In case anyone needs these and had not seen this deal: 64B CF Card - Lexar Pro 1066X (160 MB/s) - $88.95 http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=invoice&A=details&Q=&sku=1022077&is=REG
Steve: The guy I do some filming with uses Magic Lantern on a 5D II and a 5D III and he uses these cards. I just ordered a couple of them and also got the 2-4 week shipping time frame. Not in a desperate need for them so its worth the wait for me.
I'll check in with him and let you know. He is filming in MI this week, but I'm sure I can find out. Is there a faster class of card available? I thought these cards equaled the fastest speeds that the current cameras could write. I know there is a new spec that is going to be much faster, but is it out yet? I plan to keep my 5D IIIs for a while yet so I am limited by what they can do.
I think the speed limit is caused by the DIGIC chip in the camera -- it simply cannot scrape'n'write the data at 30 fps allowing for the speed of the CF card. A colleague of mine tested the 5D MK III with the Lexar cards and at 30 fps we were lucky to get two or three seconds with ML before the CF/camera dropped data. Andy.
There seems to be no faster CF cards than the Lexar at "1066x" (x is fast approaching zero ), and I've never heard of anybody able to get anything more than 24 or 25 fps at 1080P. You can go faster at lower resolutions. But I think these hacks have tapped out the CPU power in the 5DM3 and its I/O pipeline. I'd love to see somebody take a crack at the 1DX, as I believe it has a lot more CPU horsepower than the 5DM3, but of course very few people own a 1DX (I do not).
I just heard back from the guy I do some filming with and we get about 30 seconds on a 5D III shooting RAW video on these cards with ML. Yeah, its not much, but there are a number of things we use short clips for that are under 30 seconds.
That's not encouraging for those of us who are flying these cameras. I thought there were cards that worked more reliably than that.
Like you mention above, I don't think its the cards. There are some things inside ML that you can turn off to free up processing power - some of the meters, graphs, etc I think. I do know you can do longer clips if you drop your frame rate. Everything is a compromise with this one...at least for now.
It's at this point that programmers amongst are thinking: "Halt and wait for next version." I suspect it could be that we have to wait for the nextgen of the 5D before we can really get the bandwidth we need. Andy.