CF CARD FOR CANON 7d

[Pieter J de Villiers]

Hi,

I just got a Canon 7D and need a new, larger CF card. The prices vary SO much as I'm sure the speed and quality do. Is it safe to go with a lower priced, less popular brand?

I need at least 16GB and would like decently fast read/write speeds.

What about a Lexer 16GB 200X Premium CF Memory Card?

Thanks

[Chris F]

Pieter the clever guys will give you all the codes - but in short, when on RAPID FIRE the 7D needs a FAST card !


Pieter at about R750 per card I would have spent an obscene amount of money on cards for our month long holiday. I rather invested in a 10'' laptop, cost a bit more than 3 cards ... Allowed me to download my pics regularly. (I did not want o lug a 17'' laptop over 1000's of km of gravel roads)

[Anonymous]

I'm pretty happy with the 32gb Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s cards in my 7D. I've got a UDMA card reader which means I can also take advantage of rapid offloading to my laptop.

[Grant Atkinson]

Hi Pieter
The 7D will do best with a really fast CF card, at the minimum 45Mb/s and upwards, as indicated by Chris F and Williams above. I make use of either the Sandisk Extreme 60Mb/s CF card or the Sandisk Extreme Pro which is 90Mb/s. These cards are very expensive especially in the larger sizes like 16Mb and upwards. The card you have mentioned writes at 30Mb/s which is a lot slower. What is important though is to take into account whether you will be shooting a lot at high speed, and in bursts, which would be something done more by sports and wildlife action photogs. If you are shooting at slower rates, then you won't be missing out on much by getting a slower card and cheaper card.
cheers
Grant

[Pieter J de Villiers]

Tx People............

[Yogotta B. Kidding]

For various reason I carry many cards. They are all either 4Gb 30mb/s or 8Gb 60mb/s SanDisk cards. Bursts of seven to ten frames are stil catered for. I have never ran it into the buffer redline.

[Grant Atkinson]

Good point there YBK, and it is worth remembering that the 7D has a very deep buffer as well. I have also never run one into the buffer whilst shooting. And the speed of the card really comes more into play when you actually have filled the buffer, and are forced to wait as the card can only receive data at the cards fastest write speed....so with the faster cards, if you do fill the buffer, you have a shorter wait for it to clear. Even when using a slow card, the buffer itself will remain the same.

[Jaco de Klerk]

Pieter,

Good advice from Grant.

It's expensive, but (only) to use machine gun mode you'll need a fast card else the buffer fills up quicker. I'm sure Lexer will be OK, this is no longer new technology. Personally I buy Sandisk, but never the latest and greatest as prices always drop after a while.
My most expensive card - many moons ago when the 10D was released, I bought a 1GB Sandisk card in New York - for R2700!!