1D users help me understand

I have been perplexed by the fact that Canon chose to make the 1D series with two memory cards, but one CF and the other SD. What's with that? I would rather have it like the D3.

Does someone know why Canon chose to do this?

More choices? Who knows. Personally I kinda liked it. The SD card was fast to download from card reader to PC and it was nice and small. More storage in camera with very little need for additional room.

I'm not sure either. As far as I know, all the fastest cards are CF. I would also really like dual CF cards as it just seems to make sense. It's frustrating if you're fired off a few frames writing to both cards simultaneously, and you know your CF card is done writing but the buffer can't clear because it takes a lot longer to write the data to the SD card. It doesn't make sense to me.

Why? Flexibility. SD cards used to be smaller than CF cards, but usually were usually faster, which was great for RAW+JPG. Send the JPG to the sd card, RAW to the flash card. Nowadays, SD is just as large, faster, and cheaper than CF, so you'll get more out of a 1d than a dual CF card D3. You can use old cards just fine, and you can get new SD cards for cheap (i got a 8gb extreme iii card for 40 bucks).

and picturecrazy, you're just dead wrong there. even the fastest CF cards can't break 7.5mb/s on a 1dmkii, yet an ultra II sd can go past 8.5mb/s. on a mkiii, the difference is even larger. when transferring on a computer, the difference is just as large but opposite, which is what you might have thought. on a 1dsmkiii (only UDMA capable canon camera), then CF cards may be faster, but only if they support UDMA use.

Many photographers like CF more than SD just because CF is larger and thus harder to lose. However, SD has caught up to CF in most other respects. I find myself using SD in my M3 more than CF these days...

At first I didnt like it.... but after covering many events where cards get replaced very often I like the fact they are different...one more thing to help me keep the cards sorted...sounds silly but it does help especially when you have to change out cards in and make notes in 10-20 seconds. JMO

Well for me the CF card offers a measure of safety compared to SD. The CF card works more like a disk drive and can move sectors if there is an error.

Worst of all the SD card is so small that I could easily loose it. As a wedding photog, its a frightening nightmare to loose it.

basroil wrote in post #5909334
and picturecrazy, you're just dead wrong there. even the fastest CF cards can't break 7.5mb/s on a 1dmkii, yet an ultra II sd can go past 8.5mb/s. on a mkiii, the difference is even larger. when transferring on a computer, the difference is just as large but opposite, which is what you might have thought. on a 1dsmkiii (only UDMA capable canon camera), then CF cards may be faster, but only if they support UDMA use.

So if this is the case, why not have a slot for two SD cards?

davidfig wrote in post #5909582
Well for me the CF card offers a measure of safety compared to SD. The CF card works more like a disk drive and can move sectors if there is an error.

CF and SD card, afaik, function exactly the same and both use flash memory. Neither is more like a disk drive than the other.

davidfig wrote in post #5909582
Worst of all the SD card is so small that I could easily loose it. As a wedding photog, its a frightening nightmare to loose it.

This is one of the best arguments for CF.

davidfig wrote in post #5909590
So if this is the case, why not have a slot for two SD cards?

Obvious answer here: CF has been used since the beginning and there would be an outrageous uproar to switch entirely at this point. It takes time. Most pros have dozens of GBs in CF...

sbressler wrote in post #5909606
Obvious answer here: CF has been used since the beginning and there would be an outrageous uproar to switch entirely at this point. It takes time. Most pros have dozens of GBs in CF...

Look back at when the XSi came out, people were upset that their new entry level camera would have to mean buying new cards.

And yes, CF and SD are almost the same, except for size and bus type. Even the actual memory controller is the same for both. Nowadays, if you wanted to fit an SD in a CF box, you could (and there are SD to CF converters out there)

Versatility - and perhaps that two CF slots wouldn't fit within the space Canon had available?

basroil wrote in post #5909334
and picturecrazy, you're just dead wrong there. even the fastest CF cards can't break 7.5mb/s on a 1dmkii, yet an ultra II sd can go past 8.5mb/s. on a mkiii, the difference is even larger. when transferring on a computer, the difference is just as large but opposite, which is what you might have thought. on a 1dsmkiii (only UDMA capable canon camera), then CF cards may be faster, but only if they support UDMA use.

I was talking only from my own experience. And shooting with just an SD card is a heck of a lot slower than a single CF card. But then again, I'm using a 1Ds mark III.

Also serves as a double backup, if one card (or writer component fail) during a shoot, the camera can still write to the other card. For this purpose, the smaller SD card makes sense (otherwise the body would be a lot larger).

picturecrazy wrote in post #5910047
I was talking only from my own experience. And shooting with just an SD card is a heck of a lot slower than a single CF card. But then again, I'm using a 1Ds mark III.

Like I said, except on the UDMA capable 1dsmkiii, all canon cameras (that have sd) will write to SD between 10 and 20% faster. Also, if you shoot RAW+JPG, the time to write/compress a JPG will add to the time, which is usually 10-20% slower than writing RAW files (check RG's CF/SD card guide).

I hate it. I will say that again I HATE IT.
Either two of the same or just one...WTF is up with that.