5d Mk3 new owner - which memory cards do you use for speed?

tomkbucks

tomkbucks

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thomas
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hi all ive been playing around with fast shutter speeds and find when shooting to both cards its causing a problem with the number of shots i can get off.. i see from reading around this is as its shooting to both cards and the sd is 'slow'. I think its time i upgraded my memory cards as im currently using sandisc extreme / ultra - but the question is what memory CF and SD to people shoot with to give the fastest use poss ?
 
The SD card slot in the 5Dmk3 is limited to x133. So no point buying a mega fast card.

If you want fastest write speeds, remove the SD card and shoot just using the CF. I use Lexar Pro x1000 CF cards and the write speeds are very good.
 
As Damien said, the SD card slot is the bottleneck. I have it set to only use the SD card if the CF card is full.
 
so do you need to 'remove' the sd card or just have the camear set to write to only the cf card ? what cards to people use as sounds like there is no point buying anything better than a sandisk ultra for the sd slot ?
 
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I write raw files to the CF, and write the smaller sized back-up JPEG's to the SD card (45mb/s SanDisk Extreme). That set up works plenty fast enough for what I shoot. I rarely hit the buffer. Then again I don't shoot wildlife etc and rarely need high speed continuous shutter.
 
Stick to using CF cards and use quality brands (Sandisk, Luxor Pro etc) and you will get the best results. I do use high speed continuous shutter occasionally, shooting in RAW and I have not yet reached the buffer.
 
I leave the SD card in just in case I fill the CF card, but nothing gets written to it so it doesn't seem to cause a problem. From looking online the maximum speed you can write to an SD card is 133x so no point in getting much more than that.
 
If you want to maximize your FPS until slowdown then it is worth paying the extra for CF cards like Sandisk Extreme Pro 160MB/S

These are all Sandisk CF cards

60MB/S Max RAW 13. Frames before FPS slowed 17. Time to clear buffer to Max RAW of 13 again 5.5 secs.
90MB/S Max RAW 13. Frames before FPS slowed 21. Time to clear buffer to max RAW of 13 again 4.0 secs.
160MB/S Max RAW 13. Frames before FPS slowed 25. Time to clear buffer to max RAW of 13 again 3.25 secs. This is a UDMA 7 card.
 
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Thanks currently i have a UDMA 7 Transcend 32gb x800 and get no were near any of those speeds... the Lexar Professional 32 800x seems a good balance to cost / speed but cant find any comparisons between it and the one i have online already...seems spending to $ on the extreme pro would be the only sure fire way to get the best speeds!
 
I can vouch for the lexar pro fast cards (800 & 1000), I use them on my 1Dx and have yet to have an issue.
 
tomkbucks said:
the Lexar Professional 32 800x seems a good balance to cost / speed
Click to expand...

Be aware that the write speeds (the important figure for in-camera performance) of the Lexar 800x are significantly slower than the 1066x - a bigger difference than just looking at read speeds would suggest.

Lexar appear a little cagey in clearly stating write speeds for their cards.
But it appears the write speed of 800x is up to 75MB/s (this is from Lexar for info on the 256GB version) but I've read other sources stating 45MB/s (for 32GB version).
Whereas the 1066x write speed is up to 155MB/s (again from Lexar 256GB version) - other sources of information may vary. :)
Regardless, it appears the 1066x is probably twice as fast in-camera.

Does it matter in the real world? That's up to you to decide.

FWIW, I use both Lexar 1000x and Sandisk Extreme Pro 160MB/s CF cards in my 5D3 and I'm very happy with both.

Cheers,
Tony
 
tomkbucks said:
Thanks currently i have a UDMA 7 Transcend 32gb x800 and get no were near any of those speeds... the Lexar Professional 32 800x seems a good balance to cost / speed but cant find any comparisons between it and the one i have online already...seems spending to $ on the extreme pro would be the only sure fire way to get the best speeds!
Click to expand...


Just to point out that these figures are from several real world tests that I have done. Each test repeated 3 times and the average taken.

Cheers
 
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