Comments on: PhotoFast CF and SD Cards Review

By: Julia

Julia — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 13:06:34 +0000

I wanted to let you know why someone might want as fast as possible transfer speeds. I do because I’m shooting a documentary and gonna use DSLR for interviews and B-Roll. I am buying what I can afford in terms of cards (2) to start but want to be sure that if I need to dump one during an interview it will go fast.

By: fiathriel

fiathriel — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 04:58:47 +0000

I have a 5D MK II and I’m using two of the 366X 32GB cards quite regularly over the last 4 months, so far so good, I shot 2500 photos over a 5 day period a few weeks ago and no problems at all.

Although, I format my card in the camera each time before I start shooting and I backup to a laptop straight away just in case.

If I have any problems with them I’ll come back here and write again!

fiathriel

By: Yang

Yang — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:38:21 +0000

DVNation suck. I ordered a Photofast SSD Micro-PATA for $399 and it was DOA. Sent it back and was told that it will be replace in a couple of weeks. I followed up with Jason, and my drive was just sitting there for two weeks not knowing who that drive belong too. Please don’t order anything from DVNation. Jason is terrible. PhotoFast company is in Taiwan and if you need to replace because your device is DOA, you need to wait for weeks or if not months. Just want to share with you about these two companies. Bad bad bad….

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:31:56 +0000

@Bob Jensen: You really don’t need 40mb/s for HD video on the 5Dm2, anything over 10MB/s is good enough. I use Transcend 32GB 133X (10.7MB/s) for that purpose and it works great. If your videos are choppy, maybe your exposure is set too slow? Go outside/daylight with fully auto video and try your 533X card again. Still choppy? Go to Rob Galbraith’s benchmark page and look for any card greater than 10MB/s. Your Kingston 133X might not meet the minimum 10MB/s though.

The real need for faster cards is sport photo shooting. It’s no fun with a slow card like the 133X. I will hit buffer wall so damn often. So I’ll be buying some of those PF 16GB 533X.

And of course, card read speed is a big plus when downloading your shots.

By: Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:43:56 +0000

I have a Canon 5D MK2 and was told that I need 40mb/s write speed (about 300X) to get smooth HD video with the camera. My agent has a 300X card and it works great. Anything less than that produces a “choppy” movie. Per various recommendations, I bought the new 32gb CF Photoflash card (533x). I just shot video with it in my 5D MK2 and the movies are extremely choppy. The movie is worse than using a Kingston 133x card! Either this card does not write at the speed advertised or something else is going on? Any ideas? Thanks.

By: Pratap

Pratap — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:19:04 +0000

I ended up buying a Photofast 8GB 533x Plus CF from ebay because DVNation wouldn’t reply to my pre-sales questions via email. I paid a little more, but what the heck – bad customer service means no business.

By: ossme

ossme — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:58:28 +0000

( I wish I can edit or replay to my posts). Anyway, you can buy it from DVnation for as little as $99 for the OEM version.

By: ossme

ossme — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:55:59 +0000

Forgit it, after reading Rob’s review of the card and reading the new prices in amazon, I found out that this card eats the sandisk alive in terms of speed. I don’t know about the reliability though. I always bought sandisk and they never fail me, specially in bad weather conditions.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:50:58 +0000

@ossme – I disagree.

Although I haven’t personally tested the new SanDisk cards, take another look at the Rob Galbraith link above. The 533x Plus model exceeds the performance of the SanDisk Extreme Pro cards in the 5D Mark II according to Rob’s tests. Even the standard 533x cards are pretty close to the Extreme Pro performance in several of his tests (and better in some). We’re talking about minute differences in speed between the PhotoFast 533x Plus and SanDisk Extreme Pro cards but, based on Rob’s numbers, I think they are on pretty even footing in terms of real world performance. At that point, price and brand name become the big questions for you to answer.

By: ossme

ossme — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:49:24 +0000

seems good, but one note is that these cards are equivelent to Sandisk extreme and not the extreme pro. the sandisk extreme 16GB cards can be purchased for as little as $110 if you don’t the OEM look with no packaging.