The Canon EOS R5 will have an SD & CFExpress slot [CR2]

Jan 16, 2019
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In the UK too
Sandisk CF Express Extreme Pro 128GB 1700MB/s Read Speed, 1200MB/s Write Speed @ £299.99
Sandisk 128GB Extreme Pro SDHC Card 300MB/s Read Speed, 260MB/s Write Speed @ £265.00 reduced from £325.99

These UHS-II cards are really expensive for what they bring.
Exactly. CF Express is actually coming faster thatn I thought. I bought 64GB XQD for my Z6 and I cannot believe the speed of flushing the buffer memory. People pay huge amounts of money for their new cameras and still try to stick with their ancient cards just because they have it. Last week a friend of mine was saying her D850 was too slow and locks frequently. I went into menus, tried to reset things, checked firmware etc... but it was still slow. Then I saw that she was using an old SD card (45MB/sn). I asked her to buy 64GB Sony XQD card and now she is so happy. Even a faster UHS-II card would be good but price of XQD cards keep falling day by day and the difference isn't huge even today.
 
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Exactly. CF Express is actually coming faster thatn I thought. I bought 64GB XQD for my Z6 and I cannot believe the speed of flushing the buffer memory. People pay huge amounts of money for their new cameras and still try to stick with their ancient cards just because they have it. Last week a friend of mine was saying her D850 was too slow and locks frequently. I went into menus, tried to reset things, checked firmware etc... but it was still slow. Then I saw that she was using an old SD card (45MB/sn). I asked her to buy 64GB Sony XQD card and now she is so happy. Even a faster UHS-II card would be good but price of XQD cards keep falling day by day and the difference isn't huge even today.

You can firmware upgrade that Z6 to support CFExpress cards. Not that your XQD card is suddenly dead, just if you are buying new cards I would go with CFE.
 
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Nov 1, 2012
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Did you accidentally quote my post? I’m not referring to SD write speeds am not comparing them.

years ago I did speed test for CF cards on 5D3. The difference was huge between cards. Test was to see how many pictures it takes when you jam down the shutter button for 30 seconds. Results:

Lexar Professional 1066x 64GB: 137
Kingston Elite Pro 8 GB 133x: 40
A-Data 4GB 120x: 36
Patriot Signature 16 GB 266x: 31

Exact same cards (same settings etc.) on 1DX (Mark1):

Lexar Professional 1066x 64GB: 171
Kingston Elite Pro 8 GB 133x: 71
A-Data 4GB 120x: 65
Patriot Signature 16 GB 266x: 59
 
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128GB CF Express card with 1700MB/s read and 1200MB/s write speed is 199 in Amazon. Fastest 128GB SD card is around 142USD today (Lexar) and it has 300 MB/s read speed. 6 times faster but only 45USD more expensive.

You will buy a state-of-the art camera and be content with slow SD cards?

Most sports days I carry ~500GB of CF cards just in case, although typically I shoot ~200GB per day. Next year world champs I'm planning to have 2-3 assistants, so total 3-4 bodies. 3 full days of shooting, although plan is to offload the pics to external SSD every night. I'm expecting 600-1000GB pictures per day. For sure I'll have at least one 1DX3, and maybe one R5 if it proves to be good enough. So most likely need to carry ~600GB+ of CFE. That's plenty of money for a hobby... (although I already got the cards :) )
 
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Most sports days I carry ~500GB of CF cards just in case, although typically I shoot ~200GB per day. Next year world champs I'm planning to have 2-3 assistants, so total 3-4 bodies. 3 full days of shooting, although plan is to offload the pics to external SSD every night. I'm expecting 600-1000GB pictures per day. For sure I'll have at least one 1DX3, and maybe one R5 if it proves to be good enough. So most likely need to carry ~600GB+ of CFE. That's plenty of money for a hobby... (although I already got the cards :) )

If that SSD is fast enough and connected via TB3 you'll be able to empty those CFE cards super fast. Per 128 GB card it should be about 1 minute and 20odd seconds. (8 minutes per card for comparison to the fastest UHS-II card). This is assuming you have cracker of a card reader and your SSD 2GB/s or faster at writes.
 
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If that SSD is fast enough and connected via TB3 you'll be able to empty those CFE cards super fast. Per 128 GB card it should be about 1 minute and 20odd seconds. (8 minutes per card for comparison to the fastest UHS-II card). This is assuming you have cracker of a card reader and your SSD 2GB/s or faster at writes.

Yea it's not too much time, just need to make sure everything gets copied and mirrored before wiping the cards for next day.

Last time CF -> (laptop in the middle) -> external HDD took about 4 minutes per 64GB card. Do it twice per card to mirror, so 8 minute per 64GB. I had some 300-400GB per day so it was roughly one hour while enjoying beer and some evening snack before hitting the bed. I don't expect this to be much different with CFE -> SSD transfer.
 
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Yea it's not too much time, just need to make sure everything gets copied and mirrored before wiping the cards for next day.

Last time CF -> (laptop in the middle) -> external HDD took about 4 minutes per 64GB card. Do it twice per card to mirror, so 8 minute per 64GB. I had some 300-400GB per day so it was roughly one hour while enjoying beer and some evening snack before hitting the bed. I don't expect this to be much different with CFE -> SSD transfer.

I am perhaps spoiled by super fast everything.
 
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I consider the CFExpress useless has most need about a 500 €/$ investeissement to get started, there is no CDExpress built in any computers..

Usually only lower end computers have SD slots built in, and they are rarely as fast as an external reader. So you would be plugging a "slow" card into a even slower port, at that point just plug the camera directly into the computer.
 
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Jan 16, 2019
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Most sports days I carry ~500GB of CF cards just in case, although typically I shoot ~200GB per day. Next year world champs I'm planning to have 2-3 assistants, so total 3-4 bodies. 3 full days of shooting, although plan is to offload the pics to external SSD every night. I'm expecting 600-1000GB pictures per day. For sure I'll have at least one 1DX3, and maybe one R5 if it proves to be good enough. So most likely need to carry ~600GB+ of CFE. That's plenty of money for a hobby... (although I already got the cards :) )
Then you have money to pay the delta to get 6x more performance
 
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Jan 16, 2019
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You can firmware upgrade that Z6 to support CFExpress cards. Not that your XQD card is suddenly dead, just if you are buying new cards I would go with CFE.
I did the upgrade. I have 64GB XQD card now and it is plenty fast for what I do. I am thinking to get a 128GB CF Express in 1-2 months now though.
 
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Then you have money to pay the delta to get 6x more performance

I have money to buy Ferrari. That doesn't mean it makes sense, or I should do it. As mentioned above, I hate that logic of having money means you should spend it on expensive things.

Yes, I'll be buying 1dx3 and I already have CFE cards, but I still have right to say the cards are unfortunately expensive. I shoot sport with RAW on 1DX using CF cards, and I've never hit buffer limit. New video modes make sense to have CFE, but again it doesn't make the cards any cheaper if it makes sense to have that type of cards.
 
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Michael Clark

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I'm glad they have two different slots. The small slot for JPEG backups is nice. Also nice in those times when you want to record raw on the main card, but JPEG on the small card for ability to hand the card immediately to someone with a reader to print/transfer the file. If you had two CFExpress slots then you would have to bring the bulky reader with you or plug to the camera.

How'd that work out in the 5D Mark III and 5D Mark IV? Even when recording only jpeg to the slower SD card, the camera's burst rate slows down compared to when only recording to to a fast UDMA-7 CF card.
 
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Michael Clark

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I don't think this is totally accurate. It sounds like you are assuming raw to both cards, which I don't know why you would do that. If you shoot raw to the fast card and JPEG to the small card it shouldn't impact the buffer significantly should it?

It did with the 5DIII, 5DIV, and 7DII...
 
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Michael Clark

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I really don't know what the hell is wrong with people today...
Guys, if you have money, get the CRExpress card and the SD card.
If you don't have enough money for a CFEpress card (after you just paid around $4000 for the camera, LOL), then don't buy it. Buy the SD card instead.
It's a simple as that. You have options and it's still not OK???

What about those who would rather buy two CFExpress cards so the camera doesn't bog down sooner when saving to both cards? What can they do to use two cards at the camera's fastest burst rate?
 
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Michael Clark

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There was a test of the 5D IV years ago that showed if you write RAW to both cards it is faster compared to if you write RAW to one and Jpeg to another. Presumably this was because the camera has to use processing power to create the jpeg. This could be moot with all the updated horsepower but it's something to check out when you get one.

Yeah, but it was still a lot slower than writing raw to only a fast CF card. It was about the same speed as writing raw to only the slower card.
 
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Michael Clark

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It will throttled back to write a the slower speed which would be a waste of the CFexpress 1gbs speed. One would only write to the CFexpress with the SD empty. Or else 2 SD cards.

There can be a card in the slower slot. As long as it is not being written to the other slot will still run at its faster speed.
 
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