Do I need a faster CF card?

jerry12953

jerry12953

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Jeremy Moore
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Now that I'm going to have a go at birds in flight, etc, would I benefit from using faster CF cards?

I'm not worried about downloading to the PC any faster, but what about uploading to the card? Or is the buffer capacity of the camera the limiting factor?

(PS : I'm using a 40D and/or 5D mk2)
 
Hmm just my oppinion but if you are filling up the buffer when shooting BIF you are probably not doing it right.

I'm no expert but I have taken some pretty good shots of BIF in the past, and of other fast moving thingys, and generally you're better off shooting less and getting in-focus shots, than by having the viewfinder blacked out 90% of the time and rattling off tons of shots.

In fact I think it'd be virtually impossible to fill the buffer unless you're knowingly just shooting bad shots.
 
Well, that would kind of depend on the speed of your current card and the maximum write speed of your camera.

Yes, to a point your buffer is the limiting factor, that is, you can only shoot in high speed continuous mode until your buffer is full, then you have to wait until it writes out each image to the memory card before you can take another.

The faster your memory card, the faster it can write out that data and clear up the buffer.

As I said though, it all depends on the speed of your current cards and the camera's max speed. Cards don't always quite hit the speeds they claim either.

Sandisk Extreme III (30MB/sec) cards only hit about 22-25MB/sec on my D300s, whereas the new Extreme (60MB/sec) will hit the camera's limit of about 32MB/sec.
 
It would he helpful if you mentioned what CF cards you are using now.

Ian
 
Just to address your second question, a faster CF card will allow the camera to empty the buffer again quite noticeably quicker, the difference between my slowest and fastest cards is about half the time required to flush the buffer onto the CF card.
 
loplyg said:
In fact I think it'd be virtually impossible to fill the buffer unless you're knowingly just shooting bad shots.
Click to expand...
I think that depends on what birds in flight you're shooting (and how big your camera's buffer is).

I've regularly fired off at 8fps with Goshawks and other raptors pursuing prey.

Even if your bird is beautifully in focus and razor sharp for every single shot, getting that shot 1/8th of a second later could be the difference between a crap background a decent background and a fantastic background.

Also, if you're shooting handheld with long lenses, the first shot is rarely the sharpest of the bunch when you shoot a 3-5 frame burst. Having your finger already held down and simply panning with the bird gives you more stability than panning and jabbing your finger on the button at the same time.
 
loplyg said:
In fact I think it'd be virtually impossible to fill the buffer unless you're knowingly just shooting bad shots.
Click to expand...

I was in a tern colony recently and everything was moving so fast, there was no time or point in being choosy. I think I filled up the buffer of my 5Dii then.

Anyway, being a beginner at this sort of thing, I expect i will end up with a lot of bad shots.....
 
I shoot BIF and have done for three years using a variety of cameras including a 40D and 5D2. I find I get by perfectly well with Transcend 133X 32GB cards, but I do cherry pick my shots, or bursts of shots, so tend usually to have space in the buffer and do not need fast cards. If I decide for some weird reason to rattle off a long series of shots then sure I can fill the buffer, but the "problem" there is more one of technique than card speed. I only shoot raw.

If your shooting style demands lots of shots in rapid succession then a faster card will help a little, but once the buffer is full the best you can hope for is probably around one raw file per second until you free up some buffer space.

If you look at the performance figures for CF card write speeds on Rob Galbraith's site it looks like the 5D2 can only write out at about 32MB/s and the 40D at only 11 MB/s, so buying cards much/any faster than 30MB/s might be a needless expense.....

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9784
 
tdodd said:
buying cards much/any faster than 30MB/s might be a needless expense.....
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Read what I said above about the Extreme III (30MB/sec) vs. the Extreme (60MB/sec). The 30MB/sec card only averages about 22MB/sec in the D300s, whereas the 60MB/sec card goes 32MB/sec, that's 50% faster.

What might take 9 seconds to clear out the buffer on the Extreme III takes 6 seconds on the Extreme.

Then there's always the speed of unloading the cards to the PC to consider. Faster cards will copy to the PC much quicker, which can be a pain if you've gone out for a weekend and shot 60-70Gig of stuff. :)
 
It also depends on how fast the camera can physically transmit to the card.

If the max rate is 30mb/s there's no point getting a 60mb/s one.
 
tdodd said:
I shoot BIF and have done for three years using a variety of cameras including a 40D and 5D2. I find I get by perfectly well with Transcend 133X 32GB cards, but I do cherry pick my shots, or bursts of shots, so tend usually to have space in the buffer and do not need fast cards. If I decide for some weird reason to rattle off a long series of shots then sure I can fill the buffer, but the "problem" there is more one of technique than card speed. I only shoot raw.

If your shooting style demands lots of shots in rapid succession then a faster card will help a little, but once the buffer is full the best you can hope for is probably around one raw file per second until you free up some buffer space.

If you look at the performance figures for CF card write speeds on Rob Galbraith's site it looks like the 5D2 can only write out at about 32MB/s and the 40D at only 11 MB/s, so buying cards much/any faster than 30MB/s might be a needless expense.....

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9784
Click to expand...

Thanks again Tim.

The gist of it is, I think, that if I buy a fast card, there's not much point in using it in a 40D.

:thumbs:

Now all I need to worry about is whether I'm getting the real thing or a fake....:lol:
 
Gel said:
It also depends on how fast the camera can physically transmit to the card.

If the max rate is 30mb/s there's no point getting a 60mb/s one.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, did you not read what I put directly before your comment? :)

Extreme III == 30MB/sec Card
D300s == Can transfer up to about 32MB/sec
Extreme III in D300s == about 22MB/sec ACTUAL real world transfer speed
Extreme (60MB/sec) in the D300s == about 32MB/sec ACTUAL real world transfer speed (the limit of the D300s).

Cards do not always go at their max speed in every camera, even if the camera claims support of that card's max speed.
 
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