Leaf Aptus 12R compact flash card compatibility ?

[EricWHiss]

I looks like my Leaf 12 is not working well with any of my newer compact flash cards.  I just bought 2 lexar 16gb  400x cards, and got one 8gb 400x sandisc card with my Hasselblad CF-ii 39MS back.  All of these are working great on canon 5d2 and seem to work fine on my CF, but my leaf is making files that have all kinds of lines through them or won't open in C1/LC 11.5.    Older 4GB and 8GB cards work fine on the Leaf, but this thing puts out a big file and I hate to keep shuffling cards.   Anyone know for sure which 16gb cards work?  

[del_pscc]

Sandisk Extreme Pro 32 and 64 seem to work fine.  Haven't tried 16's.

Dave.

[yaya]

Make sure the cards are formatted as MS-DOS FAT32 with Master Boot Record partition scheme prior to using them in the Aptus

[EricWHiss]

Make sure the cards are formatted as MS-DOS FAT32 with Master Boot Record partition scheme prior to using them in the Aptus

And if that's properly done, which cards / sizes / speeds are supported? Just asking because I'm getting either parts of two images combined or lines through the image with mine on the 16gb lexar professional 400x cards.  At first I thought I had a bad batch of cards but they work fine in the other cameras.

[yaya]

All main brands/ models are known to be working well. If you use them in other cameras we recommend that you format them on the computer before using them on the Aptus

[EricWHiss]

The card was formatted by disk utility on my Mac desktop  just prior to shooting the attached image above..... and not to offend, but why can't the Leaf manage to format the cards itself? Say you are in the field and need a card and buy or borrow one - the back should be able to manage this itself. Never had a problem with my Hasselblad or Phase backs or Canon.  Used to be able to put both canon and phase images on the same card without problems even.  Seems like a simple software fix to me. Maybe the Leaf software guys could add the choice of writing compressed or uncompressed MOS at the same time?

[xinchenc]

My two lexar 8gb  300x CF cards have problems on LEAF AFi.
They were bought at the same time.
1, the one could not be recognized by AFi back anymore after about one thousand shoots, but that card works great on Canon and Sony DSLR;
2, the other one could not be formatted by AFi back anymore after four thousand shoots, and each time I need to format it on a Mac computer.

BUT, even an OLD 256MB sandisk CF card works great on AFi though is it VERY slow.

I bet Leaf backs dislike Lexar card. 

[bradleygibson]

The card was formatted by disk utility on my Mac desktop  just prior to shooting the attached image above..... and not to offend, but why can't the Leaf manage to format the cards itself? Say you are in the field and need a card and buy or borrow one - the back should be able to manage this itself. Never had a problem with my Hasselblad or Phase backs or Canon.  Used to be able to put both canon and phase images on the same card without problems even.  Seems like a simple software fix to me. Maybe the Leaf software guys could add the choice of writing compressed or uncompressed MOS at the same time?

+1

[EricWHiss]

Just to be complete here's one image with the other kind of corruption - lines - taken on a 8gb Sandisc card that Hasselblad included with their CFii-39MS back.  

btw - I thought it was a nice gesture for HB to include the card.   I got none with my more expensive Leaf purchase, and no apologies either btw, but really they should consider it if the back is THAT finicky about cards and formatting.  Actually a software fix do the trick too.   Hint, Hint 

[Graham Mitchell]

I ordered my Leaf Aptus II 12 today, so I'll soon be able to test my own Adata 350x 16GB card. With the massive new file sizes I'll be getting, I will probably have to get a 32GB card as well. Would love to know what causes these issues and how to avoid them.

[Neil Folberg]

Hello,

I am using 32GB SanDisk 90MB/s cards, 90MB 60MB/s, 16GB 30mb/s - all no problem so far. I formatted all on the Mac and use them only with this 12R back.

Neil

[Graham Mitchell]

Hello,

I am using 32GB SanDisk 90MB/s cards, 90MB 60MB/s, 16GB 30mb/s - all no problem so far. I formatted all on the Mac and use them only with this 12R back.

Which Leaf firmware are you both using?

[Neil Folberg]

I am using LC 11.5 (the new interface) which works great, but experienced no problems with the previous version.

By the way, if I opened Leaf 12 files with adobe Raw, there were problems of density and color noise; these are not visible when opened with LC or C1 used to make tiff files.

Neil

[Graham Mitchell]

By the way, if I opened Leaf 12 files with adobe Raw, there were problems of density and color noise; these are not visible when opened with LC or C1 used to make tiff files.

I've been playing with a couple of RAW files from this back, until mine arrives. (If anyone could post more samples, that would be great! www.wetransfer.com would be an easy way to host the files)
C1 does look good but I noticed that some noise reduction is implemented by default. Have you compared ACR with C1 without any noise reduction?

[EricWHiss]

Just in case anyone is looking for it, here's the Leaf tech article on how to format CF cards on the Mac.   http://www.leaf-photography.com/files/support/technical_bulletin_formatting_CF_cards.pdf

I have followed this procedure of course, but still had problems with the above mentioned cards.   I decided to do a full erase where the disk utility writes zeros over the whole card and try them again, and this reduced the corrupted files to about 1 in 50.  Still not acceptable to have any, but at least I can use these until I get others.   

I do recommend to Leaf that they consider implementing software code to make their backs more tolerant as something simple like this could take down a whole shoot wasting everyone's time and money.

[Graham Mitchell]

I bet Leaf backs dislike Lexar card. 

You might be onto something there. I just got my Aptus II 12 and have had issues with reading files from the CF card, using a Lexar 16GB 600x.
Tomorrow I will try out my ADATA 16GB 350x card, and compare the performance.

Example of issue:

[EricWHiss]

Wish it was just Lexar.         I've had problems with Sandisk too.   All of the ones I've had problems with are 400x and I get more problems at higher ISO.   I had heard that the new firmware just released might help but it hasn't.

[JerryReed]

Graham,

Good for you.

Jerry