Lexar Professional 600x UDMA CompactFlash review (does it make a Nikon D700 a speed demon?)
2010
I
purchased a 16GB Lexar Professional 600x UDMA card to finally jump over the buffer limit that the Nikon D700 has. The 17frames per second in RAW (14bit) mode is quite slow, especially since the Nikon D700 Manual (page 423) says a UDMA card should give me 23 frames in the buffer. Well, let’s see what this means in reality.
First off the test environment:
- The D700 with a MB-D10 battery pack and awfully charged EN-EL4a battery in it to obtain 8fps.
- Next we have 2 CF cards, a Kingston Elite Pro 133x 16Gb card and a Lexar Professional UDMA 16G 600x card.
- The D700 had Firmwares A:1.02 and B:1.02
The settings in the camera were firmware defaults except the following:
Shooting Menu:
- RAW Recording: Lossless Compressed 14bit
- Active D-Lighting : Off
- Vignette Control: Off
- Long Exp. NR: Off
Setup Menu:
- Image Authentication: Off
- Image Comment Off
- Copyright Information: Off
The next step is to shoot a sequence off and see the write speed before it hits the first slowdown to see how many shots we get into the buffer and how long until it empties out.
When the Lexar card is inserted the Raw buffer on the top display shows: r17, so 17 images can be buffered. This is Nikon’s specification.
Inserting the Kingston card also gives a r17 which tells me the RAW buffer is the same for any CF card that has the capacity for 17 shots.
Please note you also need to have a shutter speed fast enough to achieve 8fps. I set mine manually to 1/1000 which essentially generated a black picture but this is to measure speed not anything else.
Now, without further waiting the results:
Kingston Elite Pro 16GB 133x Non-UMDA : 18 frames before the stop
Lexar Professional 16G 600x UMDA : 19 frames before the stop
As you can see there is a 1 frame difference for a card that costs over 150USD vs a card that costs 40 USD. Either Nikon’s firmware needs an additional tweak or these are very disappointing results. Sure, you could blame the Expeed engine or the onboard processor but to be honest, if that is the best Nikon can do (which is LESS than the manual says), then you should’t label it UDMA compliant really. These number are actually quite in line with preview as well…
Is the card worth the money? -Well, its fast. VERY VERY fast and Lexar guarantees a minimum write speed of 600x. Can it deliver with a Nikon D700? -Not so much. Granted, the recovery to shoot looks very much different:
Kingston Elite Pro 16GB 133x Non-UMDA: recovery until all files are written and another 18frames can be taken in full sequence: 10 seconds
Lexar Professional 16G 600x UMDA: recovery until all files are written and another 19frames can be taken in full sequence: 4 seconds
This is where the Lexar Professional 16GB 600x shines, which makes me wonder if the buffer is actually hard limited and not designed to empty fully on the fly.
This, however, still does not explain why the manual gives me a much higher number with a lower specced card.
Let’s see if a firmware update will come to address this issue but to be honest, I won’t hold my breath and if you want shopping advice, you should look closely towards the 300x cards as they are much cheaper and deliver the same.
