Compact Flash

[Happy Hour]

Yeah, what he was saying is that the camera can't write faster than 20mb/s so after that point there is no difference. It'd be like saying the dodge viper and the Escort are both gonig to go through an automated car wash. the viper may be 1000X faster, but the car wash will still take as long.

READ speed is a different story however. Plug a 40mb/s card into a firewire 800 card reader uploading to a SSD and you won't be waiting long.

that was my point. Have you ever tried to upload 1000 pictures? It takes a while. On the 40mb/s it's within a minute or so.

 

[DSLR noob]

that was my point. Have you ever tried to upload 1000 pictures? It takes a while. On the 40mb/s it's within a minute or so.

well assuming he is the average consumer, he might read off of the camera with the standard manufacterer softwear, in which case his read speed will still be limited. even the type of connection a card reader has to a computer will affect it. I do have to agree with them that most likely, anything above 20mb/s wouldn't too noticalbe, because the card starts to surpass the transfer rates of the hardwar the average consumer has. Not everyone buys the fasted reader, uses firewire, and had a 7200 RPM HDD or SSD (Solid State Drive, the current fastest).

 

[JerryPH]

I use the Extreme IV 8gb CF cards on my D200, I suffer no delays, but then again I also do not see the need to press and hold the shutter at maximum FPS for minutes on end. Unloading all 8GB on my USB 2 card reader is about 3-4 minutes... no biggie for me.

 

[yeti]

I think everyone is confusing two different things:
One is bandwidth, which as Happy Hour said reaches up to 45Mb/s (I stand corrected 300x wasn't the fastest after all).
The other is latency and flash memory is notorious for having long latency.

Think about it this way:

You have 45Mb/s transfer, but you have to wait a second to get it. Every time you do something other sequential read/write, you have to wait a second for it.

Example:

You want to save a 20Mb photo. You think it would take less than half a second to save on your brand new 45MB/s CF card. WRONG. It will take 1 second wait to record the FAT entry + the negligible time to actually write it + 1 second wait to write the actual photo + the 1/2 second to write it = 2.5 seconds. OR: it took five times longer than expected because you spent 4/5 of your time waiting for the CF card to get ready.

You see the madness here: everyone likes to boast "I can do 10MB/s, 20, 30, 40..." because John Doe doesn't know that there is more to speed than bandwidth. A lot more. Everyone forgets that at a point noone cares whether you can do 20 or 200Mb/s, you still have to wait forever just to get access!

A 30Mb/s card might perform better than a 45MB/s card in the lab, but that's because the the lab merely measured bandwidth, ignoring latency. On your camera, those same two CF cards perform about the same. There hardly has been any improvement in the latency front, CF cards are still slow.

I downloaded 130 pictures (~1.3GB) off my camera yesterday with a 133x CF card - my computer has USB 2.0, my camera supports USB 2.0, but it still took AN HOUR! 90% of the time the access light on my camera wasn't even on, the camera was just waiting for access! I don't want to think how long Stranger waited for his 1000 photos.

For this and many other reasons good CF readers have a very smart software: they won't treat a CF card as a harddrive, they will just read it as a block device, dump its entire contents on your real harddrive and ONLY THEN read the filesystem stored within. This is fast because you have to wait for access just once. After that it's a sequential read of your ENTIRE card, which is fast.

 

[jstuedle]

in the lab, yes 40mb/s is faster than 20mb/s... i just think as far as your camera saving this it is the same.. my photos are not 20mb so either way i am not reaching the limit.

this is real world application...... will you notice the difference if i run past you faster than your eye can notice the first time, and then 2x that speed the next?

good point though and clarification

These speeds are Mega - Bits per second, not Mega - Bytes. A 20 Mega Bit card with download a 20 Mega Byte file in about 8 seconds. (8 bits to a byte)
And I think Hoodman still has the crown for speed.

 

[jstuedle]

I downloaded 130 pictures (~1.3GB) off my camera yesterday with a 133x CF card - my computer has USB 2.0, my camera supports USB 2.0, but it still took AN HOUR! 90% of the time the access light on my camera wasn't even on, the camera was just waiting for access! I don't want to think how long Stranger waited for his 1000 photos.

For this and many other reasons good CF readers have a very smart software: they won't treat a CF card as a harddrive, they will just read it as a block device, dump its entire contents on your real harddrive and ONLY THEN read the filesystem stored within. This is fast because you have to wait for access just once. After that it's a sequential read of your ENTIRE card, which is fast.

Also, remember that using the camera as a card reader is the slowest way to transfer files. The handshaking between the camera and the computer eats up a lot of time. Often the read time for the camera is several times that of even a basic card reader.

 

[yeti]

Also, remember that using the camera as a card reader is the slowest way to transfer files. The handshaking between the camera and the computer eats up a lot of time. Often the read time for the camera is several times that of even a basic card reader.

Here is a trick I want to try sometime: electrically a CF card has the same 42-pin connector as a regular parallel ATA harddrive. I want to wire a CF card to the IDE connector of the motherboard and see exactly how fast a CF card is. This is effectively a DIY sold-state harddrive.

Worst-case scenario is I will destroy the CF card with high(er) voltage. I don't see how the motherboard itself can be damaged as the IDEs are pretty resilient.

 

[THORHAMMER]

I've played around with tons of memory cards,

(hey I work for a major major memory manufacturer )

You wont notice much difference in regards to taking the shots once you exceed your maximum write speed to the camera, which for most non full frame dslr should be 20mb /second , a true 133X card should write 16 -20 megs a second depending on the build/manufacturer. thats close, so get the 166X or 200X and your covered plus its quick to get the stuff off the card when your done.

I think anything over 200x is overkill unless your using a medium format digital system or your DSLR can write to the card more then 25-30mb/s

As for quality it goes into controller issues and thats beyond the scope here, but the big 3 are all good.

Sandisk, Lexar, Kingston

Of course Sandisk started it all (heck they were selling 3 million CF cards a year back in 1999. )

Lexar (which is owned by micron) is fantastic for photographers as well as they have image rescue software on the cards.

Kingston - last but not least is a good motto for their entry into flash. Late to the game, but fantastic products. Their 266X 8GB is a beast. Also they have a little site devoted to photography called "Icons of Photography" http://www.kingston.com/flash/iop/default.asp

All the other brands you are risking customer service issues and hassle if they go bad. You want support if your shelling out dough for a 4GB extreme III, or anything that big and fast.

If your just picking up a 2GB 40X spare for 15 bucks it doesnt really matter I dont think where you buy it.

 

[lifeafter2am]

I've played around with tons of memory cards,

(hey I work for a major major memory manufacturer )

You wont notice much difference in regards to taking the shots once you exceed your maximum write speed to the camera, which for most non full frame dslr should be 20mb /second , a true 133X card should write 16 -20 megs a second depending on the build/manufacturer. thats close, so get the 166X or 200X and your covered plus its quick to get the stuff off the card when your done.

Have you gotten a chance to play around with the Sandisk UDMA cards in a camera that supports it? Just wondering.

 

[THORHAMMER]

UDMA is a very cool thing,

about time it shows up in cameras. Its basically same as 10 year old Hard Drive technology But flash doesnt have actual read/write heads to slow it down, its like flying without friction

At its highest current theoretical speed (mode 5)
it's 100mb / sec Of course you can use it as a SSD hard drive too.

some 266X and above, (most 300X) are UDMA
These are some of the cameras that so far can support it, though new firmware will probably be needed to full take advantage. The slowest UDMA speed is 16 megs /s

Canon IDs Mark III
Nikon D300
Nikon D3X
Olympus E3
Sony A700

Your computer will love transferring files @300X speed. But you really need firewire 800 at least to enjoy extra transfer speeds. Some of the cards dont even test faster with firewire 800 but like actually 2% slower!!

All the bugs just need to be worked out with the controllers. Thats all.
All I can say right now is not all new UDMA cameras even benefit from it.
First Gen of many things comes out like this,
Anything else its too early to say....

it will make better sense as newer cameras come out. Also could be a good thing for the guys with tethered rigs and digital hassies who shoot into hard drives,

they might want to pop off the tether and nail some frames knowing the card can keep up with the camera.

 

[RyanLilly]

Here is a trick I want to try sometime: electrically a CF card has the same 42-pin connector as a regular parallel ATA harddrive. I want to wire a CF card to the IDE connector of the motherboard and see exactly how fast a CF card is. This is effectively a DIY sold-state harddrive.

Worst-case scenario is I will destroy the CF card with high(er) voltage. I don't see how the motherboard itself can be damaged as the IDEs are pretty resilient.

I think you can get these adapters for about 5 bucks on ebay.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=CF+to+IDE&category0=

 

[usayit]

Compact flash is closer to PCMCIA

but as already pointed out... there are adapters out there that will take the mess out of the job.