Which FireWire 800 CF Reader do you use from your Canon camera?

Happy Hopping

Happy Hopping

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I use Sandisk Extreme 4, CF card, and I am tired of using the Canon's XTI USB port to download to the hard drive. It takes easily 20 to 30 min. and drain my battery. In 2 download, I can wipe out a fully charged battery

The only FireWire 800 that I can find is Lexar

http://store.lexar.com/?category=22&subcategory=47&productid=RW034-001

The Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 Reader supports data transfer rates of up to 800Mb/sec (or 100MB/sec)—twice as fast as traditional FireWire 400-which satisfies the demand for faster transfer rates from card to computer. Paired with a blazing-fast Lexar Professional UDMA card, the reader is performance optimized to deliver the industry-leading read/write speed of the card.
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what do you guys use? And does XP Pro SP2 or SP3 gives us the full speed of Firewire 800 or is there still a problem w/ it?

Also, is Firewire 1600 out yet? If so, any good brand name?

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EDIT: I just find out as stupid as it seems, Firewire 400 uses a different port as Firewire 800, unlike USB 1.1 to 2.0. So I only have IEEE 1394 (Firewire 400), it seems I am stuck w/ whatever Firewire 400 is out there.

Anyone has a good recommendation on Firewire 400?
 
Happy Hopping said:
I use Sandisk Extreme 4, CF card, and I am tired of using the Canon's XTI USB port to download to the hard drive. It takes easily 20 to 30 min. and drain my battery. In 2 download, I can wipe out a fully charged battery
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You must be using a pretty large CF card, I'd say 8GB. Back when I used my cable it never took me more than 5 minutes, but then I never had more than 1GB of pictures to download. Now I use a Kingston USB 2.0 CF reader with a 4GB card, and it works just fine for me.
 
Auric said:
You must be using a pretty large CF card, I'd say 8GB. Back when I used my cable it never took me more than 5 minutes, but then I never had more than 1GB of pictures to download. Now I use a Kingston USB 2.0 CF reader with a 4GB card, and it works just fine for me.
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No. My card is 2 GB Extreme 4. About 400 photos. Remember the Canon has to communicate w/ the computer first, and that takes 20 min. for the red dot to finish flashing. Then it read all those photos, then we wait for the EOS software to download them
 
Happy Hopping said:
No. My card is 2 GB Extreme 4. About 400 photos. Remember the Canon has to communicate w/ the computer first, and that takes 20 min. for the red dot to finish flashing. Then it read all those photos, then we wait for the EOS software to download them
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I've never used the EOS software, but I imagine if it were that inefficient I would have heard this complaint elsewhere by now. I simply used the camera like I would a card reader: open it in My Computer and drag all the files to my desktop. As I recall, the XTi has a read speed of about 4.7MB/s, so downloading 400 RAW photos should take you 15 minutes, tops.

There is either something wrong with your camera, your CF card, or the way you're using the software.
 
No quite, another friend of mine, using the exact same camera, has the same problem. It's not just the downloading that takes time. It's the reading, (the red light blinking) that's the part which sucks up 20 min.

The actual downloading, you are right, doesn't take all that time.

In short, the moment the USB is connected to the camera, and when the camera is on, the red light blinking takes 20 min. During that 20 min., the software icons are grey out.
 
I used the San Disk Extreme III cards had about a 12MB or so read rate at most, so USB wont limit you, you don't need fire wire..

i had 2 x 2G cards and my sandisk would get a full 2G card off in 1-2 mins. with my sandisk USB reader
 
Happy Hopping said:
No quite, another friend of mine, using the exact same camera, has the same problem. It's not just the downloading that takes time. It's the reading, (the red light blinking) that's the part which sucks up 20 min.

The actual downloading, you are right, doesn't take all that time.

In short, the moment the USB is connected to the camera, and when the camera is on, the red light blinking takes 20 min. During that 20 min., the software icons are grey out.
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I understand what you are saying, but I still think there is something wrong. When I connect my XTi to my PC, I get the autorun pop-up box immediately, I bring up the list of files stored on the camera in explorer, and that's it. There is no reading for 20 minutes, even if I have 400+ photos on the card. If the EOS software is the cause, perhaps it is doing something in the background that can be disabled via preferences.
 
I use the Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 CF/SD reader.

Works great, and faster than any other card reader I have used (and I have a lot of other USB 2.0 readers around the house). It is comparable to many firewire readers.
 
Auric said:
I understand what you are saying, but I still think there is something wrong. When I connect my XTi to my PC, I get the autorun pop-up box immediately, I bring up the list of files stored on the camera in explorer, and that's it. There is no reading for 20 minutes, even if I have 400+ photos on the card. If the EOS software is the cause, perhaps it is doing something in the background that can be disabled via preferences.
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It's not the EOS software. Even w/o loading the EOS util., the moment the camera is on w/ the USB connected, the red light will blink for that 20 min.

I have this new computer since July of 2007. Before then, it's an older P4-2.8GHZ machine. I bought the camera in May 2007. In the old machine, there could be some problems as there are small glitches.

This new machine was recently re-format (April 2008) and re-install w/ a short list of basic application software and the OS. Both in this installation and in the prev. machine, the camera performance is the same. That it takes 20 min. for the red light to stop blinking.

Surely, it can't be another coincidence for my friend to have the same problem in her machine. You are the first I heard that doesn't take that 20 min. to "initialize" the camera interface to the computer
 
MrGuvernment said:
I used the San Disk Extreme III cards had about a 12MB or so read rate at most, so USB wont limit you, you don't need fire wire..
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I have been using the Extreme 4 from Sandisk since May 2007. It's possible the speed on Firewire 400 is not a lot faster, however, the cost for me to buy a CF Card to USB Reader is about the same as the cost ofr a Firewire 400 CF Card reader
 
Happy Hopping said:
Surely, it can't be another coincidence for my friend to have the same problem in her machine. You are the first I heard that doesn't take that 20 min. to "initialize" the camera interface to the computer
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As a test, I took 100 photos in RAW format with my XTi and downloaded them to my laptop via the camera's USB port. It took 3 seconds for it to detect the camera and install the device drivers, 2 seconds to bring up the files, and a little over 2 minutes to download them to my desktop. Granted, my laptop is running Vista (for some reason it wouldn't work at all on my XP desktop), but I don't think this is a problem with XP.
 
Those are some wierd results are getting with your camera HH, but just get a card reader and you should be good. For the record, my 30D just connects up right away, transfers the pictures off, and disconnects right away on my XP and Vista machines.

Most dont even bother with using the camera to transfer anyways as it usually is a bit slower and you waste your battery.
 
Auric said:
As a test, I took 100 photos in RAW format with my XTi and downloaded them to my laptop via the camera's USB port. It took 3 seconds for it to detect the camera and install the device drivers, 2 seconds to bring up the files, and a little over 2 minutes to download them to my desktop. Granted, my laptop is running Vista (for some reason it wouldn't work at all on my XP desktop), but I don't think this is a problem with XP.
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At this pt., I am curious to hear other XTi owner and what they said about the "red light blinking" time from the moment the USB is connected to the camera
 
Auric said:
As a test, I took 100 photos in RAW format with my XTi and downloaded them to my laptop via the camera's USB port. It took 3 seconds for it to detect the camera and install the device drivers, 2 seconds to bring up the files, and a little over 2 minutes to download them to my desktop. Granted, my laptop is running Vista (for some reason it wouldn't work at all on my XP desktop), but I don't think this is a problem with XP.
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Auric, I just thought of something. What's the firmware ver. of your Canon?
 
I'lll upgrade the firmware as soon as I can empty the CF card. I wrote the following thread, and still waiting for reply:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1315866

but I have found the WIA driver in the EOS Ver. 13.1 disk, and it wouldn't install, it seems to be for Win ME only. So clearly XP PRo c/w WIA driver.

And this is what I tried:

I put the camera connected to my laptop for the first time, the red light turns on for a few seconds, just like what you describe, and I can view all my photos rightaway.

But then I installed the EOS util., then at the 2nd time I ever connect the camera w/ my laptop, same thing happens, it took that 20 min. of red light blinking before I can view the files.

So I don't get it
 
It sounds like the EOS utility is doing something in the background, though what it could be doing that would take 20 minutes, I don't know. You may want to try downloading the latest version (2.4) from Canon's website.
 
I just called Canon, they won't help. They said they don't troubleshoot on delay. I'll try the new ver. and see what happens
 
Auric said:
It sounds like the EOS utility is doing something in the background, though what it could be doing that would take 20 minutes, I don't know. You may want to try downloading the latest version (2.4) from Canon's website.
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I just uninstall the old EOS, I think it could very well be this software stalling.

What's the software you use to copy the files from the camera to the computer?

ANd if it is EOS, what ver. do you use?
 
I don't use any software; I just use Windows. The camera shows up as a removable media device under My Computer, or depending on your version and settings it may give you an explore option on autorun. Then I cut and paste the images to my desktop.

It does seem to be a little more flexible on Vista than on XP, but it's still doable.
 
I think that is precisely what the problem is. I installed the latest ver. of EOS, guess what? Same thing. But when I uninstall the old EOS and just connect the camera w/ the computer (I'm testing it on my laptop) the camera takes less than 10 sec. of red light blinking, and I'm using a very old P3-500MHz laptop.

I think I will test the above w/o EOS a few times, and select the Windows "Scanner and Camera" communication option and if it works, I'll delete that EOS on my main computer.

thanks again
 
I have the lastest versions of everything on my system at home and my 20D pops up almost instantaneously. Now when I try to access the card through the camera (shows as a connected device) then it takes some time for the folders to load and the images to load in each folder. With the Canon Zoombrowser and EOS Utility this greatly reduces that time. If you want instantaneous feed looking just at the card itself then I would suggest a good USB or Firewire card reader.
 
If I remove EOS like I did yesterday, I can wait that 10 sec., and transfer the files. What I can't stand is the 20 min. delay, which now looks a lot like it's due to EOS util.
 
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