I was overly curious so I picked up a 128GB Delkin Power CFExpress card.
Yep its faster
Was able to get 85 full RAW in ES just up to the first slight stutter. I noticed that it never fully paused out after that first stutter like the SD cards and the Transcend CFEx card.
With my Transcend CFe and top end SD cards I was always hitting an abrupt stop at 58 files.
I'll test MS and some more variations of CRAW vs RAW tomorrow. Also some back to back with the other cards so the file sizes are identical.
My RAW file size was ~46.3MB for this morning's test at ISO 3200, 1/400, f/4.5
I did a bunch more test runs on different cards today.
I'm not sure I even want to post the results as I found that the CFe performance varies a lot and seems to slow down as time goes (maybe from heat?).
One interesting finding was that in EFCS/MS at 12FPS in CRAW the buffer was hit at the exact same ~302 shots with my Delkin CFe, Transcend CFe, Delkin SD and Lexar SD. That was weird....
I tested those four cards in ES and EFCS with both full RAW and with CRAW. I found testing in MS was easier as things seem to come to an abrupt stop when buffer is full. But in ES you sometimes get small blips that then continue on for another second or so at full tilt. So test to test is difficult to know when to stop the test.
My only real conclusion is the Delkin is somewhat faster than the Transcend. The SD cards are essentially equal. If you shoot CRAW then save your $ on CFexpress, especially if you are going to shoot at 12FPS. Just use fast SD (if you already own them) and if you are going to buy CFexpress you might as well save money and buy a Transcend at MemoryC.
If you intend to shoot full RAW in ES then buying a fast CFe card may be worth it to you. But both my SD cards got 78 shots in ES in full RAW today which actually was more than the Transcend CFe
Of course video is a whole different ball game which I won't bother testing.
E shutter does not shine under the most common non-stop shooting test that waits for the first stutter. So it is spectacular in every real world way but tests poorly. The R5 e shutter mode does not start writing to the card for what ever reason until the user/camera pauses. By doing incredibly tiny pauses you can shoot almost non stop using that mode combined with a fast CF express card.
Andrew J wrote:
E shutter does not shine under the most common non-stop shooting test that waits for the first stutter. So it is spectacular in every real world way but tests poorly. The R5 e shutter mode does not start writing to the card for what ever reason until the user/camera pauses. By doing incredibly tiny pauses you can shoot almost non stop using that mode combined with a fast CF express card.
Yeah that is good info to keep in mind out in the field. I’ve yet to run into any buffer issues with the R5 while out shooting but I have been using CRAW so that pretty much eliminates even the remote chance. I’m going to play around with testing short pauses today.
arbitrage wrote:
Yeah that is good info to keep in mind out in the field. I’ve yet to run into any buffer issues with the R5 while out shooting but I have been using CRAW so that pretty much eliminates even the remote chance. I’m going to play around with testing short pauses today.
IMHO the problem with short pauses in ES is that it basically makes tracking... very difficult? I was going to say nearly impossible but that’s probably an overstatement.
When you lift your finger for a pause of the viewfinder ends up switching from the 20fps frame duplication from the last shot image back to the live feed and this switchover comes with a pause and some viewfinder feed weirdness.
Arbitrage, do you by any chance still have the packaging from your Delkin 128GB CFe card? I have come to know that the two letter code above the right corner of the bar code on the back is the firmware version, with "MH" representing the latest version of the firmware.
It was also confirmed by a Delkin rep that there is (some form of) heat throttling on their cards. I spoke with somebody at Delkin (don't know his title, but he seemed technically knowledgeable). We discussed my benchmark results and I sent him that info, as he was surprised by some of the numbers; especially the CRAW ones. I am hoping I will hear back from him next week.
If you shoot CRAW then save your $ on CFexpress, especially if you are going to shoot at 12FPS. Just use fast SD (if you already own them) and if you are going to buy CFexpress you might as well save money and buy a Transcend at MemoryC.
Hard to argue your point re SD cards in the short term. The way I looked at it is CF cards came out in 1994 and I still have a camera that uses them (the 7D2; now my back-up body). I figure that the CFe card will continue to be used in pro and prosumer bodies long after the SD card is not used in those. I have no 'proof' of this. I just figure with the way video is going, as well as still file sizes and burst rates, it is a pretty safe bet. When I compared prices, top end SD cards weren't much cheaper than various CFe cards, so I decided to play the long game and go with CFe. I liked the Delkin because the performance was good, the price was good and the heat management appears to be very good (which seemed important given quite a number of comments about issues on FM).
Jesse Evans wrote:
IMHO the problem with short pauses in ES is that it basically makes tracking... very difficult? I was going to say nearly impossible but that’s probably an overstatement.
When you lift your finger for a pause of the viewfinder ends up switching from the 20fps frame duplication from the last shot image back to the live feed and this switchover comes with a pause and some viewfinder feed weirdness.
No viewfinder change as long as you have both review settings "off". In the field I almost never take 100 shots in row non-stop in 5 seconds.
EverLearning wrote:
Arbitrage, do you by any chance still have the packaging from your Delkin 128GB CFe card? I have come to know that the two letter code above the right corner of the bar code on the back is the firmware version, with "MH" representing the latest version of the firmware.
It was also confirmed by a Delkin rep that there is (some form of) heat throttling on their cards. I spoke with somebody at Delkin (don't know his title, but he seemed technically knowledgeable). We discussed my benchmark results and I sent him that info, as he was surprised by some of the numbers; especially the CRAW ones. I am hoping I will hear back from him next week.
Hard to argue your point re SD cards in the short term. The way I looked at it is CF cards came out in 1994 and I still have a camera that uses them (the 7D2; now my back-up body). I figure that the CFe card will continue to be used in pro and prosumer bodies long after the SD card is not used in those. I have no 'proof' of this. I just figure with the way video is going, as well as still file sizes and burst rates, it is a pretty safe bet. When I compared prices, top end SD cards weren't much cheaper than various CFe cards, so I decided to play the long game and go with CFe. I liked the Delkin because the performance was good, the price was good and the heat management appears to be very good (which seemed important given quite a number of comments about issues on FM)....Show more →
Mine says "HM" is that what you meant by "MH"? Also says 8/20 which I suppose is the manufacture date.
Thanks for that info as at least I know I'm testing the upgraded FW when doing my tests.
I ran another test, just in ES with RAW and CRAW. Just comparing my Transcend to the Delkin.
In today's test the two cards were almost hitting the same numbers...Transcend just a few shots behind the Delkin. The Delkin does finish writing a few seconds faster though.
I thought if the Delkin gave me a significant advantage I would keep it and sell the Transcend. But after all this testing I'm going to return the Delkin and just keep my Transcend.
But if I had to buy from scratch and was looking at a 128GB card I'd pick up the Delkin. I wouldn't buy the Transcend at current Canadian prices nor current B&H prices but I got mine for a lot less than current prices.
EverLearning wrote:
Arbitrage, do you by any chance still have the packaging from your Delkin 128GB CFe card? I have come to know that the two letter code above the right corner of the bar code on the back is the firmware version, with "MH" representing the latest version of the firmware.
It was also confirmed by a Delkin rep that there is (some form of) heat throttling on their cards. I spoke with somebody at Delkin (don't know his title, but he seemed technically knowledgeable). We discussed my benchmark results and I sent him that info, as he was surprised by some of the numbers; especially the CRAW ones. I am hoping I will hear back from him next week.
Hard to argue your point re SD cards in the short term. The way I looked at it is CF cards came out in 1994 and I still have a camera that uses them (the 7D2; now my back-up body). I figure that the CFe card will continue to be used in pro and prosumer bodies long after the SD card is not used in those. I have no 'proof' of this. I just figure with the way video is going, as well as still file sizes and burst rates, it is a pretty safe bet. When I compared prices, top end SD cards weren't much cheaper than various CFe cards, so I decided to play the long game and go with CFe. I liked the Delkin because the performance was good, the price was good and the heat management appears to be very good (which seemed important given quite a number of comments about issues on FM)....Show more →
What I meant to say is if one already has some top end UHS-II SD cards and you are going to shoot CRAW and MS then really no reason to spend on CFe. But like you if I was going to choose to buy either CFe or an SD UHS-II then I'd buy a CFe.
Can anyone confirm if their Angelbird XTs are now performing flawlessly? I've been waiting on their cards to resolve the on-time delays, but--at this point--feel like I may just jump on ProGrade Cobalt to avoid things altogether.
rndman wrote:
If the cost of CFexpress per GB is close to UHS II v90, may be that is the best option.
At the 128GB size CFexpress is usually just $10-$20 more than the top spec UHS-II v90 (~300MB/s) SD cards from the same manufacturer.
Once you get into higher capacity CFexpress cards then CFexpress gets less and less expensive. Of course you can't buy UHS-II v90 300MB/s cards larger than 256GB anyways and only a couple 256GB ones exist.
CFexpress on its own gets less and less expensive per GB as you buy larger and larger cards. With the 2TB cards you are down to $0.44/GB. Contrast that to 128GB card that costs you $1.28/GB
I got a replacement card for the "non XT", and it works very well, the start up time on the R5 is now the same as my Prograde Cobalt one. So I think that the XT should be fine too.
arbitrage wrote:
CFexpress on its own gets less and less expensive per GB as you buy larger and larger cards. With the 2TB cards you are down to $0.44/GB. Contrast that to 128GB card that costs you $1.28/GB
Yes, but what does one do with the extra capacity? I can't imagine shooting tens of thousands of images on one memory card. The cards themselves work quite slow as SSD drives on a computer (compared to internal m.2 NVMe SSDs) and cost multiple times that of the internal drives per GB so it's highly uneconomical and inefficient to use as mass storage on a computer.
The only legitimate application for the larger CFexpress cards that I can think of is 8K video.
I think to make it sensible to buy those larger capacity cards and use them as removeable general purpose mass storage, the price would have to fall to about 1/3 of what it is today.
ilkka_nissila wrote:
Yes, but what does one do with the extra capacity? I can't imagine shooting tens of thousands of images on one memory card. The cards themselves work quite slow as SSD drives on a computer (compared to internal m.2 NVMe SSDs) and cost multiple times that of the internal drives per GB so it's highly uneconomical and inefficient to use as mass storage on a computer.
The only legitimate application for the larger CFexpress cards that I can think of is 8K video.
I think to make it sensible to buy those larger capacity cards and use them as removeable general purpose mass storage, the price would have to fall to about 1/3 of what it is today. ...Show more →
As you say, I'd bet that most people buying the 1-2TB cards are doing video. I know a number of stills shooters that have 512GB cards just for stills though. I'm happy with 128GB....because I shoot CRAW I'd be okay with 64GB. I have a 256GB card because I bought it when it was wrongly priced on Amazon upon release and it was less expensive than 128GB cards. If Transcend had a mispriced 128GB card I would have bought that instead.
I wouldn't expect people to be buying these 1-2TB cards to use as general storage over a much less expensive and faster SSD.
So
About to purchase large capacity CF express for my two R5’s
Mostly stills but will be doing some concert video of a rock band from time to time
Saw that B+ H special - 325GB CFexpress 2.0 Cobalt Memory Card (2-Pack) from ProGrade Digital at 642$
Also the memory C site found the 512 GB Transcend card cheaper at 337$ which would be 772$ if I got two cards and much more capacity
Is one really better then the other?
Appreciate your thoughts
What is the best deal for the best card right now? In 325 to 512 GB capacity
