Discussion Forum Leica S System S2 cf and sd cards– problems, speeds
  • October 25, 2011 at 2:57 am #1262
    Arif

    I have not had any problems with the 64GB Lexar Pro cards which I have been using on the S2 for over one and a half years.

  • October 25, 2011 at 3:30 am #1264
    David Farkas

    I use 16, 32 and 64GB Transcend CF cards in 300x, 400x and 600x varieties. Probably my most used is the 400x UDMA 32GB.

    The S2 will store to a fast card at about 50MB/s so a fast card does make a difference. For me, the bigger issue is download speed. With either a Firewire 800 or USB 3.0, I can get 90MB/s transfer. The Transcend 400x card has a 60MB/s write and 90MB/s read, so I find it to be the perfect match for the S2 and my workflow. It is also much less expensive than a corresponding SanDisk.

    In SD, your best bet is a Class 10 SDHC card, but you’ll be limited to download speeds of only about 30-40MB/s to your computer. Here, I find CF to be much, much faster.

    David Farkas
    Red Dot Forum
    Leica Store Miami
  • October 26, 2011 at 8:20 am #1272
    fotografz

    I’m using a Sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro CF which is rated at 90MB/s.

    I back it up in Parallel with a Sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro SD rated at 45MB/s. I almost never remove this card, and just reformat both cards after all the files from the CF are safely downloaded and redundantly stored.

    I use a 32GB card because I do not like changing cards while shooting a commercial job or an all day long wedding.

    The download speed is where the 90MB/s is apparent. I use 4 Lexar Pro FW800 readers that are daisy-chained … and download the S2, Sony A900 and my assistant’s Canon files simultaneously to one master file and sort by time shot.

    -Marc

  • October 28, 2011 at 2:43 pm #1313
    jrv

    David Farkas;1053 wrote:
    In SD, your best bet is a Class 10 SDHC card, but you’ll be limited to download speeds of only about 30-40MB/s to your computer. Here, I find CF to be much, much faster.

    SD cards with the UHS-1 spec should be as fast as the fastest CF cards, if the camera and card reader support UHS-1. Otherwise it will only do Class 10 speeds.

    You need a SD “UHS-1” USB3 card reader to get fast downloads. I don’t know if there is a Firewire-800 UHS-1 capable reader yet.

    I doubt the S2 can write at UHS-1 speeds. It’s a hardware change to support it so it probably doesn’t appear until later.

    As for high capacity SD cards, I vaguely recall testing a 128 GB SDXH card once and it didn’t work. I don’t know if that’s still true with current camera firmware. I believe this is probably just a firmware change and could be added to the S2 if Leica got enough requests.

  • October 28, 2011 at 5:36 pm #1317
    melantye

    Actually the fastest CF card right now is San Disk Extreme Pro 128GB, a UDMA 7 card with 100MB/s.

    I think S2 supports UDMA 6 cards, no idea about UDMA 7 though.

  • October 29, 2011 at 12:15 am #1319
    jrv

    Sandisk, Panasonic and Delkin all have 64GB UHS-1 SD cards rated at ~ 95 MB/s reads. The Panasonic is rated at 45 MB/s writes, Sandisk and Delkin ~ 90 MB/s.

    Just how fast any of them really are I do not know

  • November 24, 2011 at 8:21 pm #1573
    andyc

    I used the extreme pro 16 and it seems a lot slower in my S2 than 8s however although it previews in the S2 ok it shows as 0 kbs when using a lexar card reader to mac resulting in no files for downloading.. any ideas ???

  • November 25, 2011 at 4:53 am #1579
    rgk

    andyc;1390 wrote: I used the extreme pro 16 and it seems a lot slower in my S2 than 8s however although it previews in the S2 ok it shows as 0 kbs when using a lexar card reader to mac resulting in no files for downloading.. any ideas ???

    :confused:I have the same problem with a Lexar card reader and a current MacBook Pro 17″. I can use the Extreme Pro CF card in a Dell workstation with a built in card reader (2010 vintage) with no trouble. The Lexar card reader is a small unit that only reads CF and SD cards and I think that I have had it for 2-3 years. My solution is to load the images to NAS via the Dell and move the images into LR3 on the Mac. I could use a good portable CF card reader.

  • November 26, 2011 at 3:59 pm #1585
    rgk

    rgk;1396 wrote: :confused:I have the same problem with a Lexar card reader and a current MacBook Pro 17″. I can use the Extreme Pro CF card in a Dell workstation with a built in card reader (2010 vintage) with no trouble. The Lexar card reader is a small unit that only reads CF and SD cards and I think that I have had it for 2-3 years. My solution is to load the images to NAS via the Dell and move the images into LR3 on the Mac. I could use a good portable CF card reader.

    FYI, the card reader in question is a Lexar UDMA CompactFlash SD Reader (USB 2.0) Model # RW035-7000

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