I'd like to move to exclusively use SD cards rather than CF, because my 1Ds II is the only device I have that uses CF, and my laptop can directly read SD cards but not CF unless I plug in a USB reader. I had also seen on Rob Galbraith's site that the camera writes faster to SD than CF, so with cards being so cheap now, it seemed like a no brainer to move to SD.

I ordered a couple of 4GB Ultra II SD cards to replace my 3 year old 4GB Ultra II CF. I was amazed to find that the SD cards are actually much slower than the CF. It takes my camera 5 seconds to save an image to the CF card, but 8 seconds to save to the SD card.

Firmware version is the latest, 1.1.6.

Has anyone else experienced this? I'm wondering if the Ultra II cards have got slower over the years, and if I bought a CF Ultra II now rather than using my 3 year old one, perhaps it would be just as slow as the SD Ultra II?

Ultra II SD cards are slower than Extreme III CF cards.

Low-capacity SD cards were faster than "equivalent" CF cards.

Large-capacity SD cards are slower than small-capacity SD cards.

SDHC cards are dead slow. This seems to be universal but I don't see why it should be so. Something in the technology of the data controllers in the cards, I guess.

In my opinion you're better off with an 8GB Extreme III card or Extreme IV card (but the latter is no faster in-camera, just when downloading via a speedy card reader) and a new card reader. Ignoring SD cards except as an in-camera emergency spare. If you write to both cards at once then the SD card will bog things down either by being too small or too slow, or both.

As a side issue, I noticed that an SD card in my hyperdrive colorspace storage device is heaps slower than any CF card. Maybe something has changed that optimises some readers and/or cameras for CF better than for SD.

- Alan

Your findings are not surprising. I have an SD card with me sometimes for case of emergency, but that's about the extent of its use to me.

Thanks for your replies.

I've since bought a 4GB Extreme III SDHC card to try, and it's faster than the 4GB Ultra II SDHC, but still slower than my old 4GB Ultra II CF. I suppose it must be the fact it's SDHC, and perhaps a 2GB Extreme III SD card would give decent performance. I was just disappointed because Rob Galbraith's data suggested that SD would in general be faster than CF, but it seems SDHC messes the performance up.

Still, the Extreme III SDHC is acceptable, it's only a little bit slower than the Ultra II CF, I think I can live with it.

My experience on my 1D II is the complete opposite. My 2GB Ultra III SD card trounces my 4GB Ultra III CF cards and is more in line with RG's database.

Pixel Perfect wrote:
My experience on my 1D II is the complete opposite. My 2GB Ultra III SD card trounces my 4GB Ultra III CF cards and is more in line with RG's database.
+1 here, Whayne.

As I posted in the other thread, in my 1Dmk2, my
2GB Extreme 3 SD is a tad faster than my
2GB Extreme 3 CF which is a tad faster than my
1GB CF Ultra2 which is faster than my old
1GB Kingston Elite Pro SD which is faster than my
4GB SDHC Extreme 3.

I thought the SDHC card was faulty but now I figure it is just not a very good (fast) product, at least not in my camera.

Apparently the camera makes a big difference though. Check out the 1D3 vs 1Ds3 on Rob's site. The 1Ds3 is faster with CF cards (and boy is it fast) while the 1D3 is faster with SD cards. The fastest SD is a bit faster than the faster SDHC on both but not by a big margin.

Alan321 wrote:
Ultra II SD cards are slower than Extreme III CF cards.

Low-capacity SD cards were faster than "equivalent" CF cards.

Large-capacity SD cards are slower than small-capacity SD cards.

SDHC cards are dead slow. This seems to be universal but I don't see why it should be so. Something in the technology of the data controllers in the cards, I guess.

In my opinion you're better off with an 8GB Extreme III card or Extreme IV card (but the latter is no faster in-camera, just when downloading via a speedy card reader) and a new card reader. Ignoring SD cards except as an in-camera emergency spare. If you write to both cards at once then the SD card will bog things down either by being too small or too slow, or both.

As a side issue, I noticed that an SD card in my hyperdrive colorspace storage device is heaps slower than any CF card. Maybe something has changed that optimises some readers and/or cameras for CF better than for SD.

- Alan

+1, all the 2gb cards are faster than the sdhc and comparable cf cards. I still found the extreme 3 - 4gb sd's not fast enough to switch.

Rob will have his 1DII and 1DsII databases updated in the not-too-distant future.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Excellent news, Nill. Maybe he's got time for this now that his fight with the 1D3 (and Canon and all the other doubters) is pretty much over. I guess he won't be wanting a 1D4 too soon.

I noticed in his CF and SD database a comment that Sandisk has recently upgraded the Extreme III spec to a faster 2008 version. That's what happens when you don't leave gaps in your model number sequence. Maybe it should have been called an Extreme III Mark II (N)

- Alan