CF-Express/SD card advice

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Vertigo1

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Hi all,

On the brink of pulling the trigger on an R5 but am getting increasingly confused by memory card options.
As I currently have a raft of CF and old, slow SD cards I need to buy at least one new card.

I'm almost exclusively shooting stills although might play around with the odd 1080p/4K short clip here and there.

I usually stick with Sandisk but, looking around, it seems that a 128GB CFE card is over £200 right now. I figured maybe that was overkill for my needs and a decent SD UHS-II card would suffice but these seem to be almost as much for the same capacity.

Just wondering what people would recommend as the best balance. From a stills perspective, the buffer on the R5 is pretty decent so I feel a mid-range SD card would suffice as long as it's not going to take minutes to clear the buffer after a burst. For video, ideally I'd like something that could cope with up to 4K for short clips if the mood takes me but, if that significantly increases the cost then maybe I'd end up with a combination with one faster card for when I need video and slower ones for just stills?

So confused :(
 
What type of shooting are you doing when using the buffer ? If it’s fast action / sports you’ll want the fastest clearing card - nothing more infuriating than a camera that’s locked up writing to the card.

Before going for an expensive cf express - I’d go for a mid/upper range uhs ii card. I’ve got one arriving today - 128gb lexar for circa £40, the faster cards (sd) are double that, but for your use case, I’m not sure it’d be worth it. If I needed absolute speed then I’d bite the bullet and go for the cf express
 
That's the thing, whilst I shoot all sorts, I do use high speed bursts for things like motorsport or aviation at times and obviously want something fast enough to deal with that.
That said, I doubt I'd ever bother with 20fps as I don't need that kind of speed (think that's the preserve of birders where the critical shot is often very fleeting) so I suspect the fastest I'd ever have to deal with is 12fps using the mechanical shutter.

The buffer on the R5 is large (2.5GB I heard?) so even with 45MB RAW files, you're looking at over 50 images in the buffer, the question is then how fast they can be cleared to the card.

I've got some old UHS-I SD cards, rated at 45/60MB/s which, whilst fine for emergency/backup use, would struggle to clear a single RAW image per second from the buffer. At 12fps, I'd be looking at about 5s of continuous shooting which is actually fine as I'd never need to shoot for longer than that. The problem is that it would then take a full minute to flush the buffer, during which I may want to shoot another burst.

The thing is, once you start looking at faster SD cards, they start getting closer to the price of the equivalent CF-Express, in which case surely you're better off going that way.

Guess I'm just trying to find the right balance and wondering what others are using and what their experiences are, specifically with burst shooting and/or video.
 
Simple answer: Pay the money.

Why on Earth would you want to get a nice fast camera and then cripple it by putting in old media? :rolleyes:

I'm sure I've got an old box of Betamax video tapes somewhere if you want them . . . ;)
 
Oh yeah I'd only ever use the old SD cards I have as backups or emergency in case I ever ran out of space on my main cards.

There's no question I need and will buy new media, just a question of exactly how much to spend for how much speed.
 
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It might not even work with older cards.

Kingston have been fine in my comparable A7Siii - reasonably priced UHSii
I have seen them well under £100 You can have two of these for cost of one CF.
The reader they supply with it is fast too.

Kingston 128GB Canvas React Plus SD (SDXC) Card UHS-II, U3, V90, 300MB/s R, 260MB/s W | Buy Online | Kingston | Free UK Delivery

Buy MLPR2/128GB Kingston 128GB Canvas React Plus SD (SDXC) Card UHS-II, U3, V90, 300MB/s R, 260MB/s W From KingstonMemoryShop the UK's number 1 Kingston Reseller. FREE UK Delivery & Returns.
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I have the R5 and went with a Sandisk 128GB CFExpress card. I was going to buy 2 x 64GB so I had two physical cards but the 128GB is a faster read/write.

I also use some of my old Ultra SD cards which are fine for "considered" photographs i.e. landscape but the burst speed of the R5 really needs that fast transfer.

*WEX currently have 20% off Sandisk memory cards at the minute. (Lexar also worth looking at)
 
There's so much variation in price between manufactuers, it's crazy!

Also, Amazon lists two versions of the Sandisk Extreme Pro CFExpress card.
One has manufacturer code SDCFE-128G-GN4NN and is £216.
The other has code SDCFE-128G-GN4IN and is only £164.
What on earth is the difference? I can't find one.
 
Amazon do that quite often and I can't quite figure out why it happens. :thinking:

Needless to say, on the last two occasions it happened to me I chose the cheaper option. (y)
 
Usually when the product code differs only right at the end it's because they're intended for different territories I think.

Lexar also have the same cards listed at different prices on Amazon, with the cheaper cards having the same product codes but with "NA" at the end, which I presume means they're meant for North America perhaps?
 
Vertigo1 said:
Usually when the product code differs only right at the end it's because they're intended for different territories I think.

Lexar also have the same cards listed at different prices on Amazon, with the cheaper cards having the same product codes but with "NA" at the end, which I presume means they're meant for North America perhaps?
Click to expand...
US products always have FC on them. Generally most items have both the FC and EU icons as they're across all markets (certain electronics don't however. Panasonic cameras have different versions, whereas Olympus are for all markets) Just my 2 cents worth
 
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