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Any advantage in using the faster Lexar Gold CF Express B cards compared with the cheaper Silver in an X2D-100C?

R

RWilsonL

Member
At the moment I have a Lexar Silver 256 GB CF Express B card in my X2D-100C. I don't like travelling with a single card, as I have had SD cards fail in past years in my various Leica cameras and compliant with Murphy's law, always at the most inconvenient time and location. I am about to go out of the UK for close to 3 months, taking my X2D with me (plus a Leica Q3 and film M7). I was looking at buying either another Lexar Silver 256 GB or maybe the larger 512GB CF card to act as an internal back up to the built in SSD and as an easy way to transfer images to my M2 Mac laptop. I have never liked cable transfers since many years ago when I was using a cable to transfer images to my Mac iBook and a nearby lightning strike, fried the iBook the camera and the SD card. Now looking at the prices of the 256 GB and 512 GB cards, I saw that Lexar offered a more expensive alternative of their Gold series CF Express cards, with faster write speeds. In that I virtually never use continuous mode on the shutter and very rarely exposure bracketing, is there any advantage conferred by using the substantially more expensive Gold cards? On Amazon UK, £127 for 512GB Silver versus £187 for 512GB Gold. I am guessing that the fast write speeds Gold cards are really aimed at video shooters, where for example a 6K camera dumps down huge amounts of data per second (up to 325 MB/second at 3:1 compression Pro resolution).

Very oddly once you get up to the 1TB size card, the Gold (£321) is cheaper than the Silver (£328) - go figure!

Love to hear folks' opinions.

Wilson
 
I use the Sony Tough CFExpress as that’s what Hasselblad shipped with the camera. Cards are easy to get hold of generally here in the uk and often next day delivery with A*zon
 
I would also probably buy mine from the Bezos emporium. I live when in France, up in the Var mountains in a small village called Tourtour (le Village dans le ciel), where Amazon is unreliable, post is intermittent and the nearest photo shop is in Toulon over an hour's drive away and with nightmare parking. France is the only country in Europe that does not officially recognise UK Blue Badge disabled driver's permit, so although most parking people will accept it, it is not guaranteed. Therefore if my current CF card goes belly up, it is a bit of a faff to get a quick replacement, so better to take one with me. It has been my practice to have a spare card with me, ever since I had an SD card fail in my Leica on a trip to India in 2005. Trying to get a new SD card that was not a fake was difficult in Jaipur. I usually carry a spare SD card in the back of the leather battery cases I have for my M10-R and Q3. For the Hasselblad, I will store the spare card in the Lexar CF-B card reader. I will have a look at the Sony CF-B cards.
Wilson
 
The Sony 512 GB card only has limited availability in the UK and seems rather expensive. None of the sellers of the Sony 512 GB card had next day delivery, which I would like as I am going to a family wedding, leaving tomorrow. I had a look at various pro photographers reviews of CF B 512 GB cards and there seemed to be quite a lot of negative comment on the Lexar cards getting very hot, when downloading large numbers of MF RAW files. The card which got surprisingly good reviews, which had not even crossed my mind, was the Delkin 512 GB card. Seemingly on tests faster than a Lexar Gold and runs cool as well, so I ordered one of those last night for delivery today. It was very reasonably priced at £122, against around £400 for the Sony 512GB card.
Wilson
 
The other card that I use is Delkin Black. There are sales from time to time in the USA and uk. They’re fast and good for video too - they don’t get too hot as others do. I use on my Nikon Z8
 
The Delkin Black would be overkill for my modest requirements, so I have opted for a Delkin Power 512GB. Arrives later today.

Wilson
 
RWilsonL said:
At the moment I have a Lexar Silver 256 GB CF Express B card in my X2D-100C. I don't like travelling with a single card, as I have had SD cards fail in past years in my various Leica cameras and compliant with Murphy's law, always at the most inconvenient time and location. I am about to go out of the UK for close to 3 months, taking my X2D with me (plus a Leica Q3 and film M7). I was looking at buying either another Lexar Silver 256 GB or maybe the larger 512GB CF card to act as an internal back up to the built in SSD and as an easy way to transfer images to my M2 Mac laptop. I have never liked cable transfers since many years ago when I was using a cable to transfer images to my Mac iBook and a nearby lightning strike, fried the iBook the camera and the SD card. Now looking at the prices of the 256 GB and 512 GB cards, I saw that Lexar offered a more expensive alternative of their Gold series CF Express cards, with faster write speeds. In that I virtually never use continuous mode on the shutter and very rarely exposure bracketing, is there any advantage conferred by using the substantially more expensive Gold cards? On Amazon UK, £127 for 512GB Silver versus £187 for 512GB Gold. I am guessing that the fast write speeds Gold cards are really aimed at video shooters, where for example a 6K camera dumps down huge amounts of data per second (up to 325 MB/second at 3:1 compression Pro resolution).

Very oddly once you get up to the 1TB size card, the Gold (£321) is cheaper than the Silver (£328) - go figure!

Love to hear folks' opinions.

Wilson
Click to expand...
I use a Lexar Silver 512GB and it works very well. A 1 TB Card would be more perfect to mirror the internal SSD, but Hasselblad recommend just a 512GB Card for whatever reason - so I tried a 1TB Card before and it works well but it is a little bit to unsafe for me...
 
Don’t you just want the CFE Cards as backups from the SSD? If so, get two cheaper 512MB or even smaller and change them when they get full?

My $0.02
 
My main reason for using the CF cards is for transferring images to my laptop, or as I am contemplating, a refurbished 5k iMac. Especially when I am at house in France (Tourtour 83690), which is in a very thunderstorm prone area, I never like connecting a camera via cable. In the past, I lost a camera and iBook when lightning struck a tree just outside my house and the EMP killed a whole lot of electronics in the house.
 
135mm said:
Think about doing a simple faraday cage around your equipment. Maybe chicken wire is already sufficient
Click to expand...
In theory the inner reinforced concrete shell of my house which has double the usual number of steel reinforcing rods, welded together where the walls meet the roof and floor, should act as a Faraday cage but in practice it does not seem to. The architect who built my house as his own retirement house, had a recurrent nightmare of dying in a collapsed house in an earthquake so made his own house earthquake proof, even though it is not in an earthquake prone area. I now run all sensitive equipment via Auxiliary Power Supply systems, with a lead acid back up battery, which isolate the items from the outside electricity supply. That is the route the EMP is using to get into the house, even though I have a fast disconnector circuit breaker and diverter to earth, fast reacting gas valves for all three phases and one for neutral (France in common with most European 3 phase systems uses Wye (Y) rather than Delta). One additional problem is getting a good earth. I now have 6 linked 1.5m long copper coated steel rods driven 1m into the ground and my earth link resistance is still 4Ω, which is on the high side. This figure drops after heavy rain to around 1Ω, as the ground is very porous coral limestone, which 500 million years ago, was under the sea.

Wilson
 
RWilsonL said:
In theory the inner reinforced concrete shell of my house which has double the usual number of steel reinforcing rods, welded together where the walls meet the roof and floor, should act as a Faraday cage but in practice it does not seem to. The architect who built my house as his own retirement house, had a recurrent nightmare of dying in a collapsed house in an earthquake so made his own house earthquake proof, even though it is not in an earthquake prone area. I now run all sensitive equipment via Auxiliary Power Supply systems, with a lead acid back up battery, which isolate the items from the outside electricity supply. That is the route the EMP is using to get into the house, even though I have a fast disconnector circuit breaker and diverter to earth, fast reacting gas valves for all three phases and one for neutral (France in common with most European 3 phase systems uses Wye (Y) rather than Delta). One additional problem is getting a good earth. I now have 6 linked 1.5m long copper coated steel rods driven 1m into the ground and my earth link resistance is still 4Ω, which is on the high side. This figure drops after heavy rain to around 1Ω, as the ground is very porous coral limestone, which 500 million years ago, was under the sea.

Wilson
Click to expand...
You know your stuff! Would love to see it.
 
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