Sandisk 32GB? and other flash card/battery recommendations?

O

Omar67

Active member
Hello,

I just purchased a Canon 7D (love the camera BTW - been a HVX200 user for years and love the crazy DOF on the camera)

My question is for the accesories - I need to puchase batteries, flashcards for a camera that really is only being used as a camera to shoot features and short films (not documentaries etc.). I would like to have lots of battery life and great recording time but NOT spend an arm and a leg doing so.

Has anyone used the SanDisk 32GB flash card that goes 60mb/sec? How does it compare to the SanDisk IV 16GB 45MB/s. Are there other flash cards just as good

Batteries? Has anyone tried any of the knock off batteries or battery grips? Are there any good ones out there, besides the authorized Canon ones?

Thanx,
Omar
 
Flashcards

Before we get into this...Please understand that mb/s and MB/s are very different things. mb means "megabit". MB means megabyte. There are eight bits in one byte, so 1 MB is eight times larger than 1 mb. Using them interchangeable can, has, and does cause a great deal of confusion.

The Canon manual says on page 149: "When shooting movies, use a large-capacity card having a read/write speed of at least 8MB/sec."

That is really not very fast at all! Virtually any CF card you buy off the shelf should exceed that spec.

I and many others believe, however, that there should be a little bit of room for overhead - often times a card that claims to write at 45MB/s only write at 40MB/s, for instance. So I believe it is definitely wise to use something faster than 8MB/s.

I personally use a Kingston Elite Pro 32GB 133x card which writes at 20MB/s. That's more than twice as fast as the fastest the camera can put out information - at least according to Canon (and who should no better?). I've never experienced any problems with it in terms of dropped frames.

However (dun dun dunnn...) a Canon employee did issue a statement that people should use UDMA cards to avoid various artifacts. I believe, at the time, some people were having trouble with stuttering, excessive chroma aliasing, and dropped frames, etc on the 5D Mark II. Unfortunately, I have yet to understand how exactly that works. In my mind if the camera is really outputting at a maximum of 8MB/s, then anything that actually writes at over 8MB/s should be sufficient to record it. Canon has never come forward and explained this in any technical capacity, nor have they publicly stated that the camera outputs at anything higher than 8MB/s. And, at least for me, that is the case. No dropped frames, no unexpected aliasing, no unusual stuttering.

Others, however, take that warning very seriously with or without a more in depth explanation of what's actually going on. These individuals would definitely say to grab the fastest thing you buy. After all, it certainly won't hurt you and can make your offloads a lot more pleasant. In my opinion, anything over 133x buys peace of mind.

Batteries

I have spoken to a few people who use third party batteries. Here are the problems.

1) They are "dumb" - they don't tell you how much charge remains. So in order to avoid your camera cutting out during the one good take of the day, you simply have to keep tabs on how long the battery has been running.

2) Which wouldn't be a problem if they were consistent. Reports I've heard have shown the batteries to vary significantly in how long they last in the camera.

3) You need to use the third-party chargers.

I haven't heard anything terrible (it blew up and ruined my camera, then killed by dog and slashed my tires) nor have I heard anything great. I know a few people who keep them on hand as backups for their backups.

I haven't heard anything at all about the battery grips.

Hope that helps!
 
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I tried a third party battery and it didn't work at all.

I also use the Kingston 32GB Card with no problems.
 
I have a third-party battery in addition to the authorized Canon one. Other than the lack of feedback on remaining batter power, it functions perfectly fine...so far. ;)

But it was a fraction of the price. I could buy 3 of these for the price of one Canon battery.
 
why do these cameras use stinky flashcards? I already ahve a nice stock of SD cards, AND my laptop takes SD and not Flashcards!?

BOOOOOOOURRRNNNNS!
 
I used 133x cards a bunch of times, they work, but keep in mind the offloading time is annoyingly slow compared to something like a P2 card. I've been using Sandisk 400x cards (UDMA 60MB/sec) and the offload speed is around that of a P2 card when using the Lexar firewire 800 reader. If you're using the 7D in a serious production environment, get the faster cards...
 
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