Testing CF cards transfer speed with Transcend and Hama card readers

A few days ago I became a happy owner of new Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera. Thus I decided to buy a larger compact flash card. I wanted 32GB with a good speed. However the price of top-range brand name cards seemed a bit too high so I decided to make a compromise - i.e. to get large capacity and reasonable speed, but not the fastest possible.

I bought Silicon Power 200x card and I got interesting results testing data transfer speed.


I did a basic test on my PC, using USB card reader. My older cards shown on the picture are rated 100x (PQI) and 133x (Transcend). They both demonstrate read speed of about 40 MB/s (reading large file from card to hard drive of my PC). However the card from Silicon Power has only shown 16 MB/s in my initial test with Transcend M5 card reader. I repeated the test few times with the same result. At first I was very disappointed, but when I repeated my tests with Hama card reader I've got the speed of ~44 MB/s from the same card!

The writing speed is approximately the same for Silicon Power and for 133x Transcend and is about 9 MB/s (100x PQI is notably slower).

I paid about 70 Eur for the Silicon Power card while the brand name 266x-300x cards are priced above 150 Eur, so I am very happy now with the saving I got :)

My main surprise is that cheap Hama reader overperformed the Transcend by so much - but only on 32GB card. The tests with 8GB and 2 GB cards didn't show a difference between 2 card readers. FYI Hama reader is a box from blue transparent plastic and called 'Cardreader 19 in 1'. It has partnumber 00055114. I've got one in Germany for 9 or 10 Euro. (The one from Transcend looks nicer - it's a square white glossy box in "Mac-style" but it failed miserably with large card.)


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Finding photo models

There are several ways to find models. Relatives and friends might be easy to access, but they are not necessarily good models. Another possibility is to use special web sites where models and photographers find each other. Make-up artists can be found the same way.

Quite often the same model can be found on different sites at the same time. Sites provide different options and different communication channels to the users.

Probably the most popular in Belgium is http://modellennet.be. Currently it lists more than 2000 models (mostly from Belgium and some from the Netherlands). In Dutch.

Another popular site is http://www.eye-on.net (former photograaf.be). Current list is above 800 models. The site is in Dutch. It is supposed to grow beyond a basic meeting place for photographers and models, but these services are yet to be developed.

Less popular is http://models.handelsgids.be/?zoekenHome/

Speaking about Dutch model the most popular site is http://DutchHeaven.nl

Very popular international site: http://www.modelmayhem.com. It is not so popular in Belgium (only 300 models) as it is in some other countries, but is it a good resource for photographers. The site is in English.

Site popular in Germany: http://www.model-kartei.de. It lists more than 20,000 models, and on top many make-up artists, studios for hire, etc. Although the site is in German it is quite easy to search for models if you learn a few basic words.

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Leuven station in twilight

One more photo of Leuven railway station that I made almost a year ago. This time you could see a large version if you click on picture (and then click "All sizes" above the picture).







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Winter photos

Unusually for Belgium we've got real winter this year - lot's of snow and freezing all week. It was a nice sunny day yesterday so I went out to make a few pictures. This one is made in Heverlee bos:


It was -10 centigrade and I didn't have any issues with the camera at that temperature. However fully charged batteries died extremely quickly - it was showing "battery low" after about 15 minutes of use. Fortunately I have a good habit of always having several charged batteries with me. By the way Canon compatible battery behaved better than original Canon. It was showing "battery low" but kept working, while Canon battery quickly went down.


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Data backup

I was keeping in mind for a long time that I need to improve my data backup strategy. This topic was recently discussed in one of the internet forums I read; and following that discussion I finally made a move :) I should have done that earlier, but luckily I am not too late because I didn't loose any data yet.

Until now I was backing up my RAW files + edited PSD files on 2 recordable DVDs, both stored at home. Personal non-photography data was occasionally copied on another hard drive on the same PC. Although my personal experience with recordable CDs and DVDs is good I've read many times about CDs/DVDs becoming unreadable after several years. Also saving the data on the same PC (even on a separate hard drive) isn't safe at all.

So my new plan is the following:
* Keep making a copy on DVD, but just one copy. That's for RAW + edited PSD files.
* Make 2 copies on 2 external hard drives (different brands). One of them stored off-site (swapped monthly). RAW + PSD + personal non-photography data.
* Keep a copy of most important data in online storage - I've chosen Amazon S3 for reasonable price and good SLA. To keep costs low this will only be used for selected most important RAW files and selected personal data.



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