Why don't Canon cameras support Write Acceleration?

[Jesper]

Many of Canon's competitors, most notably Nikon, Kodak and Olympus, do support Lexar's Write Acceleration technology on their cameras according to Lexar's website (http://www.lexarmedia.com/digfilm/wa_cf.html). Why doesn't Canon build this into their cameras? Does Canon use some other technology to make CF write times faster?

[Pekka]

Looks like it is just disk buffer (cache) system which uses camera RAM as buffer. In that case it will reduce frame buffer and all methods of buffered write are vulnerable to power loss (shut the camera and data is lost in RAM). I would not want such a system in my camera - I seek reliablility and Ultra II is fast enough. There is no free lunch.

[PacAce]

I read the Lexar white paper on their WA technology and from what I've read, it looks like WA is more hype than real improvement in write speed. AAMOF, based on the white paper, there really is NO improvement in the actual data transfer speed of the data from the camera to the card. All WA brings into the picture is an improvement in the protocol used in the camera to card communications. In other words, the protocol used with WA allows the camera to "talk" to the card and vice versa more efficiently (or more tersely, if you will). Unfortunately, the white paper didn't go into any details on what the real performance improvement is in using the terse communication protocol vs. the regular communication protocol but I can't imagine it would make that much of an impact on the overall write time if the actual camera to card data transfer rate is not improved in any way.

The white paper does go on to say the most benefit from WA is gained in video applications where data is captured at 30 frames per second. But it still doesn't say how much of an improvement WA provides over standard protocols.

[MarkH]

It seems that some are bothered by the CF write time, I am unsure as to why.

The 10D has an interesting buffer system which allows 9 shots of any res to be taken, then the data is processed and moved to a 2nd buffer, this frees up space in the first buffer for more pictures. When the 2nd buffer is full the camera can't process any more data from the first buffer until some data is written to the CF card. This means that I can take 9 shots at 3 fps, then another shot within a second or so with JPG or within 2 seconds with RAW.

I very rarely have to wait for the 10D to write data before I can take another pic.

For much faster performance there is always the 1D MkII.