Best CF Card for the 7D

[rhanesworth10]

The canon 7S write speed maxes out just below 53mb/sec.  You Would think the a 60MB/sec card would be fast enough, but with the faster 600X cards the camera buffer empty's faster so you can shoot continuously as the camera writes to the card. See attached site.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-10044-10297 Can't help you with brand I've always used sandisk but am planning on Lexar 32GB 600X as my next card.  Good luck

[Flake]

The more expensive cards have second interface chip which helps with the speed.

Sorry rhanesworth but the Rob Galbraith test is a joke trying to assess data transfer rates by standing over a camera with a stop watch and timing by when the write light comes on & goes off - well try presenting that as evidence to any engineer.  If it were possible to accurately measure the data transfer the manufacturers would have done it, but it's not that simple.

memory cards have a minimal effect on the frame rate, and the maximum number of shots unless they're very slow, now you need a resonably quick card for video on a DSLR, but the single most important thing is reliability.  A whole days shooting can be worth over £1000 it's not nice having to go back & do it all again simply because a cheap card has failed!

[maharzan]

I am using SanDisk Extreme III CF card 8GB. Its working great over a year and half now, shoot stills/videos just fine. I have 4 of them.

[du9gvu]

I have 5 Scandisk 60mb/sec UDMA 8GB cards for my 7D and so far no issues as to speed, read/write and transfer, bought it from Amazon.com at a fairly half the price compared to local camera stores. I tried several cards (30mb) but can't catch up when taking high speed shoots, 7D has dual processor and needs at least 60mb/s fast cards.

[K3nt]

I got a Kingston Ultimate 32GB 600x CF card for my 7D and couldn't be happier. The price/performance ratio is spot on. Costs about the same (or less) than the 16GB SanDisk version. I paid 130eur for mine (around 150-160USD).
I'm gonna get me some more of these babies.
Whether I need the speed or not is another question. I just like knowing the card has the performance when I do need it + I'm a tech geek in general. 

I'm not going to argue pros and cons, this card worked for me and might be worth looking in to in your case too.

[Helix]

I got a Kingston Ultimate 32GB 600x CF card for my 7D and couldn't be happier. The price/performance ratio is spot on. Costs about the same (or less) than the 16GB SanDisk version. I paid 130eur for mine (around 150-160USD).
I'm gonna get me some more of these babies.
Whether I need the speed or not is another question. I just like knowing the card has the performance when I do need it + I'm a tech geek in general. 

I'm not going to argue pros and cons, this card worked for me and might be worth looking in to in your case too.

The Kingston 600x Ultimate cards are not great at all. Bad in fact. Just bought some of these 16Gb "600x, 90Mb/s" cards, and my Sandisk 60mB/s (400x) Extreme writes much much faster.

The Kingston reads at about 57Mb/s with my USB3 card reader and writes at 17Mb/s.

The Sandisk Extreme reads at 58Mb/s writes at 43Mb/s. Really, really noticable in my 7D.

False advertising. Not happy. Stay away!

[niccyboy]

I use 8, 16 & 32gb Sandisk 60mbs cards in my Canon gear.. I've never had any problems, but never had anything to compare it to. I've also formatted a card and used the software that Sandisk provide with the cards and recovered ALL of my 8gb of data.

On the Nikon d3x's we use 32gb 90mbs Sandisks and they are amazing. So fast to write and download on our firewire readers. We were originally using Lexar cards and had multiple data errors when transferring and card errors while shooting.

I definitely recommend a firewire CF reader. I have a few of these..http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/492648-REG/Lexar_RW034_001_Professional_UDMA_FireWire_800.html... they work very well, even when daisy chained directly to a firewire HDD.

[DCMoney]

I’ve been using a SanDisk 16GB 60MB/s Extreme for 2 years now with my 7D and have never had any problems with the card or noticed any lack of speed writing to the card. At an air show a year ago I took 2200+ pictures all jpg's but the card and camera was perfect all day. I’ve never had a sandisk card fail me and will continue using them.

[EYEONE]

I have 4 Transcend CF cards, all 600x (two 16gb and two 8gb). And of those I've had one be bad. I've actually got to send it back to BHPhoto today.

[candyman]

I came across some info on the internet:

"7D Manual says that for VIDEO your card should do at least 8MB/sec read and write.      
Assuming cards don't necessarily perform at their rated capabilities but below, take a card that is performing slightly better.       
      
Considering that 1x = 150KB/sec, here are the most common card speeds:      
      
6x = 0.9 MB/sec      
8X = 1.2 MB/sec      
12X = 1.8 MB/sec      
20X = 3.0 MB/sec      
25X = 3.8 MB/sec      
30X = 4.5 MB/sec      
32x = 4.8 MB/sec      
40x = 6.0 MB/sec      
60X = 9.0 MB/sec      
66x = 10.0 MB/sec      
80X = 12.0 MB/sec      
90X = 13.5 MB/sec      
100x = 15.0 MB/sec      
133x = 20.0 MB/sec      
150x = 22.5 MB/sec      
200x = 30.0 MB/sec      
266x = 40.0 MB/sec      
280x = 42.0 MB/sec      
300x = 45.0 MB/sec      
433x = 65.0 MB/sec      
600x = 90.0 MB/sec      
666x = 100.0 MB/sec      
      
So, unless you are shooting MULTIPLE FRAMES PER SECOND RAW, there is NO NEED to go to the super fast cards for video!      
Save yourself a lot of money and get a x133 (20MB/sec) card. That will be largely enough. Spend the difference on higher capacity cards (16 or 32GB) instead. "   

I myself use Transcend 32 GB 133x and shooting RAW (AI-Servo) at soccergames. No problem here
(I also have Sandisk 8 GB (60mb)   

Here is the Wikipedia info on speed of cards

[ianhar]

I only bu cf from trusted brand. I have few sandisk and lexar n my bag. Why i would throw money on things that are really small compared to my hand? Dodgy brand almost usually gives dodgy result. You might be lucky to have no problem or what so ever with that dodgy card. But dont expect your client to understand your problem when you say "sorry but i lost all the files from yesterday shoot" its not his problem its yours. You might even get sued if there a contract for it. Bottom line. Always buy from trusted brand. Its not like lexar or sandisk never fail. They do fail but the probability is smaller than other dodgy brand.

Remember to buy your cf cards from official retailer. There are a lot of fake sandisk out there. BEWARE WHEN MAKING PURCHASES ONLINE. ESPECIALLY WITH SOME DODGY ONLINE RETAILER.

[Benhider]

Don't buy the Kingston card.

It is much slower than a Lexar or Sandisk

[Harley]

Agreed.  SanDisk hands down, preferably the SandDisk Extreme.  You get what you pay for (and then some).

[kennykodak]

Agreed.  SanDisk hands down, preferably the SandDisk Extreme.  You get what you pay for (and then some).

agreed...
if the best of them are made in china, would you really want to go cheap?

[Paul D]

Another hands on with the Canon EOS 1D X at www.paul-d.tv/blog:

http://paul-d.tv/blog/2011/10/28/canon-eos-1d-x-hands-on-report/