Product Survey: Compact Flash Cards

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Compact Flash cards aren't beaten yet! They're still round and, and are used in both SLR and bridge cameras. Let's see how the latest cards stack up ...

Pierre-Jean Alzieu
Published: February 04, 2010

Our Tests

The test procedure is similar to the one used for memory card readers. To reach the maximum speeds quoted by the manufacturers, we have to leave USB behind and use a FireWire memory card reader. That's why we swapped our Transcend Multi-Card Reader for a SanDisk Extreme FireWire 800. We test every card with three types of file:

• small spreadsheets: 100 KB each
• large files: 256 MB each
• photos: 2 to 5 MB
We note the time of transfer in writing and in reading in order to give a value expressed in MB/s.

Afterwards comes a pratical test on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II digial SLR. We use it in burst mode and see how long it takes to save ten shots to the memory card using the RAW + JPEG format.

Last time we looked at Compact Flash memory cards, we thought they were going out of fashion with ordinary consumers. But although they're not as popular as SD/SDHC cards, some digital SLRs and even a few bridge cameras have remained faithful.

Storage capacity on the CF format is still a little bit ahead of SDHC, with 64 GB cards in the shops and the first 128 GB cards around the corner. Speeds are also climbing, with some cards recently reaching a maximum of 600x. Because 1x represents a speed of 150 KB/s, these cards can in theory reach a maximum of 600 x 150 = 90 000 KB/s, or a bitrate of up to 90 MB/s.

Don't always trust the label

As ever though, it's important to not put too much trust in the manufacturer's quoted speeds. A 266x card won't necessarily be twice as fast as a 133x card. Even more confusingly, some 266x cards are faster than those advertised as being 300x. It's enough to make choosing the right memory card something of a minefield.