Now that I've moved up to a 5D, I need more cards. I see that I can get a Ritek Ridata 80x 2GB CompactFlash Card for $40 shipped. Then I see a SanDisk 2GB Ultra II CompactFlash Card for $75 shipped. I usually believe that you get what you pay for but this is nearly double the price. Sure, not a good idea to skimp on cards considering the importance of your images but is this extreme difference in price justified?

So you took the plunge then he? You may want to check the robgalbraith database on this.

Also depends on the buffer the 5d has. With my 1d2 I have a large enough buffer that I really don't feel incented to buy the fastest cards.

In the case of the two cards above, I'm pretty sure the speeds are similar.

I'm almost always shooting a frame at a time (not burst) so I'm not sure if the speed really brings much to the party in my case.

Also, does everyone agree that a few smaller (say 2 gig cards) is better/safer than one 4 gig?

You're less likely to have all your cards go bad if you have more than one card. On the other hand if you have to open the camera body in the field you greatly increase your odds of ejecting 2 gigs worth of fotos off a cliff.

But isn't card speed also a factor when you're downloading your images to your computer or a portable storage device? Or is the difference negligible?

Paul

check the database...if you want to shoot fast, get the fastest cards, if not it really does not matter...the download speed also depends on the card reader...all there in the database...

The Ridata is not only cheaper, it's faster. Ridata also has a good rep for quality and reliability. I just ordered two.

Note that you have to search on Ritek rather than Ridata to find these cards on newegg's site.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

That's not the way I read it, the SanDisk seems to be more than 50% faster to almost twice as fast. Are you sure you ordered the right stuff? Anyway, the OP mentioned that he didn't find speed a deciding factor...

What are you looking at? The chart I linked to has the 150x 2GB Ridata writing 5D jpg's and RAW's at 6.757MB/sec & 7.640MB/sec, respectively, which is somewhat faster than the 2GB Ultra II's corresponding 6.296MB/sec & 7.307MB/sec.

The Ridata also downloads to the computer faster.

I have several of the Ultra II's and like them, but why pay more for a slower card?

Whoa, here's a deal — $57.99 after $15 mail-in rebate for the 4GB 150x Ridata. That's less than $15/gig for one of the fastest cards on the market.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

That was kind of my initial question, why pay so much more? And yes, that's a screaming deal.

Karl Lang (who's also got a 5D and has posted here about displays) was recommending the Kingston 2 gig cards which are less than the Sandisk but not the deal like Ridata. I've never heard of Ridata until I searched for Compact Flash cards on www.dealmac.com. They seem to have aggressive pricing.

OK the exact card Karl recommended was the Elite which is selling for $50 (2 gig) on buy.com:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=...omp&dcaid=17379

That's after rebate.

The Ridata 150x 8GB CF and 4GB SD that the UPS man brought this evening both seem to work fine in both of my Mark II's. I'll shoot a football game with them tomorrow night and report back.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

The initial post mentions the 80x ridata, not the 150x...

Ah, OK. No real reason to consider the 80x; the 150x are extremely well priced across the board.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Personally, I use a number of cards--have several 2GB, a couple 1GB from 20D days and even old 512mb cards from D30-through 10D days--but they are usually not carried along. I like the safety of several cards.

This post sent me off to newegg and RG and I'm in a similar boat. Never ever use bursts and am a pretty slow methodical shooter, so the quite inexpensive 80x cards interest me. My 2GB and 1GB cards are all Sandisk Ultra 11s. Seems the Ritek 80x are 4.3MB/xec as opposed to the Sandisk ultra II at 7.3MB/sec (all for RAW which is what I shoot). Now--whether this would annoy me or not--not sure. Do I understand that upload time via a reader would be the same? That might annoy me LOL. Still $77 for one vs. $80 for 2 is something to think about.

OTOH---I really don't know much about Ritek. Do they have a reputation for dependability? I had already decided to add at least one more 2GB card for a trip (though I do carry a P2000 and laptop--I upload to both in the evening before reformatting--call me paranoid) and this post caught my attention.

Ah, addendum--found Ritek Pro 150x for just $2 more (7.640MBb/sec)--surprising, but seems the way to go after reading RG's info.

Diane

whatever you buy be VERY careful if you get it on EBay, There's a lot of counterfeit cards out there - especially Sandisk Extreme III - all very good prices but they are cheap horrible slow cards in perfect fake Sandisk packaging. be warned.

Ridata is good stuff. Anything 50X and over is going to be fast enough to keep up with your camera. I have the SanDisk UltraII 2GB and the Kingston 2GB 50X. I'll do a test for you right now and tell you what I get. I'm copying them to my SATA150GB Western Digital HD from an internal reader that I paid like 10 bucks for, and installed in one of my bays in the front of my computer.

Diagnostic Program: Disk Bench (http://nodesoft.com/DiskBench/)
I shut the test program down after each test, and each file was renamed on each card. Kill file was shut off:

File: PSCS2 RAW file

SanDisk Ultra II:
Copy J:\transferb.raw to F:\transferb.raw
Size: 113194744
Time: 38797 ms
Transfer Rate: 2.782 MB/s

Kingston Elite Pro 50X:
Copy J:\transferX.raw to F:\transferX.raw
Size: 113194744
Time: 38672 ms
Transfer Rate: 2.791 MB/s

One quick question (which will probably reveal my ignorance) - does Canon (or Nikon, for that matter) support Microdrives using True IDE in any of their cameras?(the reason i ask is because iirc, this could offer faster transfer speeds for the microdrives, and, apparently, is also part of the CF+ standard)

if anyone is interested, i just ordered the new sandisk exIV cards, so i am thinking about selling my ex III cards, i have 2 4gig sandisk exIII cards, of course they are not counterfit, perfect condition...anyone interested please email paul@schefz.com...

I use Kingston, they are the biggest manufacturer of memory on the planet, but only recently went retail.

I remember an incident reported on the net some years ago. A photographer was assigned the project of photographing the demolition of a tall building. Wanting the most spectacular shots he could get, he positioned his tripod and camera as close as possible to the building, but perhaps too close for personal safety, and used a cordless remote to trigger the shutter, camera in continuous mode.

Apparently, he got shots of the debris hurtling towards the camera right up to the point the debris destroyed the camera. It looked like a wasted effort. On visiting the scene afterwards, the camera was clearly a gonner. No hope of repair. The flash card, however, was found lying on the ground a few metres away. The images were retrieved perfectly.

It was a Sandisk .

Impressive

The speed really doesn't matter a whole lot with the 5D unless you are doing something odd like shooting sports in RAW mode.

I have several fast cards + a slow microdrive. For 99% of shooting there is no difference, as in Jpeg mode the 5D buffer is 60+ images. How often do you stick your camera in motordrive and hold the shutter down for 20 seconds or more?

I've never done that, hence I am not going to lose any sleep over having the fastest cards.

I don't think the 5D can actually take advantage of 150x cards and such, it just can't write to the card that fast. It's just like anything else with electronics... you can't fill a bathtub very quickly with an eyedropper.

Even more impressive — and heartbreaking — was Bill Biggart's microdrive surviving the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

Nill
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www.toulme.net

Another unsung hero of the terrible events of 9/11, his bravery in bringing the world pictures cost him his life

guide to spotting counterfeit CF cards:

http://reviews.ebay.com/FAKE-SanDisk-Extre...000000001456539

fake SD cards

http://reviews.ebay.com/How-to-spot-fake-S...T:-1:LISTINGS:1

beware! there's a lot of counterfeit stuff out there, all brands, all sizes, all types.