Hey all, I'm back
!
Warning: this is a pretty long and geeky/techie post!
Since today I had a break from wrassling with my daughter's little Dell XP laptop, my mind wandered to other things.
In the process of the laptop thing, I was also putting together stuff she needs for her photography (she has a 400D/XTi) and we had to find a card reader to take with her. We did locate one and she took off.
It later occured to me that of the 4 readers I had laying around hers was likely going to be one of the slower ones, since I had a fast one secured upstairs at my workstation, and the one I had at my laptop was noticeably slower. And, I ran a quick test of my oldest reader on hand and found that, yes, it was a USB 1.0 device that crawled...and then I phoned my daughter and found that she ended up with the same lousy model.
Well, today I decided to run some decisive tests of the two readers I had that weren't as old, and of the four cards I had quickly located, and I got some interesting results!
First, the three reader models:
Sandisk ImageMate 6 in 1, Model SDDR-86 -- This is the USB1 device.
Sandisk ImageMate 8 in 1, Model SDDR-88 -- "Rated" USB 2.0
Sandisk ImageMate 12 in 1, Model SDDR-89 V4 -- Rated USB 2.0
The CF cards I used:
Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB
Sandisk Extreme III 8 GB
Sandisk Extreme IV 8 BG
Kingston Ultimate 133x 4GB
I've had all these things for several years, so I wasn't using the new tech cards and readers.
So far, so good! I knew that the SDDR-86 was slow as a snail, so I concentrated on the two later models of reader and ran each of the cards through both read and write speeds (copying from the card to the PC and from the PC to the card). Even though we usually are aware of the read/copy from the card to the PC function because we are staring at it in progress on our computers, the write speed is of interest because it can affect the performance in-camera as well as such pesky little tasks such as deleting, formatting, and using the card to, say, tranfer from one thing to another.
I used a folder of 125 Raw images that totalled 1.5 GB -- enough to ignore any overhead from just processing little batches or whatever.
Well, the first thing I noticed is that the two USB 2.0 readers had significantly different performances/speeds! This was true for all cards and applied to both the read and write functions. This was really noticeable in the read/copy to the PC, not only because all the cards were slower, in fact three of them were twice as slow, but all the card speeds were equal! The speeds were even worse in the write/copy to card function!
So, as far as card readers go, the SDDR-89 v4 Model is much better than the SDDR-88, although neither model is nearly as bad as the USB 1.0 SDDR-86. So, it's like choosing between a task that takes 1-2 minutes, a task that takes 3-4 minutes, and a task that takes 10 minutes!
So, the cards:
I did have one bit of a surprise: when it came to the read/copy to computer times using the SDDR 89, the Sandisk Extreme III, Extreme IV and the Kingston had the same times, equal to just about 1.5 minutes, or 1 GB per minute. The clear loser in this was the Sandisk Ultra II at 2.5 minutes.
I didn't know what to expect here -- I guess the three "fastest" cards are pushing the limit of the faster reader -- I've seen that speed in other isolated tests.
Using the slower SDDR reader was noticeably slower for all the cards and, in fact, resulted in pretty much the same speed for all 4 cards, a time of a bit more than 3 minutes.
Things got topsy-turvy for the write-to-card speed, though! In fact, even though all cards were slower in this function, the overall worst performer was the Kingston, which took a full 6 minutes to perform the operation in the SDDR-88 and tied with the Ultra II for the worst timing on the SDDR-89 at a bit over 4 minutes, compared to the compared to the copy-from-cards speeds of 1.5 minutes for the Kingston and the 2.5 minutes for the Ultra II.
The Extreme III and Extreme IV came out ahead, with the having the edge -- with the SDDR-88 the III came out at 4:22 and the IV at 3:40 and with the SDDR-89 they were much more zippy -- the III at 2:10 and the IV at 1:53.
So, my conclusions -- I'm glad that I use the Extreme cards in my two main bodies (the 5D Classic and the 1D Mk III)! This is the first time I've really examined the difference between the Ultra and the Extreme (the 2 GB Ultra is just one that shipped with a camera and just lays around unused) but it's easy to think budget first and valuse later. But when I was out buying "stuff" I just bit the bulllet and went with the higher quality.
With my 5D the write-to-card speed is not that big of a deal because the camera itself is slow and the Extreme III sits happily in the 5DC. With the 1D3 though, write speed makes a big difference and that's where I've always kept the Extreme IV and good thing.
And, of course, the copy-to-computer read speed is huge when you are dealing with hundreds of files/multiple GB shoots! Again, the two Extreme make me happy with the quicker speeds (along with the faster SDDR-89 reader)!!
The Kingston sits in my "legacy" 30D. Again, the slower body is probably not too bothered by the slower write speed, and it's nice that the Kingston is a top performer when it comes to the read/copy-to-computer speed.
And, of course, the USB 1.0 SDDR-86 shall sit forever on the shelf, and I'll keep the SDDR-89 more in circulation between the laptop and the workstation and will probably pass the SDDR-88 on to my daughter!
'Nuff said!
