C200: Sandisk CFast 2.0 Price Drop

A

Alexander.M

Active member
Not sure if this is news but I noticed that the Sandisk CFast 2.0 cards dropped in price recently. Last time I checked a Sandisk 512GB CFast 2.0 card was $999 and now it's selling for $699 new.
 
This is great but I can't help thinking that those of us who invested deep in CFast 2.0 are going to get a rude surprise soon. The surprise will be, "Guess what guys, the CFast 2.0 standard is outdated. Your next camera will use XYZ media instead."
Get ready to buy new media and dump our "outdated" and "slow" CFast 2.0 cards. Most of us who have been in the business for a while have already gone through multiple cycles of this with digital media, it NEVER stands still and no matter which
format you shoot to, it will soon be outdated.
 
Just on me alone, I wonder what the grand total spent on roughly 13-14 years of BetacamSP tapes and 7-8 years of DVCPro HD tapes is vs. all of the solid-state media I've bought for my P2 Vari's, C300 and F55...? It's about $5K in P2 cards for the Vari's, couldn't be more than $500-$1,000 for the CF cards for the C300 and maybe $2K for my F55. That's $8K for media for four cameras going back to 2011 and they're all still working. That's not bad. That works out to $1K/year spread out over four cameras. $250/camera/year and it'll just keep going down every year that the camera and media stay in service. I've done tape shoots where we shot over $250 in tape in a single day.

I do completely understand what you're saying, though, Dan. In the tape days the client either provided the tapes or we billed them back at a mark-up, whereas now, media is more or less a fixed cost to the operator. Even as expensive as some media is, I never want to go back to shooting on tape again. One thing to consider is providing a set number of cards per camera, per shoot and if more is needed, it becomes a billable rental item. I believe most rental houses do not include media in their camera rental rates. That wouldn't fly with any of my TV clients, but in the corporate or production world, maybe...
 
I own 15 256 GB Sandisk and Lexar CFast cards at about $650 each, so around $10k of CFast cards. Might need to buy some more soon.

While I like cameras and other equipment being expensive so I can bill the client more for it and thus make more profit, I find it difficult to really bill for media, as it's just expected to come with the camera, so price drops on media are good news to me. I own more media than most people do, and that's because I am able to charge the client (who always has some limit to their budget) more money for my equipment while trying to avoid unnecessary crew such as a DIT/data wrangler (which is more needed when you don't have enough memory to get through the day).

A lot of times people will sell the media with the camera they're selling, so if you consider that new camera means new media and sell the old media off with the old camera, then it's not so bad.
 
puredrifting said:
This is great but I can't help thinking that those of us who invested deep in CFast 2.0 are going to get a rude surprise soon. The surprise will be, "Guess what guys, the CFast 2.0 standard is outdated. Your next camera will use XYZ media instead."
Click to expand...

CFast 2.0 was outdated before Arri started using it in Amira way back when. Upgrade attempts of the underlying standard (SATA) had already been abandoned in favor of PCI Express based technology by the time the Amira hit the market. So it has been clear to everybody and their grandmother that CFast 2.0 would be a one generation memory card standard. So you invest in it accordingly. I always expected that a Canon C300mkIII would use CF Express, but who knows... The limit right now is thermal, not interface standard, so a new card standard won't necessarily improve things a whole lot. BUT I am still in favor on jumping to CF Express now since that's a much more future proof standard with a lot of growth potential.
 
Parrot said:
Canon C300mkIII would use CF Express
Click to expand...

The C200 is the first model in the 3rd generation of Cinema EOS cameras, so I'm assuming Canon is staying with CFast and SD for this new generation.

Also thank Mictlantecuhtli they didn't change the batteries again.

So looks like investment in 2nd gen media and power will (hopefully) pay off when upgrading to 3rd gen.
 
Matt Turner said:
The C200 is the first model in the 3rd generation of Cinema EOS cameras, so I'm assuming Canon is staying with CFast and SD for this new generation.

Also thank Mictlantecuhtli they didn't change the batteries again.

So looks like investment in 2nd gen media and power will (hopefully) pay off when upgrading to 3rd gen.
Click to expand...

This will be interesting. According to the rumor sights though, Canon may not release the C300 MKII until the end of this year or even in 2020 so who knows what'll be going on in media by then?
 
puredrifting said:
... interesting ... rumor ... ?
Click to expand...

CFast 2.0 is fine for the internal 4K raw and 12bit (assume C300MKIII will have 4K 12bit XFAVC), and I assume any 8K would be "modest" (maybe equivalent to the C200 4K non-raw, but 8K, which explains why they went to the effort of making XFAVC support 8 bit), which means CFast 2.0 would probably work as well.

Then the C300 MKIV would have to switch faster media for 8K raw internal.

Armchair pundit.
 
I hope the prices continue to drop across the board (hint hint Egodisk). I just had to quote a client an additional $600 in CFAST card rentals from Lensrentals if they wanted to film their project in RAW (all day interviews x2 cameras). They decided UHD .mp4s would work since there wasn't additional budget for raw.

I've got 1x 512GB card and 3x 256GB card and feel like I still need to get another 512GB card to not feel nervous about running out when getting hired for single cam raw gigs.
 
Pulled the 2TB drive from a T5 and it seems to work fine with a SolidPod.
Recorded 266 minutes of RAW on a C200 yesterday.
It's kind of wild to be able to record more than 4 hours of RAW non stop on a C200.
 
djangosan said:
What is black RTV? Do you mean the cracks on the CFast door?
Click to expand...
It's silicone instant gasket.
So now where the crack in the door is from the cable being there is filled with RTV gasket material.
So water, dust or spray, can't get into the CFAST compartment from the outside.
I used 80044.
It takes about 24 hours to fully cure.
It can take a bit of work to get it off, but I plan on just leaving it on the camera as well as the SolidPod.
I pull the HDD out of the SolidPod and connect it to a computer to offload the files.
 
I keep trying to talk myself into buying the Solidpod, but I have half a dozen 256GB CFast 2.0 cards now, I kind of don't need to shoot hours and hours of CRL anymore it seems, I usually do one or two interviews in a day for a total of about 90 minutes and some b-roll and I have plenty of card to do that. Our paying clients seem terrified of shooting RAW, the transfer times and storage space, they like 150Mbps and it's good enough quality for their needs so my RAW shooting is mainly for my own documentaries now. It's working out well, this was exactly how I thought it would go when I bought the camera, I would shoot MP4/XF-AVC for clients and RAW for my own projects. I have to say, other than the lack of TC i/o clients love the C200. I really wish it had TC i/o. I have thought about buying a couole of the Tentacles but even if I did, it would be one more step for the client to optimize the footage I shot for them with the Tentacle TC software, not going to happen. I usually just request them to have the sound mixer bring a smart slate.
 
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puredrifting said:
I keep trying to talk myself into buying the Solidpod, but I have half a dozen 256GB CFast 2.0 cards now, I kind of don't need to shoot hours and hours of CRL anymore it seems, I usually do one or two interviews in a day for a total of about 90 minutes and some b-roll and I have plenty of card to do that. Our paying clients seem terrified of shooting RAW, the transfer times and storage space, they like 150Mbps and it's good enough quality for their needs so my RAW shooting is mainly for my own documentaries now. It's working out well, this was exactly how I thought it would go when I bought the camera, I would shoot MP4/XF-AVC for clients and RAW for my own projects. I have to say, other than the lack of TC i/o clients love the C200. I really wish it had TC i/o. I have thought about buying a couole of the Tentacles but even if I did, it would be one more step for the client to optimize the footage I shot for them with the Tentacle TC software, not going to happen. I usually just request them to have the sound mixer bring a smart slate.
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It sounds like you have a pretty good setup, as is, for how you shoot.
And you seem to want to only buy gear if it really adds to the way you work.
So I'm trying to talk you out of buying a SolidPod.
Gear is fun.
But is best when it really fits.
 
Stills2HDConvert said:
It sounds like you have a pretty good setup, as is, for how you shoot.
And you seem to want to only buy gear if it really adds to the way you work.
So I'm trying to talk you out of buying a SolidPod.
Gear is fun.
But is best when it really fits.
Click to expand...

Ha, ha! Thank you for not enabling my GAS! Yeah, that too ;-)

I talked myself out of buying a new drone this week. I have the Mavic Pro and like it but the camera/image sucks compared to the Phantom 4 Pro, which is discontinued. We hired a Phantom 4 Pro pilot for our documentary last Summer and the footage looks beautiful compared to my Mavic Pro footage, which at 60Mbps, is just barely usable. B&H had a 12 hour special yesterday on the Phantom 4 Advanced + for $1,049.00! This is like $450.00 off the regular price. The Advanced has the killer camera of the Pro but is just missing 5.8GHz and rear and side sensors, which I don't care about. But then I remembered, I'm not a 107 pilot, am not planning on becoming a 107 pilot and just drone a bit for fun and for my own little films. So if it's not making me money, don't buy it! It was tempting though as that's quite a good deal.

Also talked myself out of buying a new Sigma 150-600 f/5.6-6.3 lens to shoot wildlife/watersports like SUP and surf ski for stock, I really examined how often I will shoot that stuff and it's not often so I am just going to rent it from Lensrentals.com. Also talked myself out of the Aputure 120d MKII for the time being. I have four Chimeras, three Lightstorm LS 1S and two Kamerar Brightcasts. No LED Fresnel but do I really need one right now? Will it make me more money? (no), will it make my job considerably easier? (no). So not doing that. All of my consumer debt, other than my mortgages, is paid off. Just bought a used car cash. So this money goes to my 401k instead, a much better investment.

Practicing what I preach, if it doesn't make you money, or make you money indirectly by making your job much easier, clients happier (which could make you more money by locking them into you and not competitors) or make your job much more efficient, don't buy it. Please fellow production people, invest your money into real estate, paying off consumer debt and retirement! These should be your 2019 goals.
 
puredrifting said:
Ha, ha! Thank you for not enabling my GAS! Yeah, that too ;-)

I talked myself out of buying a new drone this week. I have the Mavic Pro and like it but the camera/image sucks compared to the Phantom 4 Pro, which is discontinued. We hired a Phantom 4 Pro pilot for our documentary last Summer and the footage looks beautiful compared to my Mavic Pro footage, which at 60Mbps, is just barely usable. B&H had a 12 hour special yesterday on the Phantom 4 Advanced + for $1,049.00! This is like $450.00 off the regular price. The Advanced has the killer camera of the Pro but is just missing 5.8GHz and rear and side sensors, which I don't care about. But then I remembered, I'm not a 107 pilot, am not planning on becoming a 107 pilot and just drone a bit for fun and for my own little films. So if it's not making me money, don't buy it! It was tempting though as that's quite a good deal.

Also talked myself out of buying a new Sigma 150-600 f/5.6-6.3 lens to shoot wildlife/watersports like SUP and surf ski for stock, I really examined how often I will shoot that stuff and it's not often so I am just going to rent it from Lensrentals.com. Also talked myself out of the Aputure 120d MKII for the time being. I have four Chimeras, three Lightstorm LS 1S and two Kamerar Brightcasts. No LED Fresnel but do I really need one right now? Will it make me more money? (no), will it make my job considerably easier? (no). So not doing that. All of my consumer debt, other than my mortgages, is paid off. Just bought a used car cash. So this money goes to my 401k instead, a much better investment.

Practicing what I preach, if it doesn't make you money, or make you money indirectly by making your job much easier, clients happier (which could make you more money by locking them into you and not competitors) or make your job much more efficient, don't buy it. Please fellow production people, invest your money into real estate, paying off consumer debt and retirement! These should be your 2019 goals.
Click to expand...

Great advice!

I just bought a light kit (based on Aputure 120D IIs). Spent $2k or so for the kit, but my previous light kit sucked (it was old) and I just signed a big job doing oral history interviews, so it'll more than pay for itself by the end of February. That's really the only big "gear purchase" I have planned at all this year and it feels pretty good.

BTW, I'd much rather have a Mavic 2 Pro than a P4 Advanced at this point. Higher bitrates and foldable chassis. Best of both worlds.
 
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