Best CF Express Card Type B for Canon R5

canonmike

EOS R6
CR Pro
Jan 5, 2013
494
419
Ok, Gentlemen: Could use some help while waiting for my Canon USA store R5 body to arrive later in week. Would like to know the best 256GB or 512GB CF express Type B card to use in the R5? Would much appreciate hearing your current experience with same while the Black Fri sales are still going on. I'm not worried about 8k raw video capabilities. Thx in advance with any suggestions.
 

koenkooi

CR Pro
Feb 25, 2015
3,657
4,237
The Netherlands
I’ve had good experiences with a 128G Sony Tough and a 512G Prograde card. The Sony card has been going strong for 3 years now, the prograde is only a few weeks old.

For more info, @[email protected] has an article over at camnostic with CFe card test and thessdreview.com has a specific CFe section as well.
 
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koenkooi

CR Pro
Feb 25, 2015
3,657
4,237
The Netherlands
A +1 for the 128GB Sony Tough cards.

Paired with a Lexar RW550 CFexpress reader, I can download data at ~350MB/sec from the cards to the NVMe in the laptop.
If you have thunderbolt, the prograde single slot CFe readers are as fast as you can get, easily 1200+MB/s.
It takes a bit of the sting out of the 20fps mode :)
 
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If you have thunderbolt, the prograde single slot CFe readers are as fast as you can get, easily 1200+MB/s.
It takes a bit of the sting out of the 20fps mode :)
1200+ MB/s? nice. My "aging" X1 Carbon Gen 10 laptop (1½ years old) doesn't have USB4.0 so I'm not sure how that'll work out. It does have Thunderbolt 4 on the docking station connector, though.

Had to do some googling to find it here in Europe. Amazon sells it (of course). €98 (mrsp €118) during this Black Week.

If I hadn't already had the Lexar reader, I would seriously consider it. Thankfully I don't have the habit of filling my 128GB cards, despite the R3's 30fps capability :D
 
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john1970

EOS R3
CR Pro
Dec 27, 2015
994
1,235
Northeastern US
I have used Prograde Cobalt series cards in a Canon R3 for the last two years. While a slightly different model I would assume that they would work flawlessly in the R5 as well. If the Cobalt series is too costly you could also consider the Gold series although the buffer depth might suffer a bit because the Gold series does not have as fast as a minimum write speed as the Cobalt series.

I would buy the largest card than you can afford and if long-burst at 20 fps is not your thing a Gold Series card would probably suffice.

Lastly, Prograde also announced CF Express Type B 4.0 cards which are twice as fast as the older 2.0 cards, but to my knowledge no current cameras can utilize the faster bus speed. With that said, with the 4.0 cards can upload data faster to the computer. However, the upload speed could be limited by other factors such as the connection to the computer.
 
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