Will a nice CF card speed up my camera?

[bomberman]

Hi i'm new here :)

I have a question about CF cards. I use a 400d in RAW mode on continuous shooting and find that after a burst of 5 or 6 photos it takes almost 4x as long for them to go to the CF card as it does to take them in the first place!

Will upgrading to a Sandisk Extreme III CF card speed things up a bit? or am i better off saving my pennies?

[neil_g]

what card are you currently using?

[david1701]

possibly, the first few quick shots are buffer, after that it writes to card, a faster card will make it write faster so less of a lag there. But won't give you a bigger buffer

really how much of a difference depends on what you use now

[RobC]

I have a 400D and a selection of both II's and III's. You're limited by the buffer in the camera, however the III has a faster transfer rate and therefore the buffer empties quicker. BUT I can't say I've ever noticed and difference between the cards in my camera. Copying off the III cards to the pc is however faster than copying off a II.
(I have posted, now watch this thread die)

[coldpenguin]

Could well speed things up. I find that I can burst for around 2 seconds on the 400d. 5 or 6 photos sounds way too low.


Just did a test. Set to manual, time 1/200, I took 12 pictures before the camera paused. This was shooting in RAW
A total of 91MB written. This is to a lexar platinum II card, rated at 80x

[fezzr]

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

a faster card will only help if your current card is slower than your camera is capable of.

[Dave Pickett]

If you need to shoot more frames at full speed the alternative is to drop down to a smaller file size - I find jpegs are more than adequate fo show jumping pictures of my daughter. (in fact on the D90 high quality jpegs are stunning!)

[bomberman]

Hi thanks the card i'm using at the moment is a 8gb Silicon Power 45x Compact Flash

All i'm really after is that the files are written to the card and out of the way a bit quicker so i can carry on shooting without the "busy" message.