16May Canon 5d mark III RAW memory card options
Over the 2 year or so i’ve stuck with Transcend 400x 32GB cards for both filmmaking and photography. Even when shooting in burst mode, the cards are fast enough that I don’t run into buffering issues. However, with the introduction of RAW video on the 5d mark III and cameras like the Canon 1D C shooting 4k video, it seems these cards are no long fast enough to handle the data rates.
For these high data rate applications (around 80MB/s) 1000x CF cards seem to be the best way to go. Having a few 128Gb cards would be an ideal situation as far as capacity is concerned. This would give you about 15 min worth of shooting time per card, which is almost useable on a regular shoot. The downside is of course the price, some of these 128GB cards can set you back over $600.
The more affordable option is to go with a 64GB CF card. This still gives you around 7 min worth of recording time in RAW mode, saves you some money, and from the reports I’ve seen, actually gives you faster write speeds than the 128GB models.
The most well known and most expensive brand on the market is Lexar. At $299 a peace the Lexar x1000 cards are a pretty big hit to the wallet. Even though these cards usually come highly recommended, they are also the cards I see the most complaints about in forums. Everything from failing after only a few uses to ultra slow write speeds. I’m not sure why complaints are so high on Lexar cards but I suspect people who shell out that much cash get pretty vocal when a card like this fails. For the price they at least come with a lifetime warranty and the replacement process is pretty painless.
A less recognized brand, Delkin CF cards are about $60 cheaper than the Lexar cards. While other manufactures with the 1000x logo boast 120MB/s write speeds Delkin only lists 80MB/s. Is that because they are being honest about the cards actual speeds, or like some other brands is it a number that can only be achieved under ideal conditions? Remember the write speeds we’re shooting for are 80MB/s or above.
Dropping down in price another $50, the Transcend 64GB 1000x cards can be had for around $200. Still not what I would call cheap, but they are $100 less than the Lexar offering. I’m a little bias when it comes to Transcend, the 8 400x 32GB cards I’ve been using for the last 2 years have worked without a problem in my 7d as well as my 5d mark III’s. You see the impressive burst rate I get out of the 7d in this video. Like the rest of the cards above, Transcend offers a lifetime warranty and like the rest of the cards the claimed 120MB/s write speed is under ideal conditions.
By far the lowest price 1000x cards on the market come from KomputerBay. At $106 a peace these cards are relatively cheap in comparison to it’s peers. Listed write speeds are 100MB/s and the test I’ve seen put them pretty close to that mark at around 90MB/s in ATTO benchmarks. Until recently I’d never actually heard of the brand and honestly the name KomputerBay doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Unlike the rest of the cards, the Komputerbay 64GB card is missing the VPG standards logo which seems a little shift. However, everything I’ve read about them seems to be positive, is the brand name on the other cards the reason for the higher price or is the Komputerbay card made from substandard materials?
I’m actually going to take a risk on the Komputerbay 64GB and 128GB cards, the price is just too good to pass up. Supposedly they even offer a lifetime warranty, all though I’m not sure how much that means when it’s offered by a brand I’ve never heard of. Hopefully the cards live up to the positive feedback I’ve been seeing. I’ll post some speed tests and more info once I’ve had a chance to get my hands on them.
One other thing to note. If you want to take advantage of the very healthy read speeds these cards have to offer, you might want to upgrade to a USB 3.0 card reader. Generally USB 2.0 card readers will cap you at about 35MB/s, not quite sure why that is when the standard calls for max speeds of around 60MB/s (480Mb/s). Regardless the speed a USB 3.0 card reader provides when transferring files can save you a lot of time.
May 16th, 2013 at 8:50 pm
The price of those cards make the atomos and an SSD or two sound less painful.
May 16th, 2013 at 8:55 pm
No joke. You can buy a 750GB hard drive for the ninja for about $50 or you can spend $300 for 64GB CF card. I’ll be testing out the KomputerBuy cards, but I’ll probably be sticking to my Ninja for most things. Data usage with RAW footage is just too hard to manage on large or even smaller projects. 128GB for 15 min just takes up to much space.
February 13th, 2014 at 7:55 am
Its not as cheap as you make out, yes $50 for a hard drive but you need to drop £579 for the Ninja first!
February 13th, 2014 at 8:30 am
When you can only get 15 min of shooting on a $300, you will likely need at least 2 cards for even the most basic shooting at which point you’ve pretty much paid for a ninja. Though prices in the states on the ninja are much better than europe if you’re paying £579.
February 13th, 2014 at 9:20 am
Yeah, the states is so much cheaper for photography & video, its times like this I wished I lived there! I was thinking about buying 2x 128 Komputer cards (re your other post) which cost £165, I have a full day shoot coming up but am worried it may not be enough memory for shooting 1920×1080 (not RAW on 5D MkII). Think its 11mins for 4GB. Hmmm bugger. Man, this is an expensive business!
February 13th, 2014 at 9:42 am
I was just on a full day shoot last week, with two cameras, we ended up with 320GB worth of footage from 10 hours of work. If I have to shoot interviews all day, that’s when either the ninja or the c100 comes in. With the ninja I can set it to DNxHD 145 or ProRes LT and shoot all day, with the c100 you’ll get 12 hours of recording time out of 2x 64gb cards in it’s native format, either one works great for really long form interviews and you can just leave the camera rolling.
If you have to shoot a lot of stuff, you’re going to need a lot of memory cards.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:38 am
Thanks, that gives me an idea of how much I’ll need. I’m shooting interviews on 5D Mk II. From what I’ve read the Ninja doesn’t work on the 5DMkII. Sorry for the newbie questions, I can’t get around the 4GB limit on the that camera at all, can I? On the 5DMkIII and using the Ninja can you shoot more than the 4GB limit? I guess the only way to make sure there’s no loss in audio when the limit is reached by starting new recordings in natural gaps of less than 11mins (4GB). I know the proper way to do it would be to record sound separately and use 2 cam’s so there’s no gap in the visual and match it all up later but the client just wants the video & audio together with no editing later.
February 15th, 2014 at 8:50 am
I believe you can use file spanning with Magic Lantern installed, but you still lose a handful of frames before ML can start the next recording. The Ninja won’t be useful with the 5dMKII.
February 13th, 2014 at 9:13 am
Its not as cheap as that, yes its only $50 for a hard drive but you need to drop £579 for the Ninja first! I understood from your posts that most of your work was done on CF cards but do you actually use the Ninja most? I’ve got to do a full day shooting interviews. I’m debating using CF cards but obviously the Ninja would be better. Just don’t have the cash for it now though.
May 16th, 2013 at 10:13 pm
Why even bother buying anything just yet….?
Save your money and wait and see if this RAW update even eventuates.
May 16th, 2013 at 10:54 pm
I think the RAW feature has already gotten to the point of usability (40 seconds at a time). Give it a few more weeks and you’ll have audio and proper implementation of controls. In 3 days they’ve gone from discover to 2 seconds of footage and now to almost usable. By the time my cards show up next week, they’ll probably be 2 or 3 more breakthroughs.
May 17th, 2013 at 12:50 am
From what I’ve read in the ML forums, the files are 4 GB per minute, so the 128 GB cards will get you 30 mins of footage, roughly. But I would advise against ordering Komputerbay 128 GB cards as users have reported slower than advertised write speeds while recording RAW. The Komputerbay 64 GB cards are fast enough to get 1080p RAW with no dropped frames, but many are reporting that the Komputerbay 128 GB cards won’t let them get up to 1080p.
May 17th, 2013 at 9:30 am
I thought I read 35 seconds at 1920×1280 in a 4GB file, times go up depending on the output size. Could be wrong though. It seems like scaling down to 80% of 1080P (1536×864) for capture, then upscaling the final output in post would be a reasonable solution to get more recording time and slower data speeds. I don’t think you’d lose much image quality and you’d still have raw files when you were done.
May 17th, 2013 at 9:18 am
Posted from EOSHD:
KomputerBay cards are giving different write speeds from the same 1000x models. My 64GB card is fastest with a sustained write speed of 95MB/s, but my 128GB card is a dog, topping out at 73MB/s – not enough for reliable 1920×1080 raw let alone 1920×1280 for anamorphic. May have to return it to Amazon.
Much more testing needs to be done to find the best cards. The KomputerBay 64GB 1000x has been superb for me, so it is a surprise the 128GB didn’t live up to expectations.
May 17th, 2013 at 9:21 am
I’ll test out the 128GB and post some results. If it doesn’t live up to the speeds I can always send it back.
May 17th, 2013 at 2:40 pm
What about Sandisk Extreme Pro CF cards? (90 or 100 MB/s)
I trust Sandisk over any other brand, haven’t had one crap out on me ever
May 17th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
When ML figures out how (and they will), to get this raw footage out through HDMI ,we will be talking some serious shit…
May 17th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
I thought the HDMI chip couldn’t handle that stream, has there been a change?
May 17th, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Oh yeah, big changes.
My brain went from dumb to dumber.
I didn’t know the HDMI was the limiting factor.
My bad Deejay.
Thanks for the info though.
Dang!
May 18th, 2013 at 7:02 am
I bought the Komputerbay 64GB 1000x cf card from amazon for £82 to test out the RAW video on my mark iii, at the moment everything is working fine, although it not quick enough for 1920×1280 its fine at 1920×1080.
June 1st, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Hi, is there still anyone on DslrNoob ? The last post was on may 16th..Are you gone with the winds ? Give us some news.
June 4th, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Just getting back home today.
September 2nd, 2013 at 12:11 pm
I just came back from a shoot in Jordan with my 5d Mark III and I am noticing alot of artifacts in the footage. I used both 400x and 600x CF Cards and recorded in the 1920×1080 30p All-I mode. The research I did prior to buying the 400x and 600x CF cards indicated that they wold be fast enough to handle the HD data transfer requirements. Was this wrong?
September 2nd, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Your cards will stop in the middle of recording if they aren’t fast enough. More then likely the play back issues are either the play back program you’re using, or your editing computer.
Unless you were recording at something higher then 1/60 shutter speed. That might be the issue.
September 4th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
I am unable retrieve all the files from my Transcend 32 GB UDMA 400x CF card used on Canon 5D Mark II. Can someone help?
September 4th, 2013 at 9:15 pm
Might want to check out this post.