Which CF card for a Canon 7D

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I'm just about to purchase a 7D which will be my first DSLR.

Looking at the Sandisk CF cards you can get Extreme (60MB/s) and Extreme Pro (90MB/s)

I don't want the camera to be limited by the CF card for fast shooting or 1080 recording. What is the transfer speed required by the camera? Can you recommend either of these cards or another?

Thanks.
 
I use two 32GB Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s cards and they work perfectly for both high-FPS stills shooting and video. I personally think the 90MB/s cards are overkill and don't think the camera is really capable of using the extra speed. 60MB/s seems to be the best price/performance balance at the moment.
 
You'll find this interesting: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-10043-10255

Whilst it doesn't have the 7D explicitly, I'd expect results to be similar to the 5D2. Depends if you shoot raw and how long you keep your finger on the shutter button. All cards will limit eventually, the faster the card, the longer (and it may only be slightly longer) you can go before the card limits you.
 
I was using the Sandisk. Adds but recently bought a transcend 400x 32gb CF card which you can grab new for circa £45 which is pretty much half price of the Sandisk equivalent.

I've played with burst, video and copying to the pc and not had a speed issue and will now be buying a couple more as fit the bill nicely and saves a load of money :)
 
You get what you pay for and personally I wouldn't touch any brand other than Sandisk or Lexar. Heard far too many horror stories about other brands and it's just not worth the risk.
 
Vertigo1 said:
You get what you pay for and personally I wouldn't touch any brand other than Sandisk or Lexar. Heard far too many horror stories about other brands and it's just not worth the risk.
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Really, the only cards ive ever had fail on me were 3 Sandisks, i now use Samsung and Duracells
 
I looked around at reviews before buying the transcend and not seen any major issues, I can understand finding Sandisk failure reviews purely as they hold the majority of the market so more of them out there and duracell appeared to regularly have problems being a cheap rebadged item.
 
Thanks guys. In the end I got a good deal on 2nd hand Extreme Pro.
 
I got 2x 16Gb 300x Duracell and 2x 600x Duracell CF cards from 7dayshop and haven't had a problem with any of them in my 7D or 5D MkII. They all have a 10 year guarentee as well and the 600x were around £28 and the 300x were around £19 IIRC.

I have tested the stated speeds of the "lying" (not my word) Duracell cards and amazingly enough with my USB 3.0 internal card reader all 4 of my cards were within a reasonable tolerance (5%) either way of the quoted speeds for my upload device and I have no idea of the camera to card speed cause I wouldn't have a clue how to test it. These measurements have been timed by myself at various data amounts and with the computer at various loads.
 
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The 7D can write to the card at ~55MB/s. Whether the 60MB/s card can sustain those sort of speeds or whether you think its better getting the 90MB/s card I cant really help im afraid. I think there would probably be a very small difference but not much. For HD video shooting you dont need a very fast card (pretty much any card that can be bought nowadays will be able to write fast enough)
 
I used this story as my base:
http://blog.davidburren.com/2011/02/cf-card-speeds-7d-and-5dmkii.html

I'm not sure about video, but I was more interested in sustained burst speeds.
In the end I went for 60MB/s Sandisk extreme as I wasn't after a very long burst period.

Now that I have it I'm perfectly happy with it for RAW bursts. It does slow down once the buffer fills, but its not an issue for what I shoot at the moment.

Also for info, only shooting jpeg there is no slow down for as long I've tried to keep the shutter button down.
 
I use a couple of Transcend 133x 16GB and they work fine for 1080 video, regarding spray and pray I've not reached any limitation, but to be honest I don't think that is a good way of shooting.
 
so are you saying Transcend are a good card?

amazon have some ok prices at the moment
 
Looking around at prices yesterday have just ordered another two transcend 32gb 400x cards from amazon here :)
 
wealthysoup said:
The 7D can write to the card at ~55MB/s. Whether the 60MB/s card can sustain those sort of speeds or whether you think its better getting the 90MB/s card I cant really help im afraid. I think there would probably be a very small difference but not much. For HD video shooting you dont need a very fast card (pretty much any card that can be bought nowadays will be able to write fast enough)
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Like he said, at the end of the day you could get the fastest cards in the world, but your limited by the speed at which the camera writes to the card, that's fixed, so buying a card that's mega fast will only effect the speed at which it downloads to your computer not the camera, personally I find the San Disk Extreme III I've had for ages still work, why would I want to pay a fortune for some of these cards that clearly your not getting any benefit from when you camera writing to card speed is limited to what ever spec, example 55MB/s for the Canon 7D.

http://pct1.sandisk.com/NewSearch.aspx
 
Gary Coyle said:
So thats 1 card labelled wrongly out of about 50 million sold, i better change then as they do seem unreliable unlike the 3 sandisks ive owned which all failed.:thinking:
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Nope, you've misread that post. One of the cards was completely DOA. All of the Duracell cards lie about their speed. Well, they're deceptive. Trustworthy manufacturers like Lexar and Sandisk label cards with the write speed. After all, that's what's important for most users.

Duracell label their cards with the read speed, which is normally higher but is not really relevant for most users. If Sandisk followed the same practice then my 60MB/s card would be labelled 80MB/s.

If a company is willing to deceive their customers over card speed then I, for one, am likely to distrust them in other areas also.
 
pete.rush said:
buying a card that's mega fast will only effect the speed at which it downloads to your computer
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And most people are still using USB2, which is limited to around 30MB/s - or, more likely, 20-something MB/s.
 
It's not just the speed it writes to the card while burst shooting, but how fast it empties the buffer before you can start again.

Been pointed out before but Lexar have a demo video to show the real advantage of a very fast cards http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpNw5yVPhLg

Personally I use Transcend x600 CF in my 1D, but going to have a try with Sandisk 95mbps SD card soon, just as they are a very good price at the moment.

As for downloading to the computer, I use a firewire 800 reader, so that's quite fast, and I understand the SD card slot built in to my iMac is 480mbps,
 
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whiteflyer said:
I understand the SD card slot built in to my iMac is 480mbps,
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I presume you mean 480 Mbps. That means it's USB2. 480 Mbps (that's megabits per second, or 60 MB/s) is the theoretical maximum speed for USB2. But it never gets to that maximum, if you get half that speed you're lucky.
 
whiteflyer said:
It's not just the speed it writes to the card while burst shooting, but how fast it empties the buffer before you can start again...
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Eh? I would have thought there was a fairly direct link between the two.
 
I always use 2x Sandisk Extreme Pro 16GB cards in my D3S. I need reliability, knowledge they won't slow down even with my 20mb RAW files at 9fps and don't mind paying a bit more for it. Cheaper cards sound a good buy until they lock up! Spend the extra and buy the best.
 
I've used Transcend in my DSLR's and Video camera (1080p @50fps) and never had a problem.
 
hollis_f said:
I presume you mean 480 Mbps. That means it's USB2. 480 Mbps (that's megabits per second, or 60 MB/s) is the theoretical maximum speed for USB2. But it never gets to that maximum, if you get half that speed you're lucky.
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OK then I'll stick to the Transcends then :)


Oggy said:
Eh? I would have thought there was a fairly direct link between the two.
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Of course it's a direct link, not so much in this thread, but we hear people saying that a x200 card will let me shoot a high speed burst of image so no need for a faster card, not understanding that the import bit is how soon can you shoot the next high speed burst of images.
 
Jonhob said:
I always use 2x Sandisk Extreme Pro 16GB cards in my D3S. I need reliability, knowledge they won't slow down even with my 20mb RAW files at 9fps and don't mind paying a bit more for it. Cheaper cards sound a good buy until they lock up! Spend the extra and buy the best.
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Define 'best'

Most well know (most advertised) = Sandisk
Fastest = Delkin CombatFlash685 ,but it's $149.99 for an 8GB card
Most Rugged = Delkin CombatFlash685, see above
Value for money = Well that's a personal choice, but not Sandisk or Lexar as the same size speed and reliability can be bought for less from others.
 
i use storage options and lexar cards, i dont use a card bigger than 8GB. i also carry a few 2GB cards (unknown make) as a backup.
 
whiteflyer said:
Your looking at the wrong Delkin card its the CombatFlash 685 "An elevated 685X rating guarantees 103MB/s" and at $608.99 for 64GB it's not cheap :)
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Still half the price of the Sandisk. And is that 103 MB/s read or write?
 
Speed: 685X (103MB/s read & 95MB/s write)
Operating Temperature: -25°C to 70°C
Shock: 40g’s at 11ms, MIL-STD-810, Method 516.5
Vibration: 15Hz to 2000Hz, MIL-STD-810, Method 514.5
Humidity: 95% R-H, MIL-STD-810, Method 507.4
Altitude: 80,000 feet

The Sandisk card can be bought for £740 from play.com

At the end of the day were just nit picking, the point was that "The Best" will depend on different variables, some of which may be more important to you than me and thus our definition of the best card could be totally different.
 
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All now mute due to today lexar launching the x1000 card.

The Lexar® Professional 1000x CompactFlash® (CF) memory card provides ultimate high-speed performance and reliability for professional photographers, with industry-leading 1000x (150MB/s) minimum guaranteed sustained read transfer speed
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coming February at $899 for 128GB
 
Guys just to clear something up, USB2.0 is Asynchronous technology, the data cannot go both ways at the same time like firewire - therefore your max speed is usually limited to 26mb per sec in real use.
 
shabba said:
Guys just to clear something up, USB2.0 is Asynchronous technology, the data cannot go both ways at the same time like firewire - therefore your max speed is usually limited to 26mb per sec in real use.
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Point of order ;)

You're correct that data can only flow in one direction at a time, but that isn't why you're limited to ~26MBytes/sec. That's down to the size of the packets read and the command overhead for it.

Also, USB is a synchronous communication (the clock is transmitted with the data). What you mean is that the serial bus is shared for both read and write.
 
Great thread, its a question I wanted to ask as I have just got a 7D as well.

After a few hours checking different threads, websites etc I opted for the SanDisk 8GB 60MB/s Extreme CF, direct from amazon so no danger of a fake at £29.

I really mulled over the brand / price / speed debate and was quite tempted by the Duracell. They do appear to have speed issues (The read speed quoted rather than the lower write) but they were still tempting at the price.

However, I trust scandisk - i'm a marketing persons dream, plus all my others are scandisk and haven't failed. So, to conclude, I sacrificed potentially a bigger card size at the same price to go with what I know. (That only tool a few sentances to write, it tooks hours to decide..... and its all over £29, crazy!)
 
A wise choice IMHO Dave,

I have the 7D and have four 8GB 60MB/s and a couple of 16GB 60MB/s cards. They never hold me up when shooting at high speed and it's always nice to know that I have reserves in the bag. I shoot Raw and JPeg most of the time, although I mainly produce work from the Raw files.
 
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