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Appropriate CF write speed for 40D

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bananazad

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Dear all,

Please advise which CF card will satisfy time-to-time fast shooting with 40D.

E.g. Sandisk offers following:
1) Sandisk Ultra II - write speed 10Mb/sec
2) Sandisk eXtreme III - write speed 20Mb/sec
3) Sandisk eXtreme IV - write speed 45Mb/sec

I'd like to understand which one is optimal as I'm thinking of getting the one over 8Gb.
 
From what I understand, you may have problems trying to format a 16GB card in camera. I would stick to 8GB cards.
 
bananazad said:
Dear all,

Please advise which CF card will satisfy time-to-time fast shooting
with 40D.

E.g. Sandisk offers following:
1) Sandisk Ultra II - write speed 10Mb/sec
2) Sandisk eXtreme III - write speed 20Mb/sec
3) Sandisk eXtreme IV - write speed 45Mb/sec

I'd like to understand which one is optimal as I'm thinking of
getting the one over 8Gb.
Click to expand...
Get a 16GB Extreme III card if you feel like paying the money and you want the capacity. Your camera WILL accept it without any problems. You can pick and choose amongst the lines but I'd go with the Extreme III because it's the best balance of performance and cost and you can use the 16GB card if you don't mind the expense of it. You'll see a minor difference between the Ultra 2 and Extreme III cards when it comes to speed of writes in the 40D but the Extreme III will give you better performance as a CF card, assuming you are okay with whatever price difference there is between them. I've found Ultra II cards going for 15 dollars less than Extreme III cards iin some places but your mileage will vary when it comes to sale prices. I made the mistake of buying an Extreme IV when they came out and frankly I wasted my money on it though it does perform well with my Hyperdrive SPACE.
 
bananazad said:
BWinter,

Thanks for smart advice! But I'm looking for subjective opinions of
users...

:S
Click to expand...
I your looking for subjective opinions of users you could have said so in the first place.

But facts are: independent of type CF you can get 75jpeg files of 19 RAW (buffer).
The time needed to flush the buffer is card dependent.
If you never need the full buffer then any card will do.
If you do al lot of burst then even the extreme IV would not be fast enough.

Main thing is you can only decide for youself what kind of shoter you are and how often you will need to shoot the buffer full and reshoot shortly after that again.

If you thing + -1fps (jpg) or + -0.5fps (raw) is enough then the Ultra II will do.
The Extreme III is fater + -1.5fps (jpg) en + -0.7(raw) and
finaly the Extreme IV (of Lexar pro 133) do + -3fps (jpg) and + -1fps(RAW)

One Tip: 19 frames for RAW sounds very nice but at 6.5fps it's only 3 sec!!!
so for me it would be a) shoot JPG then or buy the Extreme IV
 
BWinter,

Thanks for explanation. To expand the nature of my question I'll explain my needs fully. I prefer to shoot in RAW as I've found it rather nice to convert to JPG on PC unlike using 40D's built-in option. To my opinion 19 shots burst is nothing when you're truing to catch "the best" smile of your baby. That's why buffer's discharge speed (or CF's upload speed) is so vital for me.
rgds,
B.
P.S.: I guess your next advice will be to start shooting in JPG, right? ;)
 
Dear HorseRidingHero,

Thanks for your thoughts. Just to make you happy of how lucky you were to make that purchase I'll post the best prices I can get in my location! ;) for this example all are Sandisk's 4Gb:
Ultra II - $ 68
eXtreme III - $ 80
eXtreme IV - $ 115

rgds,
B.
 
bananazad said:
BWinter,

P.S.: I guess your next advice will be to start shooting in JPG,
right? ;)
Click to expand...
Nope,
always shoot RAW and get the Extreme IV.

For me it's very simple: if a camera can (and the 40D does) benefit from a faster card then get it. The buffer is always too small and a missed photo (espesially from one of my kids) is worth more than the little price premium of a faster card.

It looks like you're in the same position. So if you've got the money get one.
 
bananazad said:
BWinter,
To my opinion 19 shots burst is nothing when you're truing to
catch "the best" smile of your baby. That's why buffer's discharge
speed (or CF's upload speed) is so vital for me.
Click to expand...
In that case -

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=25227404

Conclusion, buy the Extreme III. The slight difference in the time taken to clear a 20-shot buffer isn't, IMNSHO, worth the 30% price hike of the IV. Added to which - I don;t think 16GB Extreme IV cards are available yet.

--
Frank Hollis
Mass Spectroscopist in the UK
Can0n 2oD and 4oD
 
Dear Frank,

Thanks for advice, but I'm still thinking of IV but not III. And to my needs 8Gb are enough for a weekend. By the way, do you know how many Mb there will be in 8Gb (nominal) card?

I remember when I've purchased Kingston 2Gb USB Flash it appeared to be only 1730Mb of free space! :(

Rgds,
B.
 
bananazad said:
Dear HorseRidingHero,

Thanks for your thoughts. Just to make you happy of how lucky you
were to make that purchase I'll post the best prices I can get in my
location! ;) for this example all are Sandisk's 4Gb:
Ultra II - $ 68
eXtreme III - $ 80
eXtreme IV - $ 115

rgds,
B.
Click to expand...
This weekend 4gb Ultra II cards were $35 at staples. Getting faster than the Ultra II is going to be a big percentage in price increase. I don't shoot in Raw much, but I have never filled the 40D buffer. If you have the dough, buy the faster card. For me, I wanted to get the CF cards cheap and spend anything left over on glass. In fact, I used the 2GB Ultra II cards I had from my XTI until this weekend's deal came up.
 
according to the review done by this website the 40D has a write speed of 6mb/sec.

so, convert to kb/sec and divide by 150.

that is: 6mb/sec =6000kb/sec / 150 = 40X.

so buy a card that is capable of being written to at 40X or faster. a card that is faster will not make the camera write faster but would speed up the card to pc write speed using a card reader.
 
actually what the review here shows is that an extreme3 is around 30% slower than an extreme4 in camera buffer flush so if the fastest possible continuous is a priority you need a very fast card, and 40x will certainly not cut it.
 
"The D40 demonstrates very fast write times, we estimate at least 6 MB/sec for RAW images with fast cards such as the ones used in this test. Just like the D80 the D40 has a good buffer implementation which means that all image processing and card write processes occur in parallel with normal camera operation ('in the background'), hence never affecting your ability to take the next shot."

the above is a quote from the Timings and File Sizes" page. it says in the first line 6mb/sec. since either the extreme III or IV is faster than that, the limiting factor is the camera write speed. if you think it is faster take it up with phil askey, he wrote the test, not me.

so, 6mb/sec is 6000kb/sec / 150 = 40X. if you think phil askey is wrong tell him so.
 
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