeah, woops.
For me, it is mainly 1 second shooting, 1 second re-framing, 1 second shooting for me a the worst. These cards were cheap (~$40 for an 8GB) this year so I got one. The 133x card I had previously, was more than enough to keep up with me.

How many people here actually run off 2 seconds worth of shots, and what on?
Birds in flight, I shoot as I said above, by then they are usually either gone or finished what they were doing.

Possibly shooting something like a rugby tackle taking that long?
I don't know whether the technology is significantly different for Compact Flash (I didn't think so), but with standard flash rom writes we used to see the quality of the recorded signal degrade if the writing time was sped up. Meaning that the recorded signal was less secure, the faster the signal was recorded/recording flash.
 
coldpenguin said:
How many people here actually run off 2 seconds worth of shots, and what on?
Click to expand...


If I'm capturing a horse going over a jump it's usually 3-4 frames, if it goes pear shape (and there's lots of splashing water or a rotational fall) I just keep my finger on the trigger. I don't know if it's for 2 sec or not but I have taken a 70 shot sequence before.
 
Fair enough, I hadn't really considered situations where things go horribly wrong.
 
I am using Transcend 600X 8Gb Cards in my 7D, they top out at 90Mb/Sec and much better value than the new Scan Disk.
 
The transcends do look pretty good value. Do they go any larger than 16gb though yet?
 
coldpenguin said:
How many people here actually run off 2 seconds worth of shots, and what on?
Click to expand...

rally cars - usually 100 cars per stage, at least 2 maybe 3 stages in a dat, a good 6/7 shots per car ....very rarely hit the buffer tbh, running mixture of extreme III's and IV's, shooting RAW

drew
 
Vertigo1 said:
Interestingly, DP Review had this to say:

At eight frames per second the EOS 7D is the quickest APS-C DSLR that we've seen in our labs so far. The frame rate is impressive on itself and even more so considering that with a very fast card, such as the Sandisk Extreme Pro, in JPEG format the 7D can maintain this speed indefinitely (well, we gave up after approximately 60 sec or 320 frames) and for 24 frames when shooting RAW. Surprisingly that's even better than the official Canon specification (126 frames in JPEG, 15 frames in RAW). The initial frame rate is still maintained when shooting RAW+JPEG but only for seven frames..
Click to expand...

No one pick up on the error in this quote.
in JPEG format the 7D can maintain this speed indefinitely (well, we gave up after approximately 60 sec or 320 frames) This is only 5.3333 frames per sec.
 
hmm...good point!!
 
If anyone's interested. I have a spare 64gb version of one of these cards for sale in the buy/sell forum! Cheaper than anywhere else i can find on the net!
 
I'm using the 60mb/s 16gb cards for my 7d, got 2 of them. From what I read it's really import to get at least a 400x card for the video capabilities of the 7d, I've found them to be great
 
I got the 60mb/s card with my 5DII.

I also bought an SD-CF adapter so I can use my old SD cards in a squeez - no good for video or high FPS, but for general pic's they are fine, and let you carry on shooting if the CF gets full or goes kaputt !

the fast 60mb/s card on the 5DII just lets you keep your finger on the trigger ! .. pretty amazing really and woops the a$$ off the year old 'pro' SD cards I bought with the 450D
 
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