Will this card work with the 7d?

[Lucian]

This is a Sandisk Extreme III 8gigs. 30mb/s. Not sure if its UDMA, will it work for the 7d video?
http://www.jr.com/sandisk/pe/SAD_SDC...ductTabDetails

[Michael Olsen]

According to the Canon manual, any card that is 133x and faster should work, regardless of UDMA.

According to a Canon representative, the cameras "may" have some function that reads the speed of the CF cards and adjusts footage to a poorer quality, introducing artifacts, if they aren't UDMA. (IMHO, this mysterious principle hasn't been explained well enough for me to buy it. And it doesn't help that Canon appears to officially have no firm idea as to whether this really happens or, if it does, how it does.)

According to Stu M. from ProLost, UDMA cards give the best results.

According to Cinema 5D thread, some of the artifacts people are experiencing (freezing frames, etc) are due to the use of Automatic Exposure, which you will probably want off 99.9% of the time.

According to a small sample (N= ~12) of random folks, professionals and otherwise, the 133x speed cards seem to work just fine.

My personal opinion? Your card should work just fine. When you get the camera, test it rigorously. Make it angry - deep DOF shots of complex imagery with camera movements. If for some reason your find your tests show some unusual problems (frames dropped, banding artifacts, etc) consider purchasing a UDMA card to test.

I sincerely hope someone can figure out a conclusive and experimental explanation about this phenomenon.

[Boz]

Great reply, Michael! I originally ordered and received the Extreme III cards for 7D. I heard enough "there could be problems" with non-UDMA cards that I'm planning to return them. However, I've since read this on the SanDisk site that says Extreme III cards are UDMA enabled...

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/262

So, now I'm a bit confused as to what to do.

[Tracey Lee]

I've used that card. Stay away from it. Get a UDMA card. you can get a 16GB UDMA for about $125...I am sure you can find them for less as well.

[Stephen Mick]

I just shot a whole mess of clips with a 7D to the 32GB San Disk Extreme III and didn't have a single problem, including a full-on 12-minute 1080/24p clip. Bit-rate stayed a constant 46.30 the entire clip.

[Boz]

Ugh. I've done more research on the San Disk Extreme III's. SanDisk really sucks when it comes to their branding. Apparently there are TWO versions of the Extreme III cards - an older 20MB/s version, and a newer 30 MB/s version. The newer 30 MB/s version supports UDMA while the older version does not. With this in mind I'm going to hope for the best and hold on to my Extreme III cards for now.