Fast 32Gb CF cards are finally here

[dwdallam]

The newest 16GB 533x Plus versions are available, but you'll only find them at one place in North America - "Right now, DV Nation is the only authorized reseller for North America" as quoted from PhotoFast SSD website.

http://www.dvnation.com/Flash-Media-Cards.html

Yeah I just found that


Here is a little speed/capacity/price comparison using the Canon 1DS MKIII RAW

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SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s 16GB 17.3MB/s    77US
SanDisk Extreme IV 45MB/s 16GB 18.8MB/s    185US

This is only a 1.5MB/s increase. Given the price, it's a given which card you want.


New cards:

PhotoFast 533X Plus 16GB 18.9MB/s 129US
PhotoFast 533X         16GB                 85US (no test but on Galbraith's site the 32GB was only 1/s slower)

SanDisk Extreme 16GB 16.3MB/s        169US

SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB 16.6MB/s 300US

Looks like I'm buying the Extreme III 30MB/s cards. Why not the PhotoFast card for 85US? Simple, they only offer a ONE YEAR WARRANTY! I don't think Galbraith said anything about that. SanDisk is Lifetime for their CF cards and 5 years for SDHC.

From the PhotoFast Resellers website: Photofast, Silicon-Power, and Solidata carry a one year warranty.  Shoddy.





And can anyone tell me why the 5D2 writes so much faster than the 1DS MKIII?

[narikin]

Well, I guess they're almost here? I can't fin one PF 16GB card for sale anywhere.

http://www.dvnation.com/Flash-Media-Cards.html

is where I got mine.

Interesting that the fastest writing card in the Canon 1Ds Mark III is still the old Ducati CF cards, which is just barely faster than these latest cards and the older Extreme IV's.  I'm also guessing that in the 1D Mark III these new CF cards won't have any benefit for write speed since it's a non-UDMA camera. If you're looking for faster buffer clearing in the 1 series Canons, these cards aren't really an upgrade.

Really this is more about how long it takes to download the card to the computer, unless you are shooting with the latest generation of Canon cameras (5D Mark II, 7D, 1D/1Ds Mark IV?).

yes thats true, the 1Ds3 is amazingly slow to write compared to a 5D2, but obviously the next generation 1 Series (MkIV's ?) will write as fast or faster still than the 5D2, so surely better to buy UDMA cards for the future, than ones that will not be able to keep up with next gen cameras, and leave you waiting for the buffer to clear?

[narikin]

From the PhotoFast Resellers website: Photofast, Silicon-Power, and Solidata carry a one year warranty.  Shoddy.

And can anyone tell me why the 5D2 writes so much faster than the 1DS MKIII?

true, should be 3 year, but I find I'm onto the next generation of cards within 3 years, so warranties longer than that are moot for me.
what use is a lifetime warranty on a 5 year old 1Gb Sandisk I keep in the drawer now, as its so slow and small?
we'll all be on C-Fast cards in a little while. I've never had a card go wrong on me - Sandisk, Lexar or Photofast, and as a PhotoFast one is under half the price of Sandisk, you could replace it and still save money. and still have a faster card!

the 1Ds3 is not UDMA 6  enabled, so it cant write to the max speed of new generation cards. 5D2 is, so its more than 2x faster!

like I said before I'd advise against getting old Sandisk III's simply as when you upgrade your camera in a few months to a newer Canon, you will then need to upgrade your cards to UDMA 6 ones to get the speed bump. its not worth buying old generation ones, imho, especially as their price hasn't dropped that much.

beware of eBay too  there are SO many Sandisk fakes out there, III, IV, etc, all in very convincing packaging, that you must pay full price at a main dealer to be sure of getting the real deal, or you'll be buying a counterfeit most likely.

[dwdallam]

true, should be 3 year, but I find I'm onto the next generation of cards within 3 years, so warranties longer than that are moot for me.
what use is a lifetime warranty on a 5 year old 1Gb Sandisk I keep in the drawer now, as its so slow and small?
we'll all be on C-Fast cards in a little while. I've never had a card go wrong on me - Sandisk, Lexar or Photofast, and as a PhotoFast one is under half the price of Sandisk, you could replace it and still save money. and still have a faster card!

the 1Ds3 is not UDMA 6  enabled, so it cant write to the max speed of new generation cards. 5D2 is, so its more than 2x faster!

like I said before I'd advise against getting old Sandisk III's simply as when you upgrade your camera in a few months to a newer Canon, you will then need to upgrade your cards to UDMA 6 ones to get the speed bump. its not worth buying old generation ones, imho, especially as their price hasn't dropped that much.

beware of eBay too  there are SO many Sandisk fakes out there, III, IV, etc, all in very convincing packaging, that you must pay full price at a main dealer to be sure of getting the real deal, or you'll be buying a counterfeit most likely.

The 1DS MKIII is UDMA enabled, but at what class, if not 6?

Advice to buy the faster cards for upgrade in camera is solid. I think I'll buy one of the PF cards to see how they perform.

[narikin]

I believe the class 6 standards/cards predate the 1 series cameras, so no, they are not class 6, which is the new high performance standard that all the card manufacturers are working to, till C-Fast comes out.

Phase digital backs are not UDMA class 6 enabled yet either, but will be soon with an upcoming firmware update, apparently.

to be clear, UDMA6 cards DO work in older cameras/backs, but not at their highest speeds.