CF CARD READER

Is there really an advantage to buying a "better" card reader? like this one
http://www.lexar.com/r​eaders/pro_reader.html

the card reader I have currently is similar to this one > http://www.newegg.com …aspx?Item=N82E1​6820223073

will I see a difference in speed with the Lexar if they are both USB 2.0?

I don't know how much difference in speed you will see. They are both usb 2.0. I would say any difference is going to be nominal.

I have http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …re_CompactFlash​_Card.html and it is faster for sustained transfer rates when using an Extreme IV card. In the grand scheme of things unless you are consistently pulling down 4 gig of data on multiple cards, I would stick with what you have. Especially for the price they are asking for those things.

Sp00ks wrote in post #5819255
I don't know how much difference in speed you will see. They are both usb 2.0. I would say any difference is going to be nominal.

I have http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …re_CompactFlash​_Card.html and it is faster for sustained transfer rates when using an Extreme IV card. In the grand scheme of things unless you are consistently pulling down 4 gig of data on multiple cards, I would stick with what you have. Especially for the price they are asking for those things.

Um . . . the Lexar is FireWire. So you will see a difference. But "USB 2.0 is USB 2.0" doesn't hold either. A good USB 2.0 reader, like SanDisk's Extreme USB readers, will easily outperform lesser "USB 2.0" readers. It's all in the card-USB interface that they build in.

I have been using the Lexar Pro FW 400 version since they 1st came out, I have 2 of them daisy changed together and you can dump to cards at the same time, which is a time saver working on deadline, the Sandisk Extreme are nice but can't be daisy changed together. Both Lexar Pro and Sandisk Extreme come in USB 2.0 and FW versions, I do notice a difference in speed between FW and USB but not much.

Just for a bit of savings, Home Depot (US only probably) usually has a half an isle dedicated to small electronics, a USB 19-in-1 card reader which is $5.99. USB 2.0 and works perfect, I have 3 of them myself.

The isle is usually (in the 5 or 6 stores that I have gone into) very near the Networking/Phone wire section of the store.

Jon wrote in post #5819325
Um . . . the Lexar is FireWire. So you will see a difference. But "USB 2.0 is USB 2.0" doesn't hold either. A good USB 2.0 reader, like SanDisk's Extreme USB readers, will easily outperform lesser "USB 2.0" readers. It's all in the card-USB interface that they build in.

I stand corrected. I looked it up at B&H and saw USB 2.0. I missed the firewire version. Sorry about that.

So let me ask this, how does speed of the card effect transfer rates. I'm sure this has been discussed before. I see a difference in the transfer rate of the Extreme IV and the Extreme II cards. Or its all in my head, either way......

I cheated. I followed OP's link :{)#

A faster card will be better able to take advantage of any reader; you'll see this on Rob Galbraith's performance tests of both cameras and readers. Granted, if both the cards being compared are faster than the reader/writer/camera the difference will be less, but unless your reader's hopelessly overwhelmed by the cards there'll be a difference. That's one reason I recommend getting the fastest cards you can afford, regardless of whether they'll perform much better in your present camera. They'll do better in an upgraded reader down the road, as well as in your next camera. Some of my 20D cards have made the transition to the 1D3. If I'd stayed with cards that were "almost as fast", I'd be replacing them now.