How fast can the DRebel write images to disk (Canons Answer)

[Nascar Nut]

I had posted on here for info about this and no one really seemed to know. Emailed Canon, and this was there reply:

INQUIRY: I have purchased the EOS Digital Rebel and I am going to get my compactflash card. My question is, how fast does the camera write to the card. There are several speeds of cards. I don't want to spend the extra money on the fastest card if the camera only writes at maybe 12x. Thanks in advance for your help.

Thank you for contacting Canon Technical Support.

The only feature on our cameras that will utilize the high speed rated Compact Flash (CF) cards is the Continuous Shooting feature. Unless this one feature is of extreme importance to you, you will honestly be wasting your money on a high speed rated CF card. The CF cards that come packaged with our cameras do not have a speed rating. I recommend that you purchase a CF card with the memory capacity in mind, not the speed rating.

I wish they would have told me what the normal write speed was. Seems like this is imposible to find out.

[defordphoto]

I wish they would have told me what the normal write speed was. Seems like this is imposible to find out.

No it's not. This is the best information regarding CF's available: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

[theoldmoose]

The same run-around I got from Canon support. It shows you how absolutely clueless the answer was, considering that they do not pack a CF card in with the 300D, so you are forced to make an 'instant' decision about what speed card to spend your money on.

This comes in the same category as when Chuck Westfall says, "that's proprietary information". In general Canon, being one of those really large corporations brimming with intellectual property lawyers, has adopted the attitude of 'better to say as little as possible, to avoid revealing too much'.

Pooh.

Check out the independent reviews posted. At the moment, it's the best information you can get on the subject.

[PeterS45]

The only feature on our cameras that will utilize the high speed rated Compact Flash (CF) cards is the Continuous Shooting feature. Unless this one feature is of extreme importance to you, you will honestly be wasting your money on a high speed rated CF card. The CF cards that come packaged with our cameras do not have a speed rating. I recommend that you purchase a CF card with the memory capacity in mind, not the speed rating.

I wish they would have told me what the normal write speed was. Seems like this is imposible to find out.

In fact they gave you the answer you were looking for, because they stated that the 300D will not benefit from high speed cards and that you will honestly be wasting your money on a high speed rated CF card.

[CoolToolGuy]

I did some testing several months ago with my G3, and I noted that 'write time' was definitely decreased when using faster cards, although the improvement was minimal above 25x. I presumed (silly me) that the same would apply to the Drebel. Such may not be the case - and I don't have the time right now to redo the tests with the Drebel. :(

It may be that Canon doesn't want to open up the can of worms that would result from revealing actual write speeds. However, they should not ignore that the media is speeding up, and they need to get with it. They can keep the pros at bay with the buffering in the MKII, but the prosumers, and even the average Joe will be noticing this before long.

This is a computer technology issue, not a photographic one, but Canon needs to get on the computer stick and realize they are dealing in multiple domains. I certainnly could manually wind my F1 faster than my Drebel writes a RAW image, and even the A1 with the anemic Power Winder can outpace the Drebel. I wonder when Canon will 'Revolutionize Digital' in this regard :?:

Have Fun
Rick 8)