New Toy !!! (kinda camera related)

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

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This probably won't be useful to most of you guys, but if you are like me, shoot thousands of photos in a single shoot, and with file size 25mb each, 8G cards, and have around sometimes 80G to transfer. Using USB2 is painful.

I have the Sandisk Extreme Reader, the ones that isn't available anymore and it gets really good review, very nice reader indeed but it doesn't cut it anymore. To download a 8G of images from a Sandisk Extreme card (from 30mbs to 60mbs), takes 8mins.

8mins x 10 cards + swapping out time = 90mins average to transfer files post shoot.

I don't know about you, but transferring files is like watching paint dry, I soooo want to look at what i shot so it an hour and a half is an eternity. Not to mention time IS money now that it is a business so 90mins is a long time.

Enters...

Lexar UDMA FireWire 800 Reader

For size comparison, the Lexar reader is enormous !

IMG_7967.jpg


IMG_7970.jpg


Now...the result to transfer 8G of images.

photo.jpg



Forgot to add, you can daisy chain these, up to 8 in one go!

So, i could in theory, download an entire wedding in under 2 min 30 seconds!
 
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I'm not trying to poopoo your purchase, as purchases are always good! but....

I'm wondering why your old system was taking so long to transfer files over USB2? Unless I've misunderstood something, you used to be taking 8 minutes to transfer 8Gb? That's an average of 16.7Mb/sec, quite a bit from USB2's maximum saturation figure of 60Mb/sec which would transfer 8Gb in about 2min 14sec. Maybe its difficult to actually saturate USB2.

Its all a moot point for me anyway. I find the bottleneck in my processing is the dunce sitting behind the screen, and not the transfer speed. :p If only I could process them at the rate I pull them off the cards!
 
Well, It took Phate 30 mins the other day to transfer 8G on USB2 so.....

I don't know, but that's my experience, and i will let others answer that techy question :)
 
USB2 has a processing overhead when transferring files. On older hardware, or even cheap new hardware, you can sometimes get huge bandwidth bottlenecks meaning you only get 15 - 20MB/s transfer speeds.

It's most likely down to the individual interface chips on motherboards etc but I've always had better experiences with FireWire and large scale file transfers.

If you want the best external files transfer performance go with eSATA. It's part of the same buss as your internal drives, so there's no interfacing with other devices and drivers to get your data across.
 
I have 2 of these and have had them since i started photographer so I dont know any different, but they are fast. Just got myself 60MB/s 8GB SanDisk Extreme card it soooooo fast at downloading the RAW files.
 
I only recently bought a USB card reader, just a cheap £7 one.

I had gone 8 months simply transferring straight from my 5D1, which I believe is only USB 1.1....ie. RIDICULOUSLY SLOW!!
 
Raymond how long will it normally take you to process a wedding days shoot? Also what sort of time frame do you aim to deliver the goods to the client after the wedding?
 
I might have to buy one of these. Transferring 24gb the other night was slightly.....boring. And then 9gb Wednesday evening to.....*yawn*
 
ScarySquirrel said:
OT: How did the stripper shoot go?
Click to expand...

Was good thanks mate, had a good laugh, was damn tired by the end of it though. Trying to come up with different ideas for each girl 13 times is knackering.

Going to start processing these tonight before I go out around 9ish. So I'll get a few hours to work on them. Want to get them all done by say Tuesday so I can really crack on with the Wedding stuff :)
 
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I can't say I've ever noticed how long it takes to download from my card reader (cheap thing off the auction site). I use LR to import, I give it a minute to get a head start and then start reviewing the photos it has imported whilst it is still importing the rest.
 
Rojin said:
I can't say I've ever noticed how long it takes to download from my card reader (cheap thing off the auction site). I use LR to import, I give it a minute to get a head start and then start reviewing the photos it has imported whilst it is still importing the rest.
Click to expand...

That's probably you never heed to download 10 x 8G cards in 1 sitting. If you do you would know what a chore it is.
 
Raymond Lin said:
That's probably you never heed to download 10 x 8G cards in 1 sitting. If you do you would know what a chore it is.
Click to expand...

No that's true. I have done 4x 16GB cards though. I guess what I'm saying, is that the import finishes before I catch-up reviewing the shots. So I've never noticed the actual time taken to import on it's own.
 
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