CF Card between 2 bodies

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Archive 2012 · CF Card between 2 bodies

duranash
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p.1 #1 · CF Card between 2 bodies

Man I hate to ask this "dumb" question, but I'm wondering.......is there any downside to swapping around CF cards between two Canon bodies (5DII and 7D) as long as I format the card(s)?....or do most folks make sure they use the same card(s) in each body all the time?

Feb 15, 2012 at 04:35 PM

omarlyn
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p.1 #2 · CF Card between 2 bodies

It might reset the file numbering sequence between cameras but if you don't care about that, there is no issue.

Omar

Feb 15, 2012 at 04:57 PM

dfresh
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p.1 #3 · CF Card between 2 bodies

I've read from conspiracy theorists that repeated formatting will reduce CF card life (they claim you should 'erase' regularly but not format), but I've never seen hard evidence to support this.

Feb 15, 2012 at 04:58 PM

jcolwell
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p.1 #4 · CF Card between 2 bodies

No worries. I sometimes don't even bother to format them.

Feb 15, 2012 at 04:59 PM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #5 · CF Card between 2 bodies

dfresh wrote:
I've read from conspiracy theorists that repeated formatting will reduce CF card life (they claim you should 'erase' regularly but not format), but I've never seen hard evidence to support this.

You would have to format loads of times to have have np any great effect.

But by far the biggest drawback to swapping cards between bodies is the file numbering.
The body you insert the card into will take the number of the last file written and compare. That with its last number. If the number on the card is higher the new body will start rom that number, if it's lower then it carries on from the it's higher number.
The reason for this is to stop file number conflicts on you computer.

Feb 15, 2012 at 05:15 PM

Rodney O
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p.1 #6 · CF Card between 2 bodies

dfresh wrote:
I've read from conspiracy theorists that repeated formatting will reduce CF card life (they claim you should 'erase' regularly but not format), but I've never seen hard evidence to support this.

Here's a quick summary on the memory chips in CF cards:
CF cards have finite number of writes for each cell. That number if generally well above what most photographers will ever use. There are two types of Cf cards memory chips. 1)= Multi-layer (MLC) which has the shorter life between 15,000 and 50,000 writes per memory location. 2)= Single Layer (SLC) which has the larger number of writes before failure over 150,000 to maybe 300,000+ depending on the mfgr. SLC CF cards are more expensive. Most of the cards people use are MLC

Each time you write to a memory bit, it counts towards the total for that bit. Erasing is a write over action. The cards are organized such that you never actually write to just one bit, but rather write to a block of bytes. Thus the failure of one bit in a block will "kill" the entire block.

An "erase" on a card actually does more to shorten the card's life than a simple format. The format simply reorders the listing of available space on the card. It does NOT write to each memory block.. Where as an erase writes to the whole card, every block.

In practice, CF cards have internal controllers that attempt to "even out" the use over the card's blocks and that makes it difficult to ever truly securely erase a CF card.

And note that when you wrote "erase" in your post, I understood you to mean just that "erase" which is to write over the card's data and not to do a "delete".

hth
Rodney

Feb 15, 2012 at 05:18 PM

Roland W
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p.1 #7 · CF Card between 2 bodies

I always format my cards in my computer before putting them into use in my cameras. I then have the choice of which body out of the three I use, and once I put a card in a camera body I do not use it in another body until after the next cycle of download, backup, and format. That eliminates any issues with changing the numbering sequence, all though that issue may be fixed in some way with newer cameras.

Feb 15, 2012 at 07:42 PM

Scott Stoness
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p.1 #8 · CF Card between 2 bodies

I format my cards when I put them in a body but often will take a 5dii formatted card and use it in the 7d. Usually not the reverse because 7d fps uses up my 32gb cards whereas that would be a lot of pictures on the 5dii.

When you put the 7dformatted card in the 5dii (or reverse) it creates a new folder and carries on from the last count on the specific body.

The only issue is that you cannot see what shots you have from 7d when you look at a 7d formatted/shot on the 5dii, so you don't know if you are formatting over valuable pictures.

But I have never lost pictures because of swapping.

Feb 15, 2012 at 07:57 PM

hondageek
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p.1 #9 · CF Card between 2 bodies

I swap cards from body to body in mid job all the time with no problems. I'll shoot part on a 5DII then pull it and shoot more with a 1DIII.

Feb 16, 2012 at 02:57 AM

scalesusa
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p.1 #10 · CF Card between 2 bodies

Terminology is sometimes used incorrectly confusing people.

Erasing a flash memory card removes all data from a card, this impacts every memory cell, since it is done in large blocks. The card must be formatted after its erased, and this is best done in the camera, since your computer will not know whether to use Fat 16 or Fat 32 when it formats a erased card.

Formatting in Camera merely changes the FAT tables to show the card is empty, but does not actually remove data or write to each cell. Its equivalent to a quick format in a windows computer.

Feb 16, 2012 at 03:42 AM

timbop
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p.1 #11 · CF Card between 2 bodies

It's no problem. The studio I shoot for has 20+ photographers and hundreds of cards shared among them every weekend. As mentioned, if you move the card from one cam to the other and take a shot without formatting/deleting, then the sequence number on the cameras become synchronized

Feb 16, 2012 at 04:28 AM

MintMar
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p.1 #12 · CF Card between 2 bodies

duranash wrote:
Man I hate to ask this "dumb" question, but I'm wondering.......is there any downside to swapping around CF cards between two Canon bodies (5DII and 7D) as long as I format the card(s)?....or do most folks make sure they use the same card(s) in each body all the time?

I'm swapping 8G cards between 400D, 40D, 1D Mk2 N and 1D Mk3 without any formatting and I have no problems so far. Even displaying photos from other cameras in one of the cameras works.

I haven't formatted a CF card for a long time. But what I usually do is that I move the images from the card to my disk and the card without any leftovers.

Feb 16, 2012 at 12:10 PM

jchin
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p.1 #13 · CF Card between 2 bodies

MintMar wrote:
duranash wrote:
Man I hate to ask this "dumb" question, but I'm wondering.......is there any downside to swapping around CF cards between two Canon bodies (5DII and 7D) as long as I format the card(s)?....or do most folks make sure they use the same card(s) in each body all the time?

I'm swapping 8G cards between 400D, 40D, 1D Mk2 N and 1D Mk3 without any formatting and I have no problems so far. Even displaying photos from other cameras in one of the cameras works.

I haven't formatted a CF card for a long time. But what I usually do is that I move the images from the card to my disk and the card without any leftovers.

"Moving images" is effectively a copy of that image to the new location and erase of that image from the old.

As others have mentioned, formatting a card puts less wear on the CF card than erasing each image.

Feb 17, 2012 at 04:35 AM

Gochugogi
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p.1 #14 · CF Card between 2 bodies

I like to keep my image numbers sequential between cameras so I reformat in my Mac before swapping between cameras. If you don't track your shutter count or care about sequential file numbers you don't even need to reformat them.

Feb 17, 2012 at 05:32 AM

MintMar
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p.1 #15 · CF Card between 2 bodies

jchin wrote:
MintMar wrote:
duranash wrote:
Man I hate to ask this "dumb" question, but I'm wondering.......is there any downside to swapping around CF cards between two Canon bodies (5DII and 7D) as long as I format the card(s)?....or do most folks make sure they use the same card(s) in each body all the time?

I'm swapping 8G cards between 400D, 40D, 1D Mk2 N and 1D Mk3 without any formatting and I have no problems so far. Even displaying photos from other cameras in one of the cameras works.

I haven't formatted a CF card for a long time. But what I usually do is that I move the images from the card to my disk and the card without any leftovers.

"Moving images" is effectively a copy of that image to the new location and erase of that image from the old.

As others have mentioned, formatting a card puts less wear on the CF card than erasing each image.

Ummm, not quite. Yes, move = copy + delete. But when you delete a file, you don't overwrite it. Erasing just replaces the first character of the file by nonstandard character, but the file is kept intact. This is how you can "unerase" the files. Next, when you erase file, part of its allocation table is also marked "unused". And that's about all.

Quick format is nothing else than wiping the file allocation tables and deleting all the files, just about the same operation I do when I "move" files from the card to the computer.

Feb 17, 2012 at 11:38 AM

xcalibur
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p.1 #16 · CF Card between 2 bodies

If you ever swap a CF card between two cameras and it starts the file numbering where the other camera left off......Here is a fix that worked for me in the past--

Find the last original image file(stored on your computer) from the camera you want to return to the true file numbering and copy it to the CF Card in the correct folder. Take a couple pics and check the numbers.
Like I say, it worked for me but its been awhile back.

I always cut/paste from card reader to computer and then usually format in camera just to make sure. As long as there are no image files left on the card you can swap between camera bodies with no worries.

Feb 22, 2012 at 02:15 AM

Imagemaster
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p.1 #17 · CF Card between 2 bodies

Since I re-number all my files when editing on my computer, I could care less about the camera numbering. I even use the same card in Nikon and Canon bodies sometimes.

Feb 22, 2012 at 03:02 AM

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