C200: Canon C200 - CFast to SSD for RAW Recording!
- Thread starter Armando Ferreira
- Start date
puredrifting
Major Contributor
To me, .58 per GB is cheap. There are a few DVXUsers who have used these with the C200 with good results
https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Powe....0&qid=1579271357&sprefix=Cfas,aps,192&sr=8-3
Thanks for the link... I think if you look at the purchase of media perhaps as a utility ($1000 for a days footage) it’s an easier pill to swallow, Eg Zacuto EVF $1450, Shoulder Rig $1000, RAW media $1000
QuickHitRecord
Veteran
I bought my C200 within the last year and was initially going to go the CFast route too. The problem was that while 256GB CFast cards are readily available, 512GB cards that work reliably with the C200 are few and far between. For some reason, the camera is very fussy about that card capacity. SanDisk and ProGrade were supposedly the most stable but in my research even those cards had instances of file corruption so I ultimately went with the SolidPod.
I've used FreeTail EVOKE 512GB CFast cards in my C200 without issue filling them until full several times before I put them in service. They're around $300 for a 512GB card. I have two of them currently in service for when I need longer record times in CRL. Otherwise I use the pile of 256GB cards I have laying around (ProGrade, EVOKE, SiliconPower... all work flawlessly and have been for almost a year). I haven't tried the SiliconPower 512GBs, but I may give it a shot at some point and will report back in this forum like I did with the 256s.
I really don't like cable-connected recording media... and I'm not about to start smearing black RTV silicone on my $7000 camera just so I can get slightly cheaper media.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Bought half a dozen of the Ego Disk 256GB cards when we started our docuseries two years ago. They've been bulletproof for two years, they continue to be bulletproof.
I have refused to potentially jinx that reliability with any 512GB cards, I've read the same complaints from users of various 512GB cards.
Changing cards every 34 minute really isn't that big of a deal when a good portion of your career was with 10 minute film mags!
I did the same thing, and today I had my first 256 EgoDisk card fail. Now I'm feeling nervous about all my other EgoDisk cards and their age. They all hit the 2 year mark in December. So far, they've all been fantastic. But I've always wondered if eventually, I was going to suffer any consequences for buying budget CFast cards. When those cards first showed up, Egodisk wasn't really a known brand. Perhaps the consequences are now showing up in the form of card longevity. I hope that card failure was an anomaly.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
A smart thing for both of use would be to begin acquiring other CFast cards, like one per month and eventually rotating the older cards out. I believe the memory used does have a life span and at two years, depending on how much you've used them,
you may have utilized that life. They are cheap enough now where to buy one every month or two won't break you and you'll have new fresh cards.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Wish we had a memory life meter in the cameras that would alert us. I am using softRAID on my RAIDs and one of the best features is, when you boot a RAID, it will pinpoint if a drive has an increased chance of failing. It gives you time to move media and replace drives BEFORE they fail. Genius.
Just one more feature that would actually make our lives as shooters better that will probably never happen because we need more resolution and bigger imagers, not to actually have an idea about when our media might fail. Our industry just doesn't get it.
Just one more feature that would actually make our lives as shooters better that will probably never happen because we need more resolution and bigger imagers, not to actually have an idea about when our media might fail. Our industry just doesn't get it.
NorBro
Major Contributor
That's the 47th time this week.
So you're saying you don't like more resolution and big sensors?
Jaime Valles
Veteran
Honestly, all they have to do is allow recording to two cards simultaneously. This is all the safety one needs. I thought it was a major mistake for the C200 to only have one CFast card slot. It's arguably the main reason I didn't purchase it.*
I still don't understand why the RED and Arri cameras only have one card slot. Media dies, far more frequently than people think. It seems like such a simple solution to have two slots for dual recording, but I suppose if it's good enough for Roger Deakins...
* I know it has two SD card slots, but I'm not interested in the C200 for 8 Bit 4:2:0.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
It's 52, but who's counting? ;-)
I wouldn't mind the pointless stuff if it wasn't at the cost of the stuff we need. I was at a concert the other night and one of the band members pulled up to the club in his immaculately restored white 1959 Cadillac, the one with the HUGEST tail fins before tail fins went out. 6k/8k and FF are huge tail fins.
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puredrifting
Major Contributor
Our Fuji X-T3 has dual card slots but can only record to both cards when shooting stills. That bummed me out when I bought it. I think dual recording might have something to do with more heat generation/management and needing more processing power from the camera,
but someone far more geeky than me like JCS could tell us for sure. I too wish the C200 had the dual CFast but after two years of heavy use, haven't needed it once for CRL. Funny enough did one shoot on XF-AVC though dual recording and one of the cards went bad during the shoot, gulp!
Dual slot recording saved our bacon.
ARRI mags have a redundancy/RAID built in. So do Panasonic P2 cards, as per Mitch.
Reds I don't know much about ... haven't been up on my court documents, what with the impeachment and all.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
As one of the earliest P2 adopters with the first HVX200s, P2 internal card redundancy did not always work. We sent three cards back not to Panasonic LA, they sent them to Japan to figure out why we lost media, the P2 format was/is far from bulletproof.
We shot a TV pilot for Image Entertainment with three HVX200s and a mountain of 8GB P2 cards because they didn't yet have the larger cards and generally, they worked well but we lost a card worth of media and on two subsequent shoots, we completely lost all media and
Panasonic couldn't tell us why it happened and they couldn't rescue any of the media.
Ahh, here we go, 14 years ago. Damn pilot was never picked up but it was fun to shoot. I don't trust any media period, maybe Codex has the best track record?
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/tv_pilot_hvx_200_brockett.html