SD or CF?

sonny_c · February 18, 2009

I'm hoping some of the sports shooters will lend some advice to this topic.

Some of you may know that I purchased a used 1D MKIII. Up until now I've only shot with CF cards (300d, 20d, & MKII N). It's what I've always used. *WARNING, this is just my experience* Ridata has been my brand of choice. They are less expensive, just as dependable, and nearly if not the same write speeds as SanDisk Ultras and Extreme CF cards. AGAIN, this is just my past experience. With that being said, the 1d MKII N's RAW file size is 7.9MB. One Ridata Lighting 233x 16GB, one Ridata Supreme 8GB, and a few Ridata Pro 150x 4GB will barely get me through a football shoot. A football shoot consists of four games and 2-4 drill team performances. That roughly equals 2K-3K total shots.

The MKIII's RAW file size is 13MB.

Right away I already know I'm in need of more memory.

I was looking at Rob Galbraith MKIII SD/CF page and comparing data. I noticed the first 13 listings are all SD cards and only one is larger than 4GB (it's a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB). The next 20 of 22 cards are CF cards but only 4 are larger than 4GB (all 8GB; no 16GB). Do the larger cards read/write slower? Why are the SD rated faster than CF cards?

Here's my situation. I shoot youth sports. I shoot in RAW. During football season, baseball/softball tournaments, and soccer I can be shooting all day. 99.9% of the time power is not available. For this reason I cannot bring my laptop or external USB drives which would allow me to dump my images off the cards.

I'm trying to find the happy medium between price, speed, and reliability of the many memory cards on the market. After browsing through Rob's list it seems the small size cards are faster. It's also obvious that the SD cards write faster than CF cards.....but not by much. Should I go buy a "bunch" of small, faster SD cards? Or Buy (4) 8GB SD cards and a portable battery operated storage device?

I would love to hear all your thoughts and ideas.

Village Idiot · February 18, 2009

Sorry, I've only ever used CF with Canon because that's what the camera takes.

But, Sandisk is doing rebates constantly and this one is until 3/28. You can buy three 8GB Extreme IV cards for $359 and you get a $200 prepaid Visa as a rebate.

They have 16GB Extreme III's for $339, but you only get $90 back.

16GB Extreme IV's are $219 each and 8GB Extreme III's are $57

Is the 1D MKIII UDMA dependent? I know that that can make a difference. The Sandisk Extreme IV's and Lexar's pro line are UDMA cards. They can affect how many shots you can get with one burst before slow down because of the bottleneck in the cards.

ziggy53 · February 18, 2009

Cameras do show sensitivity to different card manufacturers and different card controllers. As I understand it the primary problem is critical timing relating to camera-controller-card and relatively minor timing issues can lead to significant variance in read and write speeds. This is partly why larger files mat respond differently from small files, which is why Rob tests both JPG and RAW.

Partly, it doesn't matter why this happens, it only matters that it does happen and we are fortunate that Rob has been giving enough to test and share the results.

Do remember too that cards will slow down as they are populated. My strategy is to fill a card to around 75-80% and then retire that card and switch to another.

Try to temper your purchase by how you shoot and how the action occurs. One of the nice things about the Canon 1D MKIII is that with both CF and SD cards installed, you can shoot onto one card, pull that card, and the camera will switch to the second card automatically (with a warning). You may find that faster than swapping cards and save swapping until the action (or lack of action) allows.

stevod · March 15, 2009

ziggy53 wrote:

Do remember too that cards will slow down as they are populated. My strategy is to fill a card to around 75-80% and then retire that card and switch to another.

Well I never knew that (and/or hadn't noticed!).

Is this effect removed when the card is emptied, or does it need to be reformatted?

Cheers,

S

ziggy53 · March 15, 2009

stevod wrote:

Well I never knew that (and/or hadn't noticed!).

Is this effect removed when the card is emptied, or does it need to be reformatted?

Cheers,

S

I always reformat after I have copied the files off to a computer and performed a backup to that. Reformat in-camera to prevent fragmentation and possible future file loss.

TexPhotog · March 15, 2009

ziggy53 wrote:

I always reformat after I have copied the files off to a computer and performed a backup to that. Reformat in-camera to prevent fragmentation and possible future file loss.

Not to hijack the thread... but I do have a format question...

I was told by a former insturctor that I should always do two reformats... one on the computer to get rid of anything on the card and once again when I install the card in the camera, so that the camera settings are installed on the card - whatever that means...

Just out of habit, and because he was never clear on the "camera settings on the card" thing, I just reformat on camera, but I'm curious as to your thoughs on this...

Also, as far as filling up the cards, I do agree with Ziggy... and other newspaper shooters that I used to work with... no more than 90% filled... with 90% being the MAX... and we liked to used small cards, up to 2 GB usually... then again, this is before the SDHC cards

ziggy53 · March 15, 2009

TexPhotog wrote:

...

I was told by a former insturctor that I should always do two reformats... one on the computer to get rid of anything on the card and once again when I install the card in the camera, so that the camera settings are installed on the card - whatever that means...

...

If you want to make sure that no previous shot numbers from another camera might be transferred into the current camera, then you might try the computer format first.

In the past I had a couple of cards get "confused" about numbering, even when I used them in the same camera. I would do a computer format and then a camera format and that would make the cards "right" again. I haven't had that problem for quite a while now and not with any of my current Canon cameras.

Generally, in-camera format is sufficient.

Scott_Quier · March 16, 2009

ziggy53 wrote:

If you want to make sure that no previous shot numbers from another camera might be transferred into the current camera, then you might try the computer format first.

In the past I had a couple of cards get "confused" about numbering, even when I used them in the same camera. I would do a computer format and then a camera format and that would make the cards "right" again. I haven't had that problem for quite a while now and not with any of my current Canon cameras.

Generally, in-camera format is sufficient.

- Working with 20D, 30D, and 50D cameras and some 25 weddings (at approx 1,500 shots per) - I've not had a single problem with the single, in camera, re-format. Works first time, every time.

In addition, I've read that formatting a card on a computer can cause issues - but I think that's a case of doing the format on the computer and then NOT doing another format in camera.

aj986s · March 16, 2009

Unfortunately, I'm not yet in the habit of reformatting cards (fortunately haven't had any problems yet, either....). But I know its something I need to start doing. I'm curious whether you delete the files first while its still in the computer after uploading via Lightroom, etc? Or do you simply let the in-camera formatting take care of deleting any files on the card?

Scott_Quier · March 16, 2009

aj986s wrote:

Unfortunately, I'm not yet in the habit of reformatting cards (fortunately haven't had any problems yet, either....). But I know its something I need to start doing. I'm curious whether you delete the files first while its still in the computer after uploading via Lightroom, etc? Or do you simply let the in-camera formatting take care of deleting any files on the card?

I NEVER delete individual files, either one at a time or as part of a group. My card handling practices:

Before the shoot / event, reformat all cards to be used
Shoot the event without re-using that card during that shoot
As a card fills up, remove from it from the camera and remove it from the pool of "to be used" cards
At home, download each card to individual folders using a card reader (I don't use the camera for downloads - I don't have the time or the patience)
After it's been downloaded and backed up, place each card in the "available for use" stack - notice I've not re-formatted that card yet (see step 1).

This process / workflow has a number of advantages:

Retention of the original image files as long as possible - call it yet another backup
Each card gets a brand-spankin' new File Allocation Table (FAT)
No chance of fragmented image files on the card
Reduced chances of FAT corruption

aj986s · March 16, 2009

Scott_Quier wrote:

I NEVER delete individual files, either one at a time or as part of a group. My card handling practices:
Before the shoot / event, reformat all cards to be used

Shoot the event without re-using that card during that shoot

As a card fills up, remove from it from the camera and remove it from the pool of "to be used" cards

At home, download each card to individual folders using a card reader (I don't use the camera for downloads - I don't have the time or the patience)

After it's been downloaded and backed up, place each card in the "available for use" stack - notice I've not re-formatted that card yet (see step 1).

This process / workflow has a number of advantages:
Retention of the original image files as long as possible - call it yet another backup

Each card gets a brand-spankin' new File Allocation Table (FAT)

No chance of fragmented image files on the card

Reduced chances of FAT corruption

Thanks Scott! I, too, use a card reader (MUUUUCH faster...). And I like your rationale that the card serves as another backup until it goes back in the camera. Most of the time, my shoots only involve one card, so it goes straight back into the camera. I just ordered some Hakuba card cases, so that should make it easier to keep track and shuffle card use.

mercphoto · March 16, 2009

sonny_c wrote:

I'm trying to find the happy medium between price, speed, and reliability of the many memory cards on the market. After browsing through Rob's list it seems the small size cards are faster. It's also obvious that the SD cards write faster than CF cards.....but not by much. Should I go buy a "bunch" of small, faster SD cards? Or Buy (4) 8GB SD cards and a portable battery operated storage device?

I would love to hear all your thoughts and ideas.

I think I would personally own equal numbers of CD and SD cards. Use both in the camera and setup your MkIII to use one, then automatically switch to the other when it fills. You might be able to shoot an entire game that way, switching cards out inbetween games. I'm torn on suggested a portable hard disk. I have an Epson P2000 that I used when shooting motocross and I often wished I had just bought more memory cards instead.

dyfrgi · March 27, 2009

So by "portable battery operated storage device", you mean a laptop, right? You mentioned the lack of power preventing you from dumping files to your laptop, but that makes no sense to me. If your laptop's batteries are dead, time to get new batteries!

ziggy53 · March 27, 2009

dyfrgi wrote:

So by "portable battery operated storage device", you mean a laptop, right? You mentioned the lack of power preventing you from dumping files to your laptop, but that makes no sense to me. If your laptop's batteries are dead, time to get new batteries!

Dyfrgi, welcome to the Digital Grin.

I don't know what devices other's use nut I have a "portable battery operated storage device" that is not a laptop. It is a dedicated device for the purpose of backing up digital image files, the HyperDrive HD80. Other models are also available:

http://www.hyperdrive.com/

Shane422 · March 27, 2009

Just an FYI, there is an Epson P-3000 currently for sale in the Dgrin classifieds section.

Scott_Quier · March 28, 2009

ziggy53 wrote:

Dyfrgi, welcome to the Digital Grin.

I don't know what devices other's use nut I have a "portable battery operated storage device" that is not a laptop. It is a dedicated device for the purpose of backing up digital image files, the HyperDrive HD80. Other models are also available:

http://www.hyperdrive.com/

I second the HD80 - since I got the firmware upgrade (some time ago, I was slow on the uptake on that one), the machine has performed flawlessly for me. With the advent of larger RAW files though, I'm seriously considering swapping out the HDD for a larger one. Oh, didn't you know that you could do that? Yup, they designed it so the user could change out the HDD

SD or CF?

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