questions for 5D Mark II owners

[chocchip]

I'm about to invest in a 5d mark II and was trying to figure out what size CF cards I should purchase with it. At 200 iso, shooting the highest raw setting, how many images will a 16GB card hold? What write speed would you recommend not going below? What are your observations with the burst rate before the buffer starts to lag with the cards that you use? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

(This isn't for sports, but periodic wildlife photography.)

[Tom]

If you have the noise reduction set to strong, you get a burst of 5 frames.

I use 300x and 400x cards in my camera.

At ISO 200 and whatnot... no clue. But yesterday, I took 1037 pictures in the large RAW setting and it took up 24.5 GIGs. The RAW files seem to vary between 22-30MB each.

For wildlife, I am not sure I wouldn't want the 7D for the superior AF system, unless you really think you will be shooting 6400+ ISO all the time.

[peeker]

8gb card holds 297
16gb card holds 575

I use multiple 8gb cards for events so I don't have a ton of photos on one card. I use the 16gb card for video clips as it takes a ton.

[chocchip]

Scott, I agree, I'll probably won't put all my eggs in one basket with a single 16 GB card and instead opt for several 8 GB's.

Thomas, most of my travels have concentrated on landscape so I've been craving a full frame body for quite some time. Wildlife is my favorite subject, but it seems as though I end up shooting in dimly lit areas like under forest canopies or on overcast/rainy days so clean higher ISO exposures (1600+) are now a consideration for me too. Keeping in mind the full frame desire plus the need for good high ISO performance (and slightly better weather sealing), I think the 5d will meet my needs. I was curious about the burst rate in case I encounter a whale breaching, elk sparring, or a bird of prey grabbing a fish, etc.

Thank you both for your tips.

[zeroendless]

If your main objective is landscape, that's fine.

Having used 5D mark II for wildlife and bird, i would suggest 7D instead. The buffer can hold about ~12 Raw files but there's not the issue here. U are likely to miss most of the rare encounters when unexpected events you mentioned above happened, hey, even the action-pack camera can miss those shots easy. On turtle-speed 5d mark ii, the 3.9fps rating feels more like 3fps and the shutter lag doesn't help much, i missed too much of that and eventually stop birding until the Mark IV arrived.

For CF cards choice, i would go at least the last-gen SanDisk 30MB/s series, they are fairly cheap these days with UDMA cards coming down in price. I have handful of those in 8GB capacity but all are retired, moving up to UDMA cards in 16GB and beyond. Constant checking and worries on card remaining space bothered me more than the old one-basket-egg thinking. it's time to change now or i should wait? would i miss the shots with 30 frames remaining?....etc.

Now i shoot with 32GB and 64GB, one less box to carry along -- card holder.

[ldelacruz]

Buy what you can afford. The only place I really see the difference is in HD HQ video mode. Other than that I can't tell the difference in buffer between the UDMA or my cheap 233x's. What gets me is the 3.9 fps and the shutter lag.

[Sam50]

I originally used some 133x cards I had with my 5DM2 and found that the buffer filled faster than I liked causing me to wait for it to write to the card. I ordered a PNY 266X UDMA card and my buffer/wait problems stopped. I was able to take a series of pics during modeling shoots with no waiting for the camera to catch up. I did not do a formal test but quickly realized that I wasn't having to wait as before. To date I haven't had to wait for the camera.

I have played with 7D and I agree that it is noticeably faster than the 5DM2. For action shots I would certainly prefer the 7D.