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View Full Version : Hard Data for Compact Flash Speed in G2


kd6lor
13th of October 2001 (Sat), 19:52
Research on the WWW has indicated a wide variety of speed performance results with different cards. A card that performs well in one camera may not be as fast in another. I thought it might be informative to perform a little experiment here in this forum.

I noticed that the green LED to the left of the optical viewfinder blinks as the data is written to the CF card. It blinks fast, my guess is twice/second. So here is the deal. Put your G2 into AVI/Movie mode. Record the maximum time, and when it starts writing to the CF card, count the number of green flashes. Report back here with CF brand and size, number of blinks, and confirm the camera model. Since I don't know if the G1 blinks the same way as the G2, the info may not be directly comparable, but should be of interest to all. My suggestion is to test the 32M card that came with the camera, and any other cards you have. It will be interesting to see if using the same card produces similar results, or if they vary widely. I don't know what kind of compression occurs with the data before it is written, but keep the subject matter and action level the same between the tests you perform.

Paul

my results will be posted shortly.

kd6lor
13th of October 2001 (Sat), 20:06
Canon G2 Movie mode 30 Second clip.

Brand / Size / Flashes
Canon OEM / 32M / 63
Canon OEM / 32M / 65
SimpleTech / 128M / 23
SimpeTech / 128M / 22

I am not sure if the number of LED flashes differs because of actual recording differences, or my ability to count the darn flashes. To do the 22-23 flashes is not bad, but counting up to 63 or 65 is hard. I have two cards, did each one twice.

Please contribute to the test. The four tests I made for these results took a grand total of 5 minutes. Probably less time than it took to post the message. I know I would love to hear about the other cards, and I am sure I am not alone. The SimpleTech was rated at 10x and was very reasonably priced. I would love to know how it fairs against the competition since I am considering getting another card.

PJ

ZarDoZ
14th of October 2001 (Sun), 00:11
Kingston 256meg 6 flashes
Kingston 256meg 7 flashes
Simpletech 128meg 13 flashes

Kingston is rated very fast