Question:
What is the best memory card to use with a Canon 5D Mark I that is used for high speed Music Photography?
CherryCupcake
2011-10-17 02:06:29 UTC
I currently use a SanDisk Extreme Compact Flash 8GB 60MBS and I am looking for back up memory cards. I use the cards mainly for Music Photography and I have read that it is advisable to use at least two cards to "spread the risk" just in case something happens to a card. I'm not sure what to buy in terms of brand and size. Also my current card displays two error messages for two images each time I transfer/review images on my laptop. I'm not sure why so I'm not sure if I should stick with this brand or not. Price is an issue but I also want the best cards for my work.
Six answers:
screwdriver
2011-10-17 05:28:23 UTC
San Disc are the best, they can repair themselves if corrupted, the 5D supports UDMA cards and can make use of their extra speed, the burst frame buffer expands from 78 Jpegs to 310 with UDMA, sadly no difference when shooting Raw.



There are only 4 memory chip manufacturers in the World and 3 of those are San Disc or subsidiaries. The other one is Lexar. All are in Korea.



If the cards you have are genuine then you have the best cards available, they only put the San Disc name onto top end chips, lesser chips, either in speed or capacity, get sold off for pennies to other manufacturers to package. Other good manufacturers such as Kingston commission production runs from San Disc and then package the chips in their own factories.



What San Disc offers is a re-programmable control chip on their Extreme brand, all memory cards have pages of memory, they all start off as a 256Gb card, but only a tiny minority have all the pages working, most fall short of the spec either in capacity and/or speed, the control chip uses those pages that are tested to work at the speed the card is classed at the number of working pages determines if that card is a 4Gb, 8Gb etc., and the chip is packaged accordingly. The point being that there is always fully functioning spare memory pages, Extreme cards can re-program the control chip to use one of these if a memory page gets corrupted. It does this in the POST (Power on Self Test) test when you insert a card or turn your camera on, you may notice the memory LED lights up for a few seconds whilst it does this POST test.



The only other card that can do this are the Lexar Gold series.



A possible reason why two files are corrupted is that you have erased an image from a full card and taken another image. All images use compression (even Raw files, the only exception are DNG files which are always the same size as the sensor, in the case of the 5D 22Mb), this means that the file size varies with image content, it's possible that the new image is larger than the deleted one and has overwritten part of an existing file which will corrupt both.



Stick to San Disc Extreme or Lexar Gold, they are the best cards most secure cards available.



To be honest I have never had an Extreme card fail (touch wood). But it obviously makes sense to use multiple cards, the 'all your eggs in one basket' approach, I don't own any cards larger than 8Gb for this reason, I tend to use loads of 4Gb cards, but they can be a pain when you need to change one mid shoot.



Always format the cards in camera after your images have been saved securely onto your hard drive (preferably two), this writes a new DCIM (Digital Camera Image Management) file which is how the camera keeps a record of where on the card each image begins and ends. Just deleting them doesn't do this it uses the existing DCIM file which might well be corrupt. ALWAYS format the card in camera to start afresh with your next shoot.



Chris
2011-10-17 04:45:40 UTC
The 5D is not limited by card speed, but by it's maximum write speed. Fast as it is, it's not quite in the same league as the markII or a 7D or 1Dmark III/IV/1Ds markIII.



I would say the current SanDisk Ultra series at 30 MB/S is fast enough. Previously the name was called Extreme III. My recommendation is to get a couple of the 4GB ultra's they're good quality, perfectly fast enough, and not too expensive. This way you're shooting one 8 and two 4's and that'll be plenty of redundancy. Just remember to swap cards regularly so that you get a mix of shots on each of them.



P.S. because of the write speed limitation of the 5Dc there is no difference between your Ultra and Extreme cards. In fact the old Ultra II (15MB/s) was good enough, it's just they don't make them any more.



P.P.S. you shoudn't need to worry about the speed anyway, even shooting RAW it's really quite hard to fill the buffer of the 5D.
Jeroen Wijnands
2011-10-17 10:54:16 UTC
Sandisk is a kneejerk response for most people here. Which goes to show that their marketing efforts work.

Your card probably needs a good format in camera, something you need to do before every shoot anyways.



http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-8198 shows speed tests for the 5D which show to me what I know and that's that the 5D mk1 is no speed wonder.



I shoot these in my nikon d300: http://www.transcendusa.com/products/Catlist.asp?LangNo=0&modno=264 they have proven themselves to be very, very reliable (in fact the only card error I ever got was with a sandisk 2gb card) and are quick enough for wildlife photography.
?
2016-10-03 01:08:00 UTC
With reminiscence playing cards the first rule is the swifter write velocity the greater effective. ability is terrific left to center sizes like 2Gb or 4Gb. the turn away of extensive sizes is greater glaring if the cardboard unexpectedly failed. the turn away of smaller sizes is greater tolerable if this is almost swapping playing cards now and then.
2017-01-26 05:53:49 UTC
1
B K
2011-10-17 04:58:21 UTC
How is "Music Photography" different from any other kind of photography?



Answer: It's not.



If a card has errors after formatting, throw it away. Get another.



Of course you should have more than one memory card!!!


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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