Canon R5 II R5II Write Speeds...

[DerkMc]

Is anyone planning on testing CF card speeds? Coming from an R6II and going to an R5II, I don't have any CF Express cards. I picked up a Prograde Cobalt card and a Gold card. I would like to purchase one more as I typically shoot multiple cards at an event to kind of "sort" the event.

I see an RF shooters blog post/article that is an in depth review of a bunch of cards in the R5 and R3 and that basically if the cards minimum write speed is greater than 600mb/s the cards perform basically the same. I was just curious if anyone had figured at the max write speed of the R5II yet.

 

[Tim Mayo]

I've not had the opportunity to test the R5II yet and they aren't available to rent here in the UK at present. But I'm not expecting it to be significantly faster than the Mark I when it comes to writing to CFexpress cards. You can't really go wrong with the Prograde Cobalt cards or their new Gold 4.0 cards. The Delkin Power and Black cards are also very good. The Mark II doesn't support the latest CFexpress 4.0 standard but 4.0 cards will still work because they are backwards compatible. You'll benefit from the faster read speeds if your card reader supports 4.0 and your computer is fast enough.

 

[Dave Williams]

What the card says on the label and how it performs are two different things. The advertised figure is "up to' whereas the reality can be much less. Just as frustrating can be the read speeds. My Anglebird card writes quickly enough but the download time is horrendous. I sent a card back and had it replaced but the new one is just as bad. On the other hand my Sony and Sandisk ones are both quick for read and write speeds. I seem to remember you need a minimum of 800mbs a second for optimum performance on the R5.

 

[StevenAunan]

The following is obviously not in-camera performance, but I recently purchased the R5m2 and the question made me curious.

• 512GB SanDisk Extreme Pro CF Express card (advertised write speed 1400 MB/s)
• MacBook Pro M2 (40GB/s over Thunderbolt 4)
• 40GB/s CFe card reader

Using the Terminal app to copy 54GB (2019 RAW files) from my MacBook to the CFe card results in an average reported transfer speed of 351 MB/s.

 

[Bettcherphoto]

As a R5 original, R5m2 and R3 user only shooting CFE cards, I find a huge difference in clearing the buffer on the MK 2 with Prograde 3400mb/s cards vs the "regular" 1700mb/s cards. Download speeds are significantly better as well. I will slowly be shifting mine over to the 3400's as they go on offer.