This card is speedy enough for my tastes. Shooting w/ my Nikon D70s in burst mode: I can record 3fps (frames per second) in raw for the first four shots and average 1.5 sec between shots thereafter (by comparison, my extreme IV 2 GB card gets 5 shots off at 3fps and averages 1.0 sec between additional shots). If I shoot with the transcend card in the maximum jpeg setting the results are even better: 3fps for the first 11 shots and 0.9 sec between shots thereafter.
I was able to read 786mb off the card in 48sec (51sec with extreme IV) using my sandisk extreme usb reader. Writing 786mb to the card from my computer (which I never do) was, however, slow: 105sec compared to 57sec with extreme IV. Transcend 8 GB 133x CompactFlash Memory Card TS8GCF133
First, I am not an expert on compact flash cards. However, I use them in my photogrpahic equipment, such as a Nikon D300. I normally use the SanDisk Extreme III CF. I am concerned with two time measurements. The first is how long the CF card takes to record the image after I press the shutter release. The second is how long it takes to download the contents of my CF card to my computer using a card reader.
I bought the Transcend because the record times appear to be very similar to the SanDisk, and I thought I could save some money. The Trascend was less than half of the price.
The Transcend has great recording times. No complaints there. But to download data from the Transcend to my computer using a card reader takes about 8 - 10 x as long as the SanDisk. I don't know why, nor do I really care.
If money is the driving factor in your purchase, and you don't care about download times, then buy the Transcend. If time is money or if you can't wait 45 - 60 minutes to download 4 GB of data from the disk to your computer via a card reader, buy the SanDisk.
I use this compact flash card with the Canon 20D. I picked this particular brand because of its price. It's frustrating to pay top dollar for new technology only to have something faster and large storage capacity come out at a cheaper price is a relatively short time.
The Transcend 4GB card didn't disappoint. I tried it just a few days after receiving it at a track and field event at the local high school. The amount of photos this card will hold will depend upon your camera settings and on the ISO level you set your camera to. (The lower the ISO or light sensitivity setting the smaller the file size.)
The card performed well and one must remember that card speed is only half of the equation. Your camera's internal buffer also plays a role. I had been using an 80x speed card and this particular card I'm reviewing is a 133x speed. I didn't notice that much of a difference in terms of writing time to my card while using the shutter and I think I was faced with a buffer issue. I was taking continous shots of hurdle jumpers and long jumpers and taking as many photos per second as the camera could handle. It was nice having a large card to handle all the photos and not have to worrying about swapping cards.
I think this card is a terrific deal and I think I will get another!
This card is not 133x (Class 20). It is Class 4 at best. Now I see how they can sell it so cheap.
I suspected something was wrong at first when I was recording paltry 640x480 video on my Canon 5D.. This is a 2MB/s task.. I got the little 'buffer filling' warning on the right hand side of the display, indicating the card was not keeping up with the bit stream! What the heck!? This is ridiculous for x480. A good rule of thumb for compressed video is 2Mb/s for 480P, 4Mb/s for 720P, 8Mb/s for 1080P. Find those numbers any number of places. 133x should give me 20MB/s+
So, sick that I had just wasted my money, I plugged the CF to my PC and ran CrystalDiskMark with a 50MB file size, representative of a RAW+JPEG write. To my shock and horror, the card is a CLASS 4! (26x). Ran it again simulating a video stream, same result. Now I understood why the card could not keep up with my Canon DSLR.
I posted the picture proof in the 'customer images' go check it out. If you have an older camera or only need x480 this card would work; but will you patronize a company that lies to you?
Unfortunately, shipping is more than the cost of the card; I'll keep this as an emergency backup for when I forget my quality card.
This card surprised me. I expected it to be considerably slower than my Sandisk Ultra II cards. But once I got a high speed card reader that let me access the full performance of the cards I found that it's actually considerably faster for reading, and only fractionally slower for writing.
I get between 5-7 megabytes per second in my write speed tests, which is roughly on par with what I get from my Ultra II cards. But in read performance I got speeds of almost 30 megabytes a second. Compared to around 10 for the Ultra II.
I should specify that this was with a UDMA capable card reader, the Lexar Pro UDMA reader, among the fastest USB 2.0 card readers out there. Performance on gear that isn't UDMA compatible may be different.
There certainly are faster cards out there, if you're willing to pay for them. For comparison, a fast enough camera can achieve three times the write speed of this card with a card that costs around $85 for an 8 gigabyte model. But you need to ask yourself if you both need that kind of speed and have gear capable of utilizing it.
If you're not in the habit of routinely filling the buffer of your camera, if you don't find yourself constantly having to wait for your camera to write enough data to the card for you to be able to take just one more picture, and you're not currently using high end, high speed cards, this is a card to consider.
Four stars out of consideration for the price/performance and capacity ratio. It's not the fastest card out there, but for the price it offers performance and capacity that's hard to beat. - Compactflash - 8gb - Cf Card - 133x'
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