Repair cost cf card bent pin

[nc0b]

My friend's 20D had the CF assembly replaced by a third-party shop for $116.00. My iPhone fell on the top LCD of my 60D, while the plastic "window" escaped damage, the LCD itself was ruined. Canon repaired it for about $220.00. The part was $10 or something like that. All my equipment is insured against loss or damage, but of course I pay annually for $14K of coverage.

 

[Antono Refa]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "Extreme Pro 32GB 90MB/s" card with which you've got a 45MB/s write speed is this one?

If so, it has a guaranteed minimum writing speed of 20MB/s, which would your point about a card guaranteed minimum writing speed of "only" 30MB/s being too slow moot.

Yes , I missed (misinterpreted, actually) the 'minimum' part. Still, the if Canon supports higher CF speeds than SD speeds, the card specs are irrelevant as long as the card isn't the bottleneck (which it's not with current cards).

I don't have a catalog of cards in my head, but looking at Lexar's offering

* The fastest CF card is 1066x, with min guaranteed is 65MB/s, and top possible <=156MB/s - close to UDMA 7's speed limit. To break this limit, the CF card would have to be replaced with CFast (still requires pins, and incompatible with CF).

* The fastest SD card is 2000x, with min guaranteed is 30MB/s, top possible is 260MB/s. UHS-II cards can be as fast as 312MB/s.

I can't say for sure which of the two specific cards would perform better in practice, but looking a bit further down the line I think it's clear SD w/ UHS-II would do better than CF.

Some people might like CFast and XQD better, I would be happy to settle for SD UHS-II.

 

[dgatwood]

Even my old 5DII wrote at ~40 MB/s. After a 20 s burst, the buffer took ~26 s to clear before a shot could be taken. A lot can happen in 26 s, even more could happen in the 35 s it would take to clear at 30 MB/s. But if you're happy with the additional delay, that's ok for you. I wouldn't be.

I've never seen a camera that required the buffer to fully clear. Even my 300D would let me take additional photos as soon as it had enough room to hold one more. Was the 5D Mark II really that broken?

I don't know much about CF cards and pins, but I think it's a poor design.

It is a terrible design, in every sense of the word.

• The cards are wider than they are long. It is physically impossible to insert an SD card sideways. It is easy to insert a CF card sideways, and the lack of guides when you do so can easily result in bent pins.
• The pins are on the camera. Normally, you would expect the flash cards to have pins instead, so that if something breaks, it is a cheap flash card rather than an expensive camera (though if you consider photos priceless, you could argue that this dubious design is correct—either way, the surface contact design of SD is much better).
• The guides are insufficient to properly align the pins if you don't insert the card carefully.
• The pins are way too small.

When they designed the MMC card standard (which evolved into SD), they learned from CF's many mistakes, and the result is a much more robust standard, both mechanically and in terms of long-term expandability, IMO.

* The fastest SD card is 2000x, with min guaranteed is 30MB/s, top possible is 260MB/s. UHS-II cards can be as fast as 312MB/s.

AFAIK all UHS-I and later hardware should support the discard command (eMMC 4.5). Assuming you're using an operating system that actually supports sending that command, then with proper UHS-II hardware, the nominal write speed should be about 260 MB/s unless your flash card is almost completely full. (Beyond a certain point, the flash card won't have enough pre-erased blocks to keep up with the filesystem metadata changes, and performance will fall off a cliff.)

Whether Canon's OS supports sending the discard command or not, of course, is another question. And it's all a bit moot until Canon starts putting UHS-II hardware in their cameras. Given that the UHS-II standard is well over three years old now, their seeming inability to put UHS-II on cameras costing thousands of dollars is, at best, disappointing and at worst, flat out appalling. By the time Canon finally gets with the program, everybody else will have moved on to a future UHS-III standard, which I'd expect to be based on 2x PCIe (about 4 GB/sec.) running over the same pins as UHS-II....

 

[tpatana]

1) I can see the advantage on the 7D and 1D-X. For the 5DmkIV (assuming it's MP count doesn't skyrocket), I'll be happy to settle for 30MB/s when the buffer runs out.

Even my old 5DII wrote at ~40 MB/s.

1. Just to clear that one aside: yes, I can be happy with an additional delay.

2. And now to the point: did the 5DmkII you used at the time had CF cards with a guaranteed minimum writing speed of ~40MB/s (if so, please state date and card model), or not?

I did speed test with my Lexar 1066x, and it's outstanding on my 5D3.

If I press the shutter button for 30 seconds in high fps mode, it takes 137 pictures (in 30 seconds), and it takes only 3 seconds to clear the buffer after that.

So I can take virtually unlimited number of pictures at any sports event.

If I calculated the data speed correctly, that comes to about 100MB/s actual write speed.

After getting used to those Lexars, I can't use any slow cards anymore.

 

[neuroanatomist]

I did speed test with my Lexar 1066x, and it's outstanding on my 5D3.

If I press the shutter button for 30 seconds in high fps mode, it takes 137 pictures (in 30 seconds), and it takes only 3 seconds to clear the buffer after that.

Is that RAW or JPG?

 

[tpatana]

I did speed test with my Lexar 1066x, and it's outstanding on my 5D3.

If I press the shutter button for 30 seconds in high fps mode, it takes 137 pictures (in 30 seconds), and it takes only 3 seconds to clear the buffer after that.

Is that RAW or JPG?

Full size raw. Setup:

5D Mark III FW: 1.2.3 with 24-105mm lens. Manual focus on the lens at a wall in my office. Camera on manual, 1/200 F5.0 ISO400, with high-speed fps mode (6fps), shooting RAW only, no jpeg.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Thanks. I'll have to see how the 1D X does with my 90 MB/s cards. In practice, I've never had it slow down, but the buffer is very deep.

 

[tpatana]

Thanks. I'll have to see how the 1D X does with my 90 MB/s cards. In practice, I've never had it slow down, but the buffer is very deep.

With my slow cards, on 5D3 I quite easily hit the buffer limit if I'm not careful about my bursts. On those Lexars, it's almost impossible.

Slow card results: Kingston Elite Pro 133x 40/14, A-Data 120x 36/18, Patriot Signature 266x 31/24 (first number is number of shots in 30 seconds, second one is time to clear buffer after that)

When I feel less lazy, I'm planning to repeat same test with 7D.

If I'd get my wish-list for 1DX2, it'd have dual-CF slots with separate data bus for both (and SW to support dumping buffer to both at the same time). Meaning it could do that ~100MB/s write speed on each individually, or even with slower cards you could reach really high combined numbers).

 

[martti]

Bent pins on my 5D II. Repair by Diana in France would have cost me 380 euros. JAS in Helsinki finland did it for 140 euros (inc. VAT) for the next weekend. Since that experience, I have been using the USB cable a lot more for the downloads.

 

[RGF]

Hi,
My mark5dIII has got a bent pin in the cf card slot. In the shop they told me that the repair (I think he meant replacement of the slot holder) would cot me 300+ euro's.
WHAT? Is that true? I've bought the camera a year ago. Does warranty do the job?

Canon Professional Services (US) did the job for me about 5-7 years ago. I think it cost USD 150 after CPS discount.

 

[Antono Refa]

* The fastest SD card is 2000x, with min guaranteed is 30MB/s, top possible is 260MB/s. UHS-II cards can be as fast as 312MB/s.

AFAIK all UHS-I and later hardware should support the discard command (eMMC 4.5). Assuming you're using an operating system that actually supports sending that command, then with proper UHS-II hardware, the nominal write speed should be about 260 MB/s unless your flash card is almost completely full. (Beyond a certain point, the flash card won't have enough pre-erased blocks to keep up with the filesystem metadata changes, and performance will fall off a cliff.)

Whether Canon's OS supports sending the discard command or not, of course, is another question. And it's all a bit moot until Canon starts putting UHS-II hardware in their cameras. Given that the UHS-II standard is well over three years old now, their seeming inability to put UHS-II on cameras costing thousands of dollars is, at best, disappointing and at worst, flat out appalling. By the time Canon finally gets with the program, everybody else will have moved on to a future UHS-III standard, which I'd expect to be based on 2x PCIe (about 4 GB/sec.) running over the same pins as UHS-II....

For the purpose of this discussion, as long as Canon gets UHS-II right, the SD slot should be able to write 260MB/s, which is >5x faster than neuro got with his CF slots, which means the CF slot could be replaced with an SD slot.

It seems Canon makes a slow progress (the 7DmkII supports UHS-I), so I hope UHS-II support will come up in the near future.

 

[tpatana]

* The fastest SD card is 2000x, with min guaranteed is 30MB/s, top possible is 260MB/s. UHS-II cards can be as fast as 312MB/s.

AFAIK all UHS-I and later hardware should support the discard command (eMMC 4.5). Assuming you're using an operating system that actually supports sending that command, then with proper UHS-II hardware, the nominal write speed should be about 260 MB/s unless your flash card is almost completely full. (Beyond a certain point, the flash card won't have enough pre-erased blocks to keep up with the filesystem metadata changes, and performance will fall off a cliff.)

Whether Canon's OS supports sending the discard command or not, of course, is another question. And it's all a bit moot until Canon starts putting UHS-II hardware in their cameras. Given that the UHS-II standard is well over three years old now, their seeming inability to put UHS-II on cameras costing thousands of dollars is, at best, disappointing and at worst, flat out appalling. By the time Canon finally gets with the program, everybody else will have moved on to a future UHS-III standard, which I'd expect to be based on 2x PCIe (about 4 GB/sec.) running over the same pins as UHS-II....

For the purpose of this discussion, as long as Canon gets UHS-II right, the SD slot should be able to write 260MB/s, which is >5x faster than neuro got with his CF slots, which means the CF slot could be replaced with an SD slot.

It seems Canon makes a slow progress (the 7DmkII supports UHS-I), so I hope UHS-II support will come up in the near future.

One reason why the high end bodies are difficult to switch from CF is that people who are likely to buy those, have already invested on CF cards. I have 128GB on the 1066 Lexars, and 80GB on other slower cards. It'd be sad to buy whole new batch of cards.

Technically it could be possible to switch for SD slot, if they implement really fast lanes. One more problem though, people tend to buy the cheap ones, and cheap SDs are slow. People wouldn't be happy about the camera if the buffer is always full, and they'd blame the camera even when the reason was the slow card they bought.

I'm ok to stay CF.

 

[adventureous]

I bent a cf card pin hole by using a cheap card reader. It was very shallow and did not allow the card to slide down deep inside the reader before connecting. I noticed it and had a machinist fix the bent spot on the card itself. I then threw the cheap reader away and bought a Lexar reader. No problems.

 

[Antono Refa]

* The fastest SD card is 2000x, with min guaranteed is 30MB/s, top possible is 260MB/s. UHS-II cards can be as fast as 312MB/s.

AFAIK all UHS-I and later hardware should support the discard command (eMMC 4.5). Assuming you're using an operating system that actually supports sending that command, then with proper UHS-II hardware, the nominal write speed should be about 260 MB/s unless your flash card is almost completely full. (Beyond a certain point, the flash card won't have enough pre-erased blocks to keep up with the filesystem metadata changes, and performance will fall off a cliff.)

Whether Canon's OS supports sending the discard command or not, of course, is another question. And it's all a bit moot until Canon starts putting UHS-II hardware in their cameras. Given that the UHS-II standard is well over three years old now, their seeming inability to put UHS-II on cameras costing thousands of dollars is, at best, disappointing and at worst, flat out appalling. By the time Canon finally gets with the program, everybody else will have moved on to a future UHS-III standard, which I'd expect to be based on 2x PCIe (about 4 GB/sec.) running over the same pins as UHS-II....

For the purpose of this discussion, as long as Canon gets UHS-II right, the SD slot should be able to write 260MB/s, which is >5x faster than neuro got with his CF slots, which means the CF slot could be replaced with an SD slot.

It seems Canon makes a slow progress (the 7DmkII supports UHS-I), so I hope UHS-II support will come up in the near future.

One reason why the high end bodies are difficult to switch from CF is that people who are likely to buy those, have already invested on CF cards. I have 128GB on the 1066 Lexars, and 80GB on other slower cards. It'd be sad to buy whole new batch of cards.

Technically it could be possible to switch for SD slot, if they implement really fast lanes. One more problem though, people tend to buy the cheap ones, and cheap SDs are slow. People wouldn't be happy about the camera if the buffer is always full, and they'd blame the camera even when the reason was the slow card they bought.

I'm ok to stay CF.

That Lexar SDHC card that does 2000x costs $100 for the 32GB version, and $150 for the 64GB version. My 5DmkIII's raw files are on average 30MB in size (just checked a random folder . Had it supported UHS-II, it could write 8.66fps continuously.

It's two more than my 5DmkIII's top rate, which I'm more than happy with, and as fast as the 7DmkI does.

So, if Canon releases a 5DmkIV that has a 24MP sensor, two UHS-II slots, and can shoot 6fps till photo #1000 chokes up my new 32GB card, I'll be happy to fork over the cash to buy a couple of new 32GB UHS-II cards, knowing I wouldn't have to buy new ones for a very long time.