Cheap CF Cards

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ACW

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Having previously had a camera with a whopping frame per 1.6 second capture rate (not even a frame per second!) the memory cards I needed were of the cheap and cheerful variety.

Having now aquired a 7D a completely forgot the strain they might be put under when trying to handle up to 8fps.

My 2gb sandisk is handling fine, however my cheap 8gb kingston seems to take ages to write the files (as expected as I've been shooting in "fine large") however when viewing them back on the computer the files are all corrupted. I've done further testing, doing single shots, "rapid fire," and even changing the iso and content of the picture (to change to file size).

The thumbnails show the full image, then the camera shows "cannot read file" and on the computer they show over 75% of typical corrupt grey block colour.

Surely this isn't right? The kingston was used on my previous camera and has had literally thousands of my pictures without skipping a beat. I've also tried formatting it to no avail.

I know the moral of the story is to go buy a fast cf card (which I plan to) but I'd still like to know if this is normal behaviour for a cheap cf?

TIA!
 
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Sounds like the card may be suspect, try reformating it in the camera first and try again, if not junk it and get a decent card. Unless you are a spray and pray shooter the card speed is only relevent if you get impatient waiting for it to download to the PC. None of my cards are faster than 133x and I haven't really had any problems. The buffer is good for 15 RAW shots and I figure if I haven't got it in those then I shouldn't be shooting it.
 
artyman said:
Sounds like the card may be suspect, try reformating it in the camera first and try again, if not junk it and get a decent card. Unless you are a spray and pray shooter the card speed is only relevent if you get impatient waiting for it to download to the PC. None of my cards are faster than 133x and I haven't really had any problems. The buffer is good for 15 RAW shots and I figure if I haven't got it in those then I shouldn't be shooting it.
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Fair point, and having a high fps for the first time meant I had to give it a good testing! Just a shame on the outcome.

Been looking into it further and apparently it was also a problem with the firmware? I had the 1.23 and apparently 1.25 acknowledges the problem and claims to have fixed it?

1. Fixed a rare phenomenon in which there were rare cases where movie files taken could not be opened when repeatedly shooting movies with specific CF cards. 2. Fixed a rare phenomenon in which there were cases where "Err 02" appeared when repeatedly shooting still images with specific CF cards.
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^From Canon

Battery is charging before I do the update, so hopefully that will sort it. Am shooting rugby this weekend so will need all the memory I can get!
 
ACW said:
Thanks, will be checking that out now
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The Sandisk Ultra 30Mb/Sec cards should be plenty fast enough for most uses (I use them and have no issues). You'll get an 8Gb one pretty cheap at the moment.

If all you do is shoot bursts then yes get the fastest you can
 
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