CF card makes any difference?

Does card speed have any effect on shooting speed? As far as i understand it all goes into the camera buffer.

Im thinking of getting Extrem III instead of IV for bigger size. III is still pretty fast but i can go upto 16GB and forget about any more cards.

 

Hi There. I am no expert, but I believe that even though the data is run through the camera buffer, you still need to empty the buffer, which is where the speed of the card comes in. If you shoot single frame shots then the speed isn't as important as if you were trying to take multiple shots as fast as the camera can.

As far as the card size, I would be concerned about having all my eggs in one basket. If that card fails and it is full, that is a lot of images to loose.

Just my two cents.

Cheers

 

My understanding is that only extremely slow cards will slow you down while shooting... but that extremely fast cards unload much faster once back at home. If you've ever waited 15 minutes for 80-90 shots to come off your CF card, you know how valuable that time could be

 

Some of the newest high end cameras can utilize the faster cards to empty the buffer faster. Also, several smaller cards as safer in my opinion than 1 or 2 big cards. This has been discussed at length before. You might want to search the threads to see more opinions on this.

 

I use 1 and 2gb cards. With the image sizes going bigger I might try a 4gb some day, but I agree with the others. All the photos on one card and depending on one expensive card, instead of multiple, less expensive cards, I like the idea of more cards.

I can set the card to download to the computer and go back to shooting, while it is saving. I have a stand alone CD writer that reads from cards, for backup. Same thing, and a CD only holds 702mb, so there's a limit. Nice part is I can just back up the whole card if I don't fill them past 3/4s.

Some people may think there's nothing more interesting than watching a card transfer for 15-30 minutes. (my laptop is older with USB 1 ports, so that's my fault) I have better things to do.

 

If you are going to be using 16Gb cards (not a good idea anyway) speed can't be that important in the first place.

What camera and what size files are you working with?

I've got 10 2Gb. cards and they handle a full days shooting for 2 cameras, no matter what, and I shot RAW.

That 16Gb. card really spooks me.

 

Thanks for sharing thoughts guys! How often do CF cards fail and cannot be recovered?

 

Big Mike is pretty much right in his comment, however, losing 16gb of info even once.......

 

CF Cards don't fail too often, and if they do many companies (especially Sandisk) have software to recover the data. I think the scare of failing cards comes from the days when microdrives were all the rage...these things failed all the time because they were basically a super tiny HDD, they had moving parts.

 

16GB cards are slow period...

get 2 or 4gb cards instead.