How to buy Compact Flash (CF) cards

Jon wrote in post #11366432
8 MP on the 60D is a JPEG setting; about 3.5 MB/frame or 18 MB/sec to flush to the buffer. Shooting in RAW M, you'd get about 10 MB files for 50 MB/sec.

So what would your overall recommendation be? Buy a more expensive CF with the long-term in mind or just buy a 133x for the moment? I think that's what I'll be doing because, like someone already pointed out, it's likely that faster flash is gonna be released, hopefully resulting in the drop of a price of the older, slower CF's.

Amazon has pretty good deals on memory I must say. I'll just get a CF from there, 16GB for 23€ shipped.

Could someone also please answer this?

Also: What is the best (fastest) way to download files to your computer? Via the cable or the card reader? I reckon it's the card reader, but should I just buy a card reader? Like a multi-purpose 21-in-one one or just one specifically for CF? I see there's certain types of USB drives and you can plug a SD in there, is there something alike for CF's? I only have a SD slot card reader (MacBook Pro) so...

EDIT:Something like this is what I was talking about. Is that just as good as a 'normal' card reader? Because I'd rather just have a USB. I never use any other cards than SD and in the future CF

TijmenDal wrote in post #11368673
Also: What is the best (fastest) way to download files to your computer? Via the cable or the card reader? I reckon it's the card reader, but should I just buy a card reader?

Definitely a card reader. The USB readers have the advantage of being cheap, but they can be slow. Around 25 MB/s is an average speed. Paying a little more can get you a bit more speed. I use this one from Lexar. Your MBP should also have a Firewire800 port. A reader that uses FW800 will be about twice as fast, but they seem to be difficult to get hold of.

Some MBPs also have an Expresscard slot. If you've got one of those then a reader in there will be as fast as anything else around. Lexar is also my preferred brand.

hollis_f wrote in post #11368865
Definitely a card reader. The USB readers have the advantage of being cheap, but they can be slow. Around 25 MB/s is an average speed. Paying a little more can get you a bit more speed. I use this one from Lexar. Your MBP should also have a Firewire800 port. A reader that uses FW800 will be about twice as fast, but they seem to be difficult to get hold of.

Some MBPs also have an Expresscard slot. If you've got one of those then a reader in there will be as fast as anything else around. Lexar is also my preferred brand.

I was looking at this one, but I hows the quality of it? The official retail price was 20 quid, and now it's only 3 apart from being cheap it USED to be fairly 'pricey' so I don't know why it wouldn't be good.
I don't see anything like a expresscard slot, just an SD reader. I'll take a look into readers that use fw800, but they're probably more expensive (and I'm on a tight budget as usual)

EDIT2: Is it important that the reader supports UDMA (I don't even know what it standards for or what it does?) because most faster cards use/have UDMA. So if I'll end up buying better CF later on the reader might be worthless or something?
EDIT: Is it important to have a reader/writer instead of just a writer? Personally I don't know why I would want to write things on it, but maybe you guys have experience with it and use it often or what not.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11369850
I was looking at this one, but I hows the quality of it? The official retail price was 20 quid, and now it's only 3 apart from being cheap it USED to be fairly 'pricey' so I don't know why it wouldn't be good

Well, they say it does 4.3 Mbps (megabits per second) which is astonishingly slow - around 0.5 MB/s (megabytes per second). Even if they meant 4.3 MB/s - that's still very, very slow. It is rare for makers to quote speeds - normally because they are so bad. I really would spalsh out the extra for the Lexar UDMA reader.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11369850
EDIT2: Is it important that the reader supports UDMA (I don't even know what it standards for or what it does?) because most faster cards use/have UDMA. So if I'll end up buying better CF later on the reader might be worthless or something?

If you buy a non-UDMA reader it'll work with UDMA cards - just not at the maximum possible speed.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11369850
EDIT: Is it important to have a reader/writer instead of just a writer? Personally I don't know why I would want to write things on it, but maybe you guys have experience with it and use it often or what not.

They are all readers and writers. People call the CF readers because reading is what they do most of the time. But if you do need to write to the card (upgrading the camera's firmware is probably the most common).

hollis_f wrote in post #11370059
Well, they say it does 4.3 Mbps (megabits per second) which is astonishingly slow - around 0.5 MB/s (megabytes per second). Even if they meant 4.3 MB/s - that's still very, very slow. It is rare for makers to quote speeds - normally because they are so bad. I really would spalsh out the extra for the Lexar UDMA reader.

Ok, so that totally blows, and I must say I've lost faith in all other cheap things after I saw some guy on youtube who's MBP died after using a cheap one.

hollis_f wrote in post #11370059
If you buy a non-UDMA reader it'll work with UDMA cards - just not at the maximum possible speed.

Ok, but in 2 years non-UDMA cards probably won't even exist anymore I reckon...

hollis_f wrote in post #11370059
They are all readers and writers. People call the CF readers because reading is what they do most of the time. But if you do need to write to the card (upgrading the camera's firmware is probably the most common).

That's a lot more logical i must say.


I'm starting to think the Lexar might be worth it, but what are the writing speeds on that one? This Hama one has 32mb/s writing speed, which seems good enough for the moment, or is the Lexar a lot better? Is blowing another 15 or so Euro's on the Lexar one worth it?

Also: Do not all card readers support Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)? I've seen readers where it said it was only compatible with Windows.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11370682
Ok, so that totally blows, and I must say I've lost faith in all other cheap things after I saw some guy on youtube who's MBP died after using a cheap one.

I lost faith in most cheap things years ago. You get what you pay for in general. Since I shoot a 40D (which maxes out at around 20-30 mb/s, I use Sandisk Extreme III cards. I've never had a single card failure in two years and these cards are relatively cheap right now. The biggest difference when using an older camera is going to be when you transfer the files to your pc using a card reader. Unless you are a pro on a deadline you can probably make due with a 30mb/s card in my opinion.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11370682
I'm starting to think the Lexar might be worth it, but what are the writing speeds on that one? This Hama one has 32mb/s writing speed, which seems good enough for the moment, or is the Lexar a lot better? Is blowing another 15 or so Euro's on the Lexar one worth it?

Yeah, that Hama one looks OK. Probably worth getting.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11370682
Also: Do not all card readers support Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)? I've seen readers where it said it was only compatible with Windows.

Macs are pretty good when it comes to standard USB devices. I've not heard of any USB card readers that have problems.

hollis_f wrote in post #11370835
Yeah, that Hama one looks OK. Probably worth getting.

The Lexar looks really nifty though; but if the Hama is ok I'll probably get that one if it saves me some money. On the other hands I just found out I got another 200€ I totally forgot I had, so maybe I'll just blow that 15€ extra; not that much, haha! And at least I'll be 100% sure it's kick-ass. I can't find out if the Hama is mac compatible though; it doesn't say on amazon or the hama site.

40Driggs wrote in post #11370720
I lost faith in most cheap things years ago. You get what you pay for in general. Since I shoot a 40D (which maxes out at around 20-30 mb/s, I use Sandisk Extreme III cards. I've never had a single card failure in two years and these cards are relatively cheap right now. The biggest difference when using an older camera is going to be when you transfer the files to your pc using a card reader. Unless you are a pro on a deadline you can probably make due with a 30mb/s card in my opinion.

Thanks. I have a 20D currently so I'll just get some 16GB 133x (20mbs) for the moment, which is like 15 quid, which is a good price if you ask me.

cf cards:
buy one of these:
http://www.engadget.co​m …per-second-memory-card-wi

tomd wrote in post #11371354
cf cards:
buy one of these:
http://www.engadget.co​m …per-second-memory-card-wi

Except it's based on the PCIe spec, so it'll be a CF card in name only, if it's accepted; not backward compatible with anything currently using CF cards, which use the PATA interface.

I'm still figuring if I should get a USB reader for when I'm traveling or something. I can imagine it'd be really nice if you could just unload your card by popping it into a computer in cafe and burning it on a disk or something?
Or are you better of just buying some more storage? 16GB 133x Transcend is only 15£, so that's all good.

Also, if anyone has the Lexar reader, I've read some reviews and they all say the SD card slot is worthless and the cards don't fit in there; now that ain't too much of a problem as I have an SD card slot in my MBP, but nevertheless it sorta sucks it doesn't work when buying a relatively 'expensive' device.

What does everyone here use? I've only heard of one person in this topic that uses the Lexar reader, maybe some other people can specify what they use?

hollis_f wrote in post #11362465
Which could be a horrible waste of money. Unless you know which camera the OP is using (does it even support UDMA) and what sort of thing they're shooting (lots of high speed bursts or single studio shots) and how they transfer images to the computer (USB1.1 or Expresscard) then any sort of advice may not be helpful.

I see cdifoto has already covered the egg-basket juggling point.

Some good points here. Since you have an old camera you can take advantage of some REALLY inexpensive cards that are basically obsolete for all current cameras.

I always think of the maximum performance of the card for the device...what you may do today may not be what you want to do with the device tomorrow.

Cheers

Beau1k wrote in post #11372462
Some good points here. Since you have an old camera you can take advantage of some REALLY inexpensive cards that are basically obsolete for all current cameras.

I always think of the maximum performance of the card for the device...what you may do today may not be what you want to do with the device tomorrow.

Cheers

Thanks, but do you mean by REALLY expensive (and thus really slow?) Less than 133x/20mbs? Because I reckon I could use 133x just fine when not shooting burst later on... Or am I totally missing the picture here...

Ya I wouldn't buy a card that's faster than the top performance of your camera. If you have an older model camera you will be able to get cheaper/older cards that nobody wants any longer.

I would imagine you could get 4GB+ cards all day long for $20 US each.

TijmenDal wrote in post #11371599
I'm still figuring if I should get a USB reader for when I'm traveling or something. I can imagine it'd be really nice if you could just unload your card by popping it into a computer in cafe and burning it on a disk or something?
Or are you better of just buying some more storage? 16GB 133x Transcend is only 15£, so that's all good.

Also, if anyone has the Lexar reader, I've read some reviews and they all say the SD card slot is worthless and the cards don't fit in there; now that ain't too much of a problem as I have an SD card slot in my MBP, but nevertheless it sorta sucks it doesn't work when buying a relatively 'expensive' device.

What does everyone here use? I've only heard of one person in this topic that uses the Lexar reader, maybe some other people can specify what they use?

Use a USB cable, I doubt the 20D is USB2 capable so any USB cable will do, you should have had one in the kit, but if not they are cheap as buggery and a lot less stuffing around than a reader