Canon 5D3 Card Writing

Richard Brooks

Richard Brooks

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Hi all,
I wondered if someone could be kind enough to advise?

I do try and buy the best and fastest CF and SD cards i can afford although one card is ls slightly faster than the other am i right in thinking this cameara drops its speed down, to the slowest camera setting?

Also with two cards inserted i believe i have the "Record Seperately" function in action. RAW fils go to the CF card whilst JPEGS go to the SD Card. Whilst chimping i rate my photos which appears to go to the CF card. When i download to the computrer he rating comes down with the pictuire into lightrroom which i find handy. However using thew SD card full of Jpegs. (usually to a laptop) the ratings do not come with the file? (i find this frustrating especially if i've taken a good few hundred pictures)

Have i got to change my reader settings to "Record to multiple" and change my settings to RAW + JPEG just to get the ratings recorded now having a backup card with the same files on....but will surley clow the camera down more wont it?

Has anyone experianced this, has a solution or offer their workflow technique please?

Many Thanks ;)
 
The SD performance on the 5D3 is shocking - I believe it's only 25MB/s max so getting a faster card will make no difference, except when offloading it to a PC via a card reader of course. CF cards are a different matter so get the fastest you can afford if prolonged bursts are important to you.

With two cards inserted you can select which is used for playback. Rating will operate on the images on that card. Deleting will also only delete the images from the playback card, they'll remain on the other. Not sure if you can rate on both files/cards simultaneously.
 
Thanks for your feedback @Vertigo1 .... I'll do a few test shots to see if ratings do go to both cards but not getting my hopes up! Was just hoping whilst out i could quickly swap SD cards with probably JPEG and ratings attached to quickly edit/upload those pictures and then after the session come home and go through the RAW files in more detail on the CF card without going through each one and rating them all again! Just trying to save time on my workflow :)
 
I have given up using the SD card other than for copying from cf in the field to make sure I have 2 copies, one as backup, as stated sd card write speed is dire and it rules cf write speed.
Matt
 
SD is 177x speed which about 20MB/S I think.

I used to have a 128GB SD card in the slot and just use it to copy the CF card at the end of the day if I was away just to have a back up.

I never wrote to both cards on any camera as I cannot see the point in my photography.

The buffer on the 5D3 isn’t very big and I know folk who have got as little as 6 frames before the FPS started to slowdown when writing to both cards and that was with RAW to CF and large jpeg to the SD card. Given that the buffer on the 5D3 is around 13 frames something must be going on.

There can be a benefit to using faster cards if the write speed of your camera can utilise them. If not then it is a waste of money.

As an example this is what I found on my Canon when I tested different speed cards.

Sandisk Extreme Pro16GB 160MB/S CF card.

In my 5D MkIII the results were as follows.

All Sandisk 16 GB 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 RAAW 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. UDMA 7
 
Thanks for the feedback guys! 5D3 is a great camera but how did canon overlook this issue with a tiny piece of plastic we insert into the SD Card slot which causes such an issue with its users? :(
 
It's to do with the processor in the camera not having native support for dual card interfaces I believe, hence the addition of the SD card slot was a bit of a hack. They rectified it in the 7D2 which does have high speed UHS-1 support for the SD slot and I presume the 5D4 will be the same when it arrives.
 
Richard Brooks said:
Thanks for the feedback guys! 5D3 is a great camera but how did canon overlook this issue with a tiny piece of plastic we insert into the SD Card slot which causes such an issue with its users? :(
Click to expand...
Marketing possibly, might have trod on the 1DX's toes at the time.
 
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