After 2 months of wait, I finally received my 32GB 600x from Duracell/Dane-Elec, and the wait was worth it, though I needed even a bit more patience to get it to work with my 7D. Here my experience with the cardridge in my camera.After unpacking, I could not wait to put the card into the 7D which features the latest 1.2.3 firmware. Even so, the card was not recognized at all first, and could not even be formatted in the camera. I then hard-formatted it through my external card reader (a Sandisk ImageMate All-In-One 34MB/s), as FAT32/32KB block size (probably any other size would have worked).
After this painstakingly-long process that took around 15 minutes (who knows, maybe a quick format would have done the job as well), I loaded the card back into my 7D, and it worked right away. To make sure to get proper performance (correct block size etc.), I formatted the card again in-camera now, as typical a 5 second affair. Not bad for a 32GB card, aye?
Now I was ready to start some burst-shooting tests (similar to Rob Galbraith's tests, even though less scientific, measuring multiple times write durations on bursts of photos until the red light on the camera went out). Here's what I found:
31 MB/sec write on my 7D (or a "210x equivalent"). That's a lot. Even the fastest CF tested so far on Rob's site, a Lexar Pro 600x, reaches not more than 53 MB/sec (about a 350x equivalent) in write speed, not 90MB/s (600x) due to the camera's natural delays in writing to any card inserted, and that's for the fastest I found so far for any camera-CF combo tested on that site yet. About 60% of that performance for 20% of the price, not bad! And the low-price competition is not even close (my other "133x" to "533x" standard cards crank out around 9-11MB/s write on-camera, and I won't name names, right, Kingston, A-Data and others).
How 31MB/s feels in a 7D when shooting RAWs: Instead of suddenly grinding to an almost-halt at 16 frames, now the camera cranked out 20 RAW frames (8/s) before even slowing down at all, then slowing down to maybe half of that for a few more frames, finally settling at a regular rhythm of about 2 quickly following frames about every 1.3 seconds until I finally stopped holding the trigger down (which was at about 15s, or 46(!) frames later). It took another 15 seconds more until the whole full buffer was emptied completely. In those total 30 seconds, the average write speed to card was 31 MB/s as mentioned. Quite impressive.
What was even more impressive was that after I had repeated the experiment a few times with almost identical results and when I started testing responsiveness during the "past-write" cycle, none of the typical and so nerving issues with my slower cards occurred (sometimes a few seconds without a shot, irregular delays in storing the pictures, etc). Instead, I was able to fire shots with the remaining opening up buffer size at full speed at any time while the camera was writing to the card as long as some buffer space had just opened up. Clearly, this is a UDMA-6 combo close to its best.
Why is that important for me ? I photograph a lot of moving animals such as birds in flight, and even with a camera like a 7D, one runs out of consecutively RAW frames quickly if the card is not fast enough. A hunting birds don't wait for its pray until my camera buffer finishes writing, though ;-)... they simply fly away, and eat. Any bit of improvement here is worth it and can freeze that magic shot in the end.
Subjectively, in long RAW bursts, the camera feels twice as fast/responsive as with my other non-UDMA6 cards (probably, with a lexar 600x it would be 3x, I assume).
How reads perform: Due to my "limited" 34MB reader I was not able to test out the card, but I got the reader close to its limit. So I would not be surprised if Duracell's promise of 90MB/s holds under ideal conditions (hey, those lexar expresscard/firewire readers seem to get pretty close to that). Maybe some of you write reviews on read speeds with this card in your faster readers.
Is the Duracell the "top racing card" on the planet? Certainly not. According to Rob Galbraith's site, the $250-$300 600x Lexar Pro and Sandisk Pro 90MB crank out around 44-53MB/s on a 7D, and even the Transcend 600x (yellow) for $170 street may get 41 with some wind in the back. But I found the Duracell the by far cheapest super-fast UDMA-6 card I found. If one gets a hold on one. Just ordered a second one to make sure I won't run out of cards... :-)
UPDATE 03-12-2011: I have just received my second cardridge yesterday, after maybe only 2 weeks of wait since backorder. The card was usable in my 7D right away so that no extra formatting outside the camera was needed. The speed was tested the same as the first cardridge which by now has endured about 6000 shots without issues. As of now, I in my 7D I only use the two duracells and have retired all my other, older cards to "400D-2nd body and emergency capacity duty".
I have notified both Duracell and Amazon of the bad card and poor test results.
BTW, I have no idea why the card is labeled USB 2. That makes no sense. First the cards do not know the protocol the reader is using towards the computer. It could USB 2, USB 3, FW 800...etc. Second, how can you see 600x performance (range of 90MB/s) if the reader is connected via USB 2 (20MB/S), FW 800..etc..? For 600x performance you need USB 3 transport.
Buy Duracell High Speed 32 GB 600X USB 2.0 Compact Flash Card Card UDMA DU-CF6032G-C Now
I did not think that I was able to buy the CompactFlash card equipped with the SLC flash memory by this price.There is no stress though it used with D700 of Nikon.
And, there was no inferiority compared with my 400x CompactFlash card.
When the speeds in the card reader were compared, it was far more high-speed than my 400x CompactFlash, and the velocity lowering at the random access was less by way of experiment.
I was convinced that this CompactFlash was one of the best choices.
Current consumption might be somewhat large as the anxiety point.
It is because the surface felt that it is warm a little when I use this CompactFlash after the reason repeatedly does the rate test.
Test Data
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64(Test size = 100MB(x5)
Card reader model:LOAS CRW-37M51
Duracell DU-CF6032G-C
Sequential Read : 81.184 MB/s
Sequential Write : 60.185 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 66.832 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 15.553 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.370 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.518 MB/s
Case of Transcend TS32GCF400
Sequential Read : 66.146 MB/s
Sequential Write : 34.867 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 57.585 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 6.708 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 4.628 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.078 MB/sVideo on this card was good, ran all the way to the 4gb mark and having shot 7 burst of video, card performed well. Read speed is slower than my 16gb transcend 600x card but that was to be expected for this size of a card. No errors so far, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. On the packaging, card is made by Dane Electric so not a fly by night company but not exactly known for stellar speed and performance either. If you want faster more reliable, by the top end Sandisk or Lexar product, otherwise this will do fine against the Kingston and Transcend cards out there.
Want Duracell High Speed 32 GB 600X USB 2.0 Compact Flash Card Card UDMA DU-CF6032G-C Discount?
When I see 600x speed, that's what I expect. That is NOT what the Duracell 600x brought to my table!. I have a Transcend 32 gig 400x and it smokes it. I bought 4 of the Duracell and have opened 2 that are equally unexceptably slow! I saved 10 bucks each in price by going with these instead of Transcend but took a hit on performance. I shoot HD video and can not afford something this small to screw up a big project. Buy Transcend or Sandisk! They have proven their performance. Duracell just proved to me they don't hold up. Transfer speed is a little faster than molasses on a cold winter day! That was a $264.00 mistake! OUCH Duracell!Save 52% Off
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