Customer Reviews

Hoodman Raw FireWire400/800 CF Reader FireWire 400/800 CF Card Reader

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The difference in download times between a Firewire-connected card reader and a USB 2.0 reader is not just percentages, but factors. For large downloads -- gigabytes -- I have measured factors of four and five. If you are a casual snapshooter, you probably don't need this specialized device, but if you need quick turn-around between jobs using, say, several 32GB cards, you absolutely need it.

I have this Hoodman unit and a similar device from Sandisk. They perform the same as far as I can tell, and I have two simply so that one can go with my gear while the other stays with my desktops.

I gave four instead of five stars just because there seems to be no reason why this device (or the similar Sandisk unit) could not be a multi-format reader, giving support to SD as well as CF cards.

In the coming months, new machines and motherboards will be arriving with USB 3.0 connections, and at that point Firewire, already a niche standard, will probably finally die. In the meantime, though, where supported, Firewire is faster -- in this case, much faster.

I bought mine at MacWorld, where I got to meet the people who make them. They are a real development company working for real-world photographers. Almost immediately after I bought my reader, I dragged it across sub-Saharan Africa on some of the world's bumpiest roads in 115° average afternoon temperature, under conditions where almost everything broke-down (cars, generators; hard-drives, computers; lenses etc.). The Hoodman CF Reader worked flawlessly... in fact, it still does, even in my air-conditioned office.

I bought this reader for my new iMac, hoping to get the best possible performance reading digital photos off CF cards. So far, I haven't been disappointed.

I usually shoot RAW mode photographs, and my camera creates large files averaging about 15MB each...a casual Sunday morning's shots can easily amount to 5-10GB, and my older USB 2.0 reader could take quite a while to transfer these images into my computer.

The Hoodman unit plugged into the FireWire 800 port on the back of my new i7 quad-core iMac and has worked perfectly, without incident. From what I can tell, it appears to be about 50% faster overall, transferring large numbers of files in about half the time. Of course, part of this could be because the iMac itself is much faster than my other computers, but whatever the reason, I'm impressed with the overall performance.

The unit itself is small but high quality. Only thing I can complain about is that the cable is permanently attached to the unit itself, so any damage to the cable means replacing the entire unit. I usually prefer a detachable cable, just in case. But this is really quite a small issue.

Highly recommended.

This card reader is very solid and performs very well. Seems to max out at around 55MB/sec on FW800 into several Mac Pro's I've tried. The cards I'm using are stated capable of up to 90MB/sec. I've never actually seen that kind of throughput from any FW800-connected device, but I have seen 75-80 from hard drives. So, this is definitely one of the fastest card readers around. I wish it could max out the bus even more.

I work with video crews who often fill 6 or more 32GB cards in a shoot day so the transfer speed is essential.

Still, 80-bucks is a heck of a markup over the cost of a standard 6-buck USB 2.0 card reader. The parts cost of the bridge chipset used in this Hoodman reader adds approx 5-7 bucks to the cost of manufacturing over and above the cost to make standard vanilla card readers.

So how do you get to a 70-75 buck price increase when the cost to make this fast reader is only 5-7 bucks more? Well, that's called paying the "What's it worth to you?" premium. And, frankly, the performance IS worth it to me. But make no mistake, there is a huge profit margin on this product.

So, 4 stars from me. Knocked off one star for the negatives of high price (gouging is perhaps too strong a term) and also because I wish it could run at least 15-20MB/sec faster. That would mean building this device with an even faster chipset though, as the bottleneck is no doubt the bridgeboard.

The product works great. I was initially concerned as it arrived with no instructions other than an 800 number. However, there are two models and one works with a standard usb port and the other requires a special card slot on the back of the computer. The card was easy to find at my local big box computer store and just as easy to install in my computer, but if you are not comfortable opening your computer, then go for the version with the usb interphase. Oh yes, the 800 number. I got a live voice immediately who told me what card to purchase and a promise of additional help once I installed the card reader. I didn't need any additional help.