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Opinions on Memory Card for 7D?

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Speed is only necessary if you are shooting RAW and you plan on shooting more than 17 shoots in a row. Very few people do this. There are very few subjects that require a burst of more than two or three seconds. If you are shooting jpeg you can do well over 100 shots before the buffer is full so speed is totally unnecessary.

The speed of the card only counts for emptying the buffer or transferring from card to computer. The speed of the card has no effect on the frames per second. That is a function of the processor. It has no effect on the number of shots before the buffer is full, that is a result of the size of the buffer.

Speed in memory cards is vastly overrated and universally misunderstood. 99% of camera users should save their money and buy the slowest and cheapest memory card. The idea that Sandisk is somehow more reliable is pure urban legend not backed up by any facts.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

If you read Galbraith's report on the new ultrafast cards he only talks about speed to empty the buffer and card to computer times. He never mentions increased frame rate or more shots in a burst.
 
That is why I bought more than 1 big card. 8G, 16G, and 32G. I do have several smaller CF cards for back up but prefer the larger. Larger the better. If one goes bad, I know I have another big card that should be large enough to hold all of my shots with no problem. but 7d sized RAW files can use up a lot of space fast, and a 4G card may be to small.

Plus, I have never had a card failure once. If your using a microdrive card, than the advise of getting a smaller card would be wise. but, compactflash cards have much lower failure rates.
 
I either shoot a few photos a day, everything is overkill, or several thousand photos a day (all day sports0, in which case I can fill a few 16MB cards. Pick the card size that fits your need. No matter what, if you transfer the card at the end of the day a 16GB card w/b just as reliable as a 1 MB. It's only the people who get a 32GB and don't back it up for a month that have to worry.
 
Condor99 said:
If you read Galbraith's report on the new ultrafast cards he only talks about speed to empty the buffer and card to computer times. He never mentions increased frame rate or more shots in a burst.
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But frame rate and more shots in burst mode have very little to do with card speed. Write speed to the card does. When I reach my buffer limit, I have to wait until the writing is done before doing another full burst. The burst rate is less frames until the buffer is emply. With the 10D that's forever.:)

--
Taking pictures is easy, making them art is hard. (al nunley)
No Try, Do, or Do Not. (yoda)
 
Alvin Nunley said:
Condor99 said:
If you read Galbraith's report on the new ultrafast cards he only talks about speed to empty the buffer and card to computer times. He never mentions increased frame rate or more shots in a burst.
Click to expand...
But frame rate and more shots in burst mode have very little to do with card speed. Write speed to the card does. When I reach my buffer limit, I have to wait until the writing is done before doing another full burst. The burst rate is less frames until the buffer is emply. With the 10D that's forever.:)
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This is true that with the 10d that is forever. That is because it has such a slow processor and the 10d can't take advantage of the speed of a faster card.
 
Alvin Nunley said:
But frame rate and more shots in burst mode have very little to do with card speed. Write speed to the card does. When I reach my buffer limit, I have to wait until the writing is done before doing another full burst. The burst rate is less frames until the buffer is emply. With the 10D that's forever.:)
Click to expand...
If you regularly need to shoot repeated bursts of over 17 RAW (or 100+ JPEG) shots without a break, then yes, a faster card will be better. But don't think it's a miracle worker. After 17 shots, you will slow to something like 2 fps instead of 1.5 fps until the buffer clears.

I think I filled the buffer on my 10D three times in two years, and have yet to do it on my 40D, all shooting RAW. It's not worth $200 for and Extreme Pro vs. $8 I paid for my new Extreme IIIs. YMMV

I agree that 99% of the population does not understand that a faster card does them no good 99% of the time they are shooting (both are probably > 99%, actually)
 
Alvin Nunley said:
I don't understand that thinking. Bigger might be nice, until a card goes bad, (or gets lost or any of the many thing that happen) then you're going to be disappointed that you didn't split your storage into two 16gig cards or even 4 8gig cards.
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I never bought that argument, unless you tell me you shoot with 16MB cards. More cards = more failure opportunities, plus more insert/ejects that causes another failure mode. From an engineering standpoint your expected loss of photos goes up.
 
rdspear said:
I agree that 99% of the population does not understand that a faster card does them no good 99% of the time they are shooting (both are probably > 99%, actually)
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I think a lot of people do not understand this because for years computer salesmen have been perpetrating the urban myth that more memory in a computer equals more speed and nothing could be further from the truth. You can take a computer with 4 gigs of memory and change it to 4 terabytes of memory and not increase the speed one teeny bit. Memory is storage space and has nothing to do with speed. Speed comes from the processor.
 
skrubol said:
--
Primary equipment:

30d, EF-S 10-22, 17-55 f/2.8 IS, EF 50 f/1.4, 70-200 f/4.0L IS, EF 70-200 f/2.8L with broken AF, 580EX, and an HP B9180
Click to expand...
It makes sense. Actually, it is up to how you look at it. If the concern is probability of a single card blowing up and lose 100% of the work and diversify it into smaller cards to hedge the risk, it is meaningful again with the fact that one of the cards having trouble is increasing in probabilistic terms, which in this case some portion of the work will be damaged, the rest will be safe. For a two card probability model, if we say X is the probability ratio of a card to blow, and assume use the same type of two cards, then probability of a card failure for a two card solution is equal to 2*X - X^2 (2 times X subtracted by X square). Say if a card has a damage probability of 1/100, using two cards will make one of the cards including two cards blow at the same time total probability as 2x1/100-(1/100)^2 = 1.99/100 which is almost 2 times. Having said the probability of two cards blowing at the same time will diminish compared to a single card which is X^2 compared to single card of X. In the same example the two cards blowing probability will be 1/100*1/100 = 1/10,000 compared to 1/100 for one card use.

Bottomline, it is up to the user which way he wants to look at it..
 
Alvin Nunley said:
Dosen't that slow things down? Or doesn't DOS do that anymore?

--
Taking pictures is easy, making them art is hard. (al nunley)
No Try, Do, or Do Not. (yoda)
Click to expand...
You are correct, if you do not have the minimum amount of ram in your computer to run it properly then you will have your computer slow down due to paging to disk. But once you have enough ram in your computer for it to run properly then adding more ram will not speed up your computer. Very few people have so little ram that they are paging to disk.

What I am refering to is the fact that any computer saleman in the country will tell you that the more ram you have the faster your computer will run. If they have a model with 3 gigs of ram they will tell you the model with 4 gigs of ram will run much faster and that is just plain wrong.
 
number95 said:
skrubol said:
--
Primary equipment:

30d, EF-S 10-22, 17-55 f/2.8 IS, EF 50 f/1.4, 70-200 f/4.0L IS, EF 70-200 f/2.8L with broken AF, 580EX, and an HP B9180
Click to expand...
It makes sense. Actually, it is up to how you look at it. If the concern is probability of a single card blowing up and lose 100% of the work and diversify it into smaller cards to hedge the risk, it is meaningful again with the fact that one of the cards having trouble is increasing in probabilistic terms, which in this case some portion of the work will be damaged, the rest will be safe. For a two card probability model, if we say X is the probability ratio of a card to blow, and assume use the same type of two cards, then probability of a card failure for a two card solution is equal to 2*X - X^2 (2 times X subtracted by X square). Say if a card has a damage probability of 1/100, using two cards will make one of the cards including two cards blow at the same time total probability as 2x1/100-(1/100)^2 = 1.99/100 which is almost 2 times. Having said the probability of two cards blowing at the same time will diminish compared to a single card which is X^2 compared to single card of X. In the same example the two cards blowing probability will be 1/100*1/100 = 1/10,000 compared to 1/100 for one card use.

Bottomline, it is up to the user which way he wants to look at it..
Click to expand...
I think with two cards your chance of a failure does go up, however, memory card errors are extremely rare. And if your memory card does go bad you have about a 95% chance of recovering your images with disk recovery software. I only own one disk and I never take it in and out of the camera. I feel that increases my chances dramatically of not damaging or losing a card.
 
Well... as of right now you can get 3 8GB Sandisk Extreme IV cards for $99.95 from Adorama after rebate. Additionally if you use Bing cashback (search crumpler, 11%) that can drop quite a bit more in price, $66.95.

24GB of Extreme IV for $66.95 is pretty darn good in my book.
--
http://bitartifact.com/
 
Just for fun I guesstimated how many 7D raw file (25 mb) photos I could write on the following size cards

4gb 160
8gb 320
16gb 640
32gb 1280

I just bought an 8 gb Sandisk Extreme III card and I figure that I should have a complete days worth of shooting with a couple of movie clips on the one card. I don't need more than one days shooting because I always transfer my photos to my netbook (160 gb HD) at the end of the day.

I got the Sandisk because they currently have a rebate program that allowed me to get the Extreme III (30MB/sec) for $32. :> )
Dave
 
If you only shoot stills at low frame rates, you don't need a fast card. However, if you shoot lots of RAW at higher frame rates or if you do video, you still need reasonably fast card write speeds.

The 7D now offers 1080p30 support, and that requires a moderately fast card. Now the SanDisk Extreme III is pretty fast but some people are reporting they're getting freezing with this non-UDMA card as well as other slower cards.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=167750

I don't know if this a problem with the cards, the camera, or both, but personally I will be buying UDMA cards for this reason, to at least eliminate one variable as a possible cause.

I suspect that fragmentation of the data is partially at play here, and when storage is fragmented, write speeds slow way, way down. Knowing that, your best bet is to go with cards that have as fast a write speed as possible, and perhaps you may need to format the cards once in a while too.
rdspear said:
Alvin Nunley said:
But frame rate and more shots in burst mode have very little to do with card speed. Write speed to the card does. When I reach my buffer limit, I have to wait until the writing is done before doing another full burst. The burst rate is less frames until the buffer is emply. With the 10D that's forever.:)
Click to expand...
If you regularly need to shoot repeated bursts of over 17 RAW (or 100+ JPEG) shots without a break, then yes, a faster card will be better. But don't think it's a miracle worker. After 17 shots, you will slow to something like 2 fps instead of 1.5 fps until the buffer clears.

I think I filled the buffer on my 10D three times in two years, and have yet to do it on my 40D, all shooting RAW. It's not worth $200 for and Extreme Pro vs. $8 I paid for my new Extreme IIIs. YMMV

I agree that 99% of the population does not understand that a faster card does them no good 99% of the time they are shooting (both are probably > 99%, actually)
Click to expand...
--
Everything Apple - http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/
 
Eug said:
If you only shoot stills at low frame rates, you don't need a fast card. However, if you shoot lots of RAW at higher frame rates or if you do video, you still need reasonably fast card write speeds.
Click to expand...
Your information is incorrect. I shoot lots of RAW at high frame rates and I have one of the slowest cards going. A fast card does nothing to help the frame rate. That is fixed in the camera by the processor speed. Same thing for video.
 
A fast card allows you to take pix at high frame rates much more often.

To explain the obvious... I've run into this problem with my 20D. Only 5 fps, but a slow card takes forever for the buffer to clear. With a faster card it's much more pleasant to shoot with.

And of course, the 7D does 1080p high def video. You really don't understand much about the cards if you think faster speeds don't help with video. Fragmention of a CF card slows write speeds significantly in some cases, despite the fact there are no moving parts. Because of this with a slower card one can drop to a speed that's marginal for video storage... and cause the machine to stop recording and lockup.

http://tony72.googlepages.com/ppc_frag



Cheaping out on flash cards is often false economy, unless you have no desire ever to shoot video, or you are 100% sure you can deal with the restrictions introduced by slow cards.
Condor99 said:
Eug said:
If you only shoot stills at low frame rates, you don't need a fast card. However, if you shoot lots of RAW at higher frame rates or if you do video, you still need reasonably fast card write speeds.
Click to expand...
Your information is incorrect. I shoot lots of RAW at high frame rates and I have one of the slowest cards going. A fast card does nothing to help the frame rate. That is fixed in the camera by the processor speed. Same thing for video.
Click to expand...
--
Everything Apple - http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/
 
Eug said:
A fast card allows you to take pix at high frame rates much more often.
Click to expand...
Eug said:
http://tony72.googlepages.com/ppc_frag



Cheaping out on flash cards is often false economy, unless you have no desire ever to shoot video, or you are 100% sure you can deal with the restrictions introduced by slow cards.
Click to expand...
Well you read it on the Internet so therefore it must be true. You must have been suckered into buying one of those really expensive cf cards and you are looking for some justification for the money you wasted.
 
Nope. I currently have mid-speed and slow cards. The mid-speed cards are MUCH more pleasant to use with my current camera. Getting faster cards for it would be useless because my camera cannot support faster speeds. However, it's fast enough to notice just how crappily slow bargain basement slow cards are.

I will likely buy faster cards for the 7D though.
Condor99 said:
Well you read it on the Internet so therefore it must be true. You must have been suckered into buying one of those really expensive cf cards and you are looking for some justification for the money you wasted.
Click to expand...
--
Everything Apple - http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/
 
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