I’ve been vocally recommending that people interested in shooting video with the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, and upcoming Canon 1D Mark IV, use UDMA, or “Extreme IV” Compact Flash (CF) cards. This was based on some hard-won personal experience — I had two nasty drop-outs (in the form of held frames) when I shot Chapter 12: After the Subway to Extreme III CF cards.
Since then I’ve gotten many replies and comments from people shooting with the far less-expensive Extreme III and 133x cards without incident.
Here’s one such response, from Will Backer, reprinted here with his permission:
Hey Stu,
First off, thanks so much for your continued support of the indie rebel community — I’m a big fan.
I wanted to just drop you a quick recommendation regarding the flash cards you use and recommend for shooting video on the 5Dmkii and the 7D.
I haven’t shot on the 7D, which I realize has a slightly higher data rate, but I have shot 8 commercials (about 20 hours of raw footage) on the 5D with the Kingston Elite Pro 32 GB 133x cards (about $75 each), and I have not had any issues whatsoever with speed or data security.
I see that you’re still recommending the 8GB Extreme IV’s, which are 1/4 the size and more expensive than the Kingston 133x 32GBs. I know you moved to these faster cards after losing data on the Extreme IIIs — which makes sense, but it seems the word around the net is the the Extreme III just didn’t play well with the 5Dmkii, and it isn’t necessarily a speed issue.
I bought 2 of the Kingston’s because I found people on cinema 5d successfully using them and I needed to shoot a lot in the field. I’ve since noticed that Phillip Bloom and others use and recommend these cards as well.
Obviously it’s better safe than sorry when it comes to quality media, but the price difference is so huge that you may wanna give slower cards a try. At least these Kingstons seem to work perfectly and offer a four-fold gain in storage capacity for your dollar.
Cheers,
-Will
Thanks Will. I’m cautiously changing my recommended cards on the 7D Cine store page and I’ll let you know if I have any issues with the Kingston card I just ordered!
This topic just doesn’t want to die. This came in from reader Sigismund S. Pikul. Conclusions? Some folks have great luck with the Kingstons, some not so much. One thing’s for sure—I’ve never had any problems with my UDMA cards.
Hey stu, i love your blog and have been following it for about a year now, I just wanted to point out my recent experiences with the Kingston 133x (32gb) card that you’ve put on the recommended list.
I picked it up a few weeks ago and already i’ve missed a few great shots due to the buffer filling and the card becoming busy. the most aggravating of which was this last weekend when I was in california shooting a concert film, with my card only about half full it got into a really nasty groove of only recording about half a second before the card would stall out, once it gets in that mood it usually takes a few MINUTES before the card starts acting normally again.
as a result, my camera angle missed a whole song, this wasn’t the first time its disappointed me, but it most certainly was the worst. it usually happens when I’ve been shooting for an extended period of time, which unfortunately is, well, how most of my shooting is.
i’m kicking myself in the pants for mis-placing my 8gb SanDisk 60mb/s UDMA card right now
keep up the great work!