compact flash redux

[Barbara Brundage]

There was quite a long thread here back in about May about the relative merits of a regular compact flash 256 card vs the "ultra" or high speed ones.

Rereading that, it seems like everyone was still experimenting to find out if there was any real difference in speed in the camera. So all you canon folks, especially, what's the verdict? Should I go for the high speed card or get another smaller one with the money I'd save by getting a regular card?

EDIT Hey, Edit's back!

[Beth Haney]

If I remember right, the speed of the card while IN the camera was limited by the camera itself and the speed with which it could write to the card.

I think, for me, the decision was based on the capabilities of my camera, and my S30 just doesn't have the gumption to take advantage of the extra speed of those cards. You might check with Canon Tech Support before you buy one.

[Barbara Brundage]

Thanks, Beth.

[carl sutherland]

Barbara,

I have both the San Disc regular and Ultra I am using with my Canon S40. I also do competition canine frisbee and am interested in rapid shots to catch the image I want (I put one in the Challenge of the old shed a few Challenges back). It seems I can get more images before my camera stalls with the ultra. I have not done a formal trial so I guess it is about the time to try. I will post back when I have a chance to try the experiment.

Please check the thread OS X and scanners if you have not done so. Thanks.

Carl

[carl sutherland]

Barbara,

Sorry but it has taken awhile for me to do the experiment. Using the San Disc regular and Ultra in my Canon s40 with the same battery charge, I get 3 rapid fire images with both CF cards followed by less frequent images that I can not tell the difference at the highest shutter fire setting. At the lower shutter fire setting I get 4 fairly rapid images with both followed by slower ones. So, based on the number of rapid shutter images, I can not tell a gross difference. If anybody else has data I would like to see it.

Carl

[Barbara Brundage]

Thanks, Carl. That's useful to know.

[Raymond Robillard]

Hi Barbara,

I have several different brands of cards (varying both in access speed and sizes). On my Canon EOS 10D, here's what I've found :

My Simple Technologies 96Mb CF card is the slowest. I guess it's a 1X (it's a very old card, 3 y.o.)

Both my SanDisk 128Mb and Lexar 512Mb 16x (rated) acts at the same speed. That being said, they are faster than the previous one.

The same can also me said for my two Verbatim 256Mb. I don't know, however, their speed rating.

On my 10D, there's a 9 pictures internal buffer, then between shots, the camera empties its buffer onto the card. It can shoot up to 9 pictures untill its buffer can no longer permits shots to be taken. When this happen, I have to wait for at least one picture can be shot again. What I noticed is that the speed at which the inner buffer gets empty is noticeably more quicker with the SanDisk, the Verbatim and Lexar then with the Simple Technologies. However, the Sandisk I believe are 8x and the Lexar is 16x, and there is no difference that I can notice between those two brands.

On [url]www.dpreview.com[/url], there was a discussion several months ago on this exact same topic. The consensus was that the 10D cannot make a better us of cards faster than 8x.

Ray