CF cards with camera FPS

[JamieDubS]

I am still new to photography. I have been told that obivously the faster the CF Card the faster you can shoot pictures. So if you have a camera that shoots 6 FPS will your CF card still affect that? I am upgrading from a sony alpha 300 which was incredibly slow no matter what kind of card I put into it, to a canon 40D which I know shoots super fast. But will it really be affected by the card? Has anyone noticed that? If there is a thread already about this im sorry for the repost.

[mellofelow]

Depends on the camera somewhat. First of all, the body itself shooting at 6fps, 40D or 50D for example has internal memory where it caches pictures up to 16 RAW files. The countdown starts as images are buffered. Meanwhile, it will start writing to the CF card. This is where speed of the card matters. The quicker or sooner the body can dump the images from buffer onto the card, the sooner you can resume your 6pfs. Using a slower card you'll just have to wait.

[JamieDubS]

ok thats what I was wondering... that makes a lot more sence now when you talk about the buffering and writing it on the card

[neilwood32]

The speed of the card does not affect the FPS at all. Even a Snadisk Ultra II will keep up with the 40D at 6.5 FPS until the buffer fills. Then it is the card speed that decides when the camera will be available (once the buffer clears).

IIRC the 40D can take a Sandisk Extreme IV or Ducati which will speed the clearing of the buffer.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9257 gives a good idea of the relative performance of the cards.

[JamieDubS]

Wow Great info thanks