Thanks very much for this testing, makes for interesting reading.
Did Angelbird come back to you on their thoughts as to the spool lag? That delay at startup is an issue for shooting birds and the way I am currently using my R5 (read switching it off frequently to save battery).
I am trying to ride a fine ethical line here. When initially talking to manufacturers, I was speaking as a customer and experiencing their normal customer service experience. This was great because I was able to see how they treat real people. Technically, this information is on the record, as would any customer's experience, as they'd write in a product review online. You saw this in the review.
I later identified myself as someone doing a review when I was asking them deeper questions than those simply relevant to my individual purchase. Information I received after that point, was either on the record or off the record in a more explicit fashion, as I was acting a journalist concerned about such things.
I can say this: I think the manufacturers who responded to my questions are very on-the-ball with what's going on from user reports, and that they're acting very quickly to address any observable concerns. Further, their customer service is about as good as I've seen from any company in any industry. They're all about results, getting new equipment to people as fast as possible, without questions asked, without charge.
Decades ago, I was a reporter. I strung for the AP, NY Times while in college. Back then, you published a piece, and you had the luxury of putting in ambiguous language that would help convey the right amount of information your source had authorized as on the record, and you attempted to corroborate off-the-record info with another source to be able to include that as well. I think it's both frustrating and refreshing that now, we have the ability to somewhat crowdsource stories with these message boards, but it makes that on/off the record stuff more treacherous, especially as sources worry precisely that their comments will become the topic of some social media presence. I think most industry publications don't press hard enough into actual reporting that this comes up often, but this means there's a rich vein of reportable topics out there for people who are respectful of these evolving standards.
arbitrage wrote:
Update2: The 512GB came In Stock at Amazon.ca at $392 CAD (the card lists at $429 USD). That is some bizarre pricing scheme based on the forex. Other 512GB cards are between $7-800 CAD. I ordered one because the 256GB card I had on order had no ETA. The 512GB is supposed to arrive next week. Then yesterday Amazon updated the 256GB card saying it would deliver in the last week of Sept or first week of Oct. So I guess they got some info on supply of those cards. So far that price has stayed down at the $260 mark.
I'll probably end up with both, test them and return one of them or sell one. The listed speeds is less on the 512GB card which is unlike any other manufacturer. Usually the larger capacity cards are the fastest. We shall see how they test in camera. I will try to match some of Tiggy's tests even though I don't have a nice Blue-wing Teal to photograph
Another update: Amazon actually shipped my back-ordered 256GB card honoring the previous price of $259. But the card is now listed at $320 CAD. They haven't shipped my 512GB one yet even though that one was listed as In Stock (and still is) when I ordered it. We shall see if they honor the $390 CAD price but seems like they will.
arbitrage wrote:
Another update: Amazon actually shipped my back-ordered 256GB card honoring the previous price of $259. But the card is now listed at $320 CAD. They haven't shipped my 512GB one yet even though that one was listed as In Stock (and still is) when I ordered it. We shall see if they honor the $390 CAD price but seems like they will.
And now Amazon shipped my 512GB....and they honored the price.
Any Canadians out there, the 512GB is still listed for $390 and In Stock so you will never find a better deal for CFe....of course actual card performance is still unknown. I'd be a little leary of it if you are going to use for 8K but if you just want a big card for stills or lower spec video modes then it is a silly deal. Other 512GB cards are over $700 CAD.
I am using the Lexar Gold 1750 in 128 and 512GB sizes and the Sonnet Thunderbolt reader attached to my MacPro. In the MacPro, I have an SSD RAID0 that will do 8GB/s. When downloading files from the card to said SSD I get around 1.2GB/s real transfer speeds. Very happy with the cards.
outlawrock wrote:
Note for the US "memoryc.com" has the Transcend 512G CFExpress card for $333.
Now if only we knew if the card was good...
The thing that worries me about that card is the speed on the 512 is lower than the 256....every other manufacturer has faster speeds the larger the card capacity....it just makes me wonder about how they engineered them??
Anyone know a reason why the 512 would rate slower than the 256?
arbitrage wrote:
The thing that worries me about that card is the speed on the 512 is lower than the 256....every other manufacturer has faster speeds the larger the card capacity....it just makes me wonder about how they engineered them??
Anyone know a reason why the 512 would rate slower than the 256?
Companies can stratify their offerings by simply claiming lower speeds with the same card. We saw this happen in past years with SD cards. Cameramemoryspeed.com is full of examples where a company sourced white-label cards and fit them into a product slot that was under-representing the actual cards' capabilities. That was the magic of Cameramemoryspeed.com - that you could find the diamond in the rough and get a great deal. There isn't a lot of motive for a card seller to do this right now, in the absence of also selling a high-end line of cards, but the white label manufacture, *could* require that claims not exceed a certain amount, in order to protect their own high-end line.
Here are a few reasons you might see this:
1) Price stratification, as guessed above
2) Very high write claims were true in unrealistic situations/durations, and evolving firmware has now foreclosed those impractical speeds, so the claim cannot be made anymore
3) Company is afraid of warranty claims in future for people using R5-like cameras, where cards could suffer heat damage, so they throttled the heck out of it in firmware
In all the reasons I can think of, it doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a dog of a card. If someone told me that a card was throttled to the speed where I could shoot RAW forever at 7 fps at 13 bit (the best performing cards out there now), and couldn't record 8k, I'd buy it in a heartbeat if it were significantly cheaper. Video guys are a small subset of the camera market, as Sigma's CEO made clear in a recently published interview.
Has anyone here bought anything from MemoryC.com? Their prices for these Transcend CFExpress cards are significantly lower than everyone else. Do I have a reason to be somewhat cautious about them?
outlawrock wrote:
Note for the US "memoryc.com" has the Transcend 512G CFExpress card for $333.
Now if only we knew if the card was good...
W.r.t slower speeds of larger cards -
Flash is VERY complicated stuff. Could be a limit on the controller. Or could be that to get more density, instead of say 2 x of the same technology flash they had to go with slower (say quad cell flash instead of tri cell flash)...
Andrew, is that with the lens cap on? The testing we were doing was producing 56mb files (3200 ISO). When we shot complete brightness or with the cap on, we were able to get crazy high buffer stats, but they weren't too good for comparing one card against another. The 12 fps buffer usually filled up around 120-125 shots for most cards with the 56mb files.
Remember that there is an inflection point in file size, below which the files just stream on to the card, and the buffer never really limits the speed. If you get at all close to that (like with a 30-40mb file), you'll get very high numbers. If you were shooting something >55mb, I'd love to know about it, as that would be a real fly in our data ointment, and we'd want to take a very close look.
Andrew J wrote:
Two different Sony 128GB cards and I am getting over 339 full RAW buffer in mechanical shutter mode at 12fps.
Just by way of reference, I just now did the lens cap version of the test, and the Delkin 512 gb did 397 shots, and the Sony Tough 512 gb card did 385.
On a lark, I switched to large jpg extra fine settings (with the Sony card) and shot 683 before the buffer coughed. The card is not very warm at all relative to shooting the hundreds of RAWs in a row, which I find interesting.
