CF Cards Vs SD Cards

[Sabaki]

Hi everybody

I've only ever shot with a 500D and have zero experience with CF cards.

I'm definitely getting a 7Dii but I'm unsure whether to continue with SD cards or if CF cards are the way to go.

I have my eye on a Sandisk 32gig for about $200.

What would you recommend and why?

Thanks guys

 

[pleasehelp]

Hi everybody

I've only ever shot with a 500D and have zero experience with CF cards.

I'm definitely getting a 7Dii but I'm unsure whether to continue with SD cards or if CF cards are the way to go.

I have my eye on a Sandisk 32gig for about $200.

What would you recommend and why?

Thanks guys

for me it doesn´t matter.
SD cards are fast enough for my needs.

i never had issues with my SD cards (lexar, sandisk).

so if you have SD cards already, use them.
if you want to use two cards in the 7D you have to buy CF cards anyway.

 

[Don Haines]

SD cards are cheaper per GB, more devices can read them, and unless you are running your camera in burst mode, you should have no problem keeping up. If you are firing off more than a picture per second and keep it up for a while, you will fill the camera buffer and a fast compact flash card is faster than a fast SD card and will clear the buffer sooner.... but the difference is not noticeable until you get to the very fastest compact flash cards.... or so conventional wisdom says.....

but if you look at Sandisk and the fastest cards that they sell:
Sandisk extreme pro HSII 64G SD card - 250MB/s write speed, $230
Sandisk extreme pro UDMA7 64G CF card - 150 MB/s, $200

You end up with an SD card that is both faster and more expensive.... the exact opposite of what people believe to be the truth.

 

[Sabaki]

SD cards are cheaper per GB, more devices can read them, and unless you are running your camera in burst mode, you should have no problem keeping up. If you are firing off more than a picture per second and keep it up for a while, you will fill the camera buffer and a fast compact flash card is faster than a fast SD card and will clear the buffer sooner.... but the difference is not noticeable until you get to the very fastest compact flash cards.... or so conventional wisdom says.....

but if you look at Sandisk and the fastest cards that they sell:
Sandisk extreme pro HSII 64G SD card - 250MB/s write speed, $230
Sandisk extreme pro UDMA7 64G CF card - 150 MB/s, $200

You end up with an SD card that is both faster and more expensive.... the exact opposite of what people believe to be the truth.

This is very interesting! So perhaps I should shoot with an SD card and if I hit limits with it, try CF.

Don & pleasehelp, much appreciated

 

[Pancho]

Sandisk extreme pro HSII 64G SD card - 250MB/s write speed, $230

The 7D MkII seems to be only compatible with UHS1 and not UHS2 as the latest Sandisk SD card is. So the Write speed seems limited to 95MB/s and not 250MB/s...

 

[Canon1]

If you have an option to not use CF cards, use them.

CF cards = bent pins = broken things and frustration.
[/quote]

All I use is CF cards. I have never bent a pin... I don't know anyone who has bent a pin. You would really need to mash the card in improperly to cause any damage.

If you plan to shoot bursts get a couple of fast CF cards. My 5D3 only bursts at about 6 FPS and it is HUGELY noticeable if I am writing to CF or SD. Also, if you are not in a hurry you could wait until SanDisk or Lexar has a rebate or sale. You can save a ton of money this way.

Just remember that this camera will shoot 10FPS. You will fill the buffer in no time at all if you are writing to SD.

 

[BLFPhoto]

Yup...enough with the fear mongering.

I've been shooting CF cards for 15 years and not once have I bent pins or messed up the mechanical interface in any way. I've had exactly one card go bad in all that time (of hundreds I've owned), and that was when one fell out of my card wallet and got run over by a fire truck.

 

[docsmith]

Just remember that the card itself is only half the story. The other half is the camera. For example, you can put as fast an SD card as you want into the 5DIII, but it isn't going to write faster than 20 MB/s. Shooting JPEG on the 5DIII, you'll be limited to less than 50 MB/s. The camera becomes the limitation in both these scenarios.

http://robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page7de5.html?cid=6007-12452

 

[Don Haines]

SD cards are cheaper per GB, more devices can read them, and unless you are running your camera in burst mode, you should have no problem keeping up. If you are firing off more than a picture per second and keep it up for a while, you will fill the camera buffer and a fast compact flash card is faster than a fast SD card and will clear the buffer sooner.... but the difference is not noticeable until you get to the very fastest compact flash cards.... or so conventional wisdom says.....

but if you look at Sandisk and the fastest cards that they sell:
Sandisk extreme pro HSII 64G SD card - 250MB/s write speed, $230
Sandisk extreme pro UDMA7 64G CF card - 150 MB/s, $200

You end up with an SD card that is both faster and more expensive.... the exact opposite of what people believe to be the truth.

This is very interesting! So perhaps I should shoot with an SD card and if I hit limits with it, try CF.

Don & pleasehelp, much appreciated

I tend to shoot with jpg's and RAW.... For me, the best way to go for speed is one of those 90MB/s SD cards for the jpgs and a 150MB/s compact flash card for the RAW files.... that gives you the fastest speeds and an image backup....

It does not say in the specs if it accepts UDMA 6 or 7 ( I would assume 7) compact flash cards or if it takes UHS 1 or 3 SD cards (I would assume UHS 1). Hopefully we will know as the release date gets closer...

 

[DRR]

Sandisk extreme pro HSII 64G SD card - 250MB/s write speed, $230

The 7D MkII seems to be only compatible with UHS1 and not UHS2 as the latest Sandisk SD card is. So the Write speed seems limited to 95MB/s and not 250MB/s...

That appears to be correct, so for the purposes of the current discussion (7DII) it should be

Sandisk Extreme Pro UDMA7 CF 160MB/s, $210
vs
Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 SDXC 95MB/s, $98

Canon does not seem to support bleeding edge bus designs. It barely supports standard ones. Look at the 5D3, doesn't even support UHS-I, which was about 18-24 months old at the time of 5DIII intro.

Personally, if I were to buy a 7DII, the burst ability would be one of the main reasons why, and if that's the case, I would not get SD as it would limit the ability of the camera to maintain burst as it writes from buffer to the card.

If you don't shoot a lot of burst then by all means, SD offers a much better price to performance ratio.

 

[kaihp]

Just remember that the card itself is only half the story. The other half is the camera. For example, you can put as fast an SD card as you want into the 5DIII, but it isn't going to write faster than 20 MB/s. Shooting JPEG on the 5DIII, you'll be limited to less than 50 MB/s. The camera becomes the limitation in both these scenarios.

http://robgalbraith.com/camera_wb_multi_page7de5.html?cid=6007-12452

And 18MB/s if you write JPGs to the SD slot.

As for bent pins, I haven't experienced that in 10 years of using CF cards, but my stepmom recently bent several pins on an poorly designed* card reader.

*) Poorly designed because the pins aren't recessed enough in the body, so it is easy to mis-align the CF card when inserting it. At least it wasn't her camera body

IMO: I'd stay with the SD cards you have now, and evaluate if I needed to move to CF cards later for speed.

Edit: spelling

 

[Don Haines]

Yup...enough with the fear mongering.

I've been shooting CF cards for 15 years and not once have I bent pins or messed up the mechanical interface in any way. I've had exactly one card go bad in all that time (of hundreds I've owned), and that was when one fell out of my card wallet and got run over by a fire truck.

CF cards in cameras.... in routers... in laptops... in spectrum analyzers.... in satcom modems.... for many many years and no bent pins yet either....

(I have a bunch of 16Mbyte ones in a drawer at work..... they have been around for a LONG time......)

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I've had two cameras with bent CF pins. One was a used Minolta DSLR that I had bought (Just before Sony bought them). I was able to straighten the bent pin out, and it was fine.

The other was a used Canon P&S that I bought for a dollar. The charger, battery, and CF card were worth more than that.

Many SD card advocates are not aware that you must do a low level format on a previously filled SD card in order to get rated write speeds. If you just do a regular quick in camera format, the write speed slows to a crawl. If you do a low level format every time, then the card gets lots of write cycles, since a low level format writes a 0 to every memory cell.

With a SD card, its best to buy a big one, and do a low level format whenever you have saved enough files to reach the card capacity.

For example, you have a 64GB card.

You do 4 photo sessions using 16 GB and doing a regular format(does not erase the cells or data). The card software tries to equalize card usage, so it tends to not over write cells with data in them until it has to. Thus, by the 4th 16GB session, the entire card has been written to, and now data must be erased to save more. This is very slow, so your right speed drops. Time to do a low level format to get the speed you are paying for.

 

[wtlloyd]

Got any links to support this, or is this all just seat-of-the-pants common sense reasoning?

I've had two cameras with bent CF pins. One was a used Minolta DSLR that I had bought (Just before Sony bought them). I was able to straighten the bent pin out, and it was fine.

The other was a used Canon P&S that I bought for a dollar. The charger, battery, and CF card were worth more than that.

Many SD card advocates are not aware that you must do a low level format on a previously filled SD card in order to get rated write speeds. If you just do a regular quick in camera format, the write speed slows to a crawl. If you do a low level format every time, then the card gets lots of write cycles, since a low level format writes a 0 to every memory cell.

With a AD card, its best to buy a big one, and do a low level format whenever you have saved enough files to reach the card capacity.

For example, you have a 64GB card.

You do 4 photo sessions using 16 GB and doing a regular format(does not erase the cells or data). The card software tries to equalize card usage, so it tends to not over write cells with data in them until it has to. Thus, by the 4th 16GB session, the entire card has been written to, and now data must be erased to save more. This is very slow, so your right speed drops. Time to do a low level format to get the speed you are paying for.

 

[CanonOregon]

As a lab owner I saw lots of 'bent pin' CF cameras, usually because they were inexpensive P&S cameras and the owners carried the cards around in their pocket. I did bend a pin on my 10d many years ago. It seems as if the design of today's dSLRs is better for CF- easier to align and prevent pin damage.
If you go CF just remember to carry it in a case to prevent 'pocket lint' from entering the pin sockets and NEVER force it into the camera! About eight years since and have not bent a pin ever again. (I was lucky enough to straighten that one out- do it SLOWLY with a jeweler's loop or some other magnifier!)
And I have seen bent contacts on SD cards, more broken SD cards and ones where the lock slider has jammed locked or fallen out- so neither card is 'bullet proof'.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Got any links to support this, or is this all just seat-of-the-pants common sense reasoning?

I covered many things in your quote. All are factual.

As for the way SD cards work, you can look it up, there are plenty of links. That's why there are two modes of formatting for SD cards in your camera, a regular format and a low level format.

I thought most users knew that formatting a card with a regular format does not actually erase the photos, it merely marks the FAT table to indicate that the files can be overwritten.

The thing that many do not know is that when the flash card decides to over write a file, it must first erase a much larger memory block, and this takes time. The Flash controller may also fragment a file due to the wear leveling, so a file is spread to different places on the card. This operation for a SD card does not happen until you go to write a file. It can slow a SD card down so much that Video recording stops.

There are many different factors in play. Start with Wikipedia, the section on Real World Performance.


Also, be aware. Card speeds are rated by saving a huge file to a completely erased card, there is no erasing of used memory blocks, and no fragmentation. As you'd expect, real world performance is slower than card rated speeds.

CF Cards handle erasing differently with a process akin to that used for SSD's in your computer.

I've had two cameras with bent CF pins. One was a used Minolta DSLR that I had bought (Just before Sony bought them). I was able to straighten the bent pin out, and it was fine.

The other was a used Canon P&S that I bought for a dollar. The charger, battery, and CF card were worth more than that.

Many SD card advocates are not aware that you must do a low level format on a previously filled SD card in order to get rated write speeds. If you just do a regular quick in camera format, the write speed slows to a crawl. If you do a low level format every time, then the card gets lots of write cycles, since a low level format writes a 0 to every memory cell.

With a AD card, its best to buy a big one, and do a low level format whenever you have saved enough files to reach the card capacity.

For example, you have a 64GB card.

You do 4 photo sessions using 16 GB and doing a regular format(does not erase the cells or data). The card software tries to equalize card usage, so it tends to not over write cells with data in them until it has to. Thus, by the 4th 16GB session, the entire card has been written to, and now data must be erased to save more. This is very slow, so your right speed drops. Time to do a low level format to get the speed you are paying for.

 

[ecka]

I prefer CF.
Both formats can be fast enough and 7D's big memory buffer makes it even more irrelevant for most users. However, CF cards tend to work faster, even when compared to higher rated SD cards. That depends on your camera as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkRiIbxNzwQ
SD cards are cheaper, because they are more popular and have wider field of use (because they are smaller, simpler, use less power and because they became cheap). They are not really better in speed or data safety. CF cards (even dual slots) are used in professional gear for a reason. Just don't buy cheap counterfeit pin-benders.

 

[tphillips63]

I use CF, usually 32GB in size from Lexmark, Sandisk, Transcend and even a couple of Duracells. Not one has ever been too slow or cause a problem. For SD I use a mix of the same brands.
I set the CF card for full sized RAM and the SD for either small JPG or small RAW, it just depends on what I am shooting and how much time I think I will spend on the computer with the files.
This is with a 5D Mk III but if I get the 7D Mk II, I would do the same.

 

[alexanderferdinand]

Using 1d4 and 5d3 its simple: I prefer the CF cards due to the slow SD interface
In my Sony or Fuji the SD shine with speed.....

7d2 supports finally the UHS protocol- wow. Canon, the late adopter.

 

[jheez]

CF are more reliable and sturdier than SD. And usually faster.

SD cards will break from a small bend. In that case you can't recover the data. I mistakenly put two SD cards in my well padded wallet once while I went to dinner. They were unreadable. In comparison, I have a CF with a huge dent in it that surprisingly still works. My buddies and I send CFs through the mail without cases all the time and never had issues.

I've had 5 cards go bad in my career:
1 CF in over 7 years
4 SD in the last 2.5 years

I shoot close to 200,000 frames per year. I'm not that careful with my gear and I've never had bent pins. But I don't see how it's that big of a deal. Bent pins is a small repair, no? I'd rather have bent pins and safe(r) data than the reverse