Customer Reviews

Transcend 32 GB 133x CompactFlash Memory Card TS32GCF133

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I use this with the Canon EOS 40D and it works perfectly with all functions, including continuous shooting. Massive storage for long trips or shooting sessions. People argue not to put all your eggs in one basket and to buy several smaller cards. I think this is bunk! If these cards work to begin with they will continue to work unless damaged by the user. This is only going to happen outside the camera or while inserting and removing, so switching smaller cards frequently will only increase your chances of damage!

Since the price of this card was about the same as a 16GB card with other more 'name' brands, I couldn't resist giving it a try and I am not disappointed. It works fine for both photos and videos in my Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera (Body Only).

This CF card is a great value but it's slower than other brands. However, if you have an UDMA card reader (such as the SanDisk SDDRX3-CF-A31 Extreme USB 2.0 Reader (Black), the file transfer to your computer is pretty fast.

I also have a Sandisk card that I use as I believe it's good to have one 'name' brand card too, which I trust a bit more although I've had no problems with this Transcend card.

Introduction:

I recently purchased a new Canon 5D Mark II camera. And while I love it the images are huge and my old 8GB cards would only hold around 250 - 260 photos. I got sick and tired of having to swap out cards just when I'm lining up the prefect shot.

Review:

I received this new Transcend 32GB card yesterday and promptly loaded it into my 5D Mark II, formatted it and headed to the zoo.

This card did NOT disappoint! It was so good to see the images remaining counter max out at 999 on my 5D Mark II for the first time. And you can shoot high definition videos and multiple images just like you can on a faster card!!

In Camera Speed:

My faster cards "Transcend 266X Extreme Speed 8 GB cards" do NOT seem faster in the 5D Mark II then this 32GB 133x card at all. I get the exact same 13 RAW or 52 JPEG's before slowing down in continuous shooting! Now once it slows down of course it's slower, but, I usually only need a burst of 5 to 10 shots to get something anyway. Think about your shooting style and go from there, fast and furious order something faster otherwise this card just might fit the bill.

I blazed through the zoo using my normal style of 3 to 5 shots a burst getting over a thousands stills with no noticeable difference in speed and felt the freedom at last to just shoot and shoot.

I also recorded an HD video of 14 minutes no problem and a to the limit low res 29 min 59 second video. There is NO hesitation and no difference.

Download Computer Speed:

I then headed home. And that's where the one weakness reared its head. Downloading to my Mac. It was half the speed of my 266x card when downloading to the computer.

But hey I'm at home now and speed is not an issue. I simply start the download, go put away my gear, grab a snack and drink from the kitchen and it's done.

Recommendation:

If you need a lot more room on your Compact Flash card and are sick and tired of running out of space and download speed isn't an issue this card is for you. I highly recommend especially for Canon 5D Mark II owners.

5-2-2009 Update:

I found out there are some situations that this car is not fast enough for after all especially when saving 25 mb raw files in rapid succesion. While great for land scapes or museum and even renaissance festivals it's just not fast enough when the pace really heats up. I recently photographed Hugh Jackman and the cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine at the World Premiere in Tempe AZ and there were moments where I could have gotten some really cool shots that I missed because the card was still writing. On the other hand I'm sure I got some shots I might not have gotten if I had a load of smaller faster cards and was swapping them out. I still love this card especially for landscapes and slow paced photography and will keep it but am now looking for a faster, high capacity brother card to compliment it. [...]

One of my better recent purchases like having a second hard drive in my laptop. Allows me to work from anywhere without the laptop since it's a virtual pc in my pocket. Great price and okay speed transfers make this a good buy. I only seeing about 30gb but with most card and hard drives you never really get the listed amount either.

A great option to bring an iPod Mini (2nd generation) back to life when the 4-6GB mechanical drive fails (all eventually do). While this card is designed for photography, and not being the fastest on the CF card market, price is great and it fits the iPod Mini perfectly. Too bad higher capacity cards (62GB+) are still expensive in comparison ($/GB). Installation was fairly easy - tutorials available online - and the 5x capacity (vs the original one) makes the revived Mini a great iPod (as long as you're not interested in color display or video capability. I use mine just for music and Audiobooks. After the iPod Mini formats the drive, the available effective capacity goes down to 29.5GB. Sync speed is amazing, and battery (also bought a new one for $5) lasts at least 3x as the original one did, due to the lower power consumption. Highly recommendable card, no bad memory sectors.

It's always a gamble buying memory, since next week it may be half the price, but I had to go for this GIANT card. I love being able to fit all my photos on it and not have to keep track of multiple cards. Card has performed admirably so far, and it is priced a lot better than the competition.

UPDATED 4/9/09 - Card is still working perfect, never a glitch even with heavy use. When you want to delete all the photos on a card, be sure you use the "format" option in camera instead of the "erase all." It'll keep the filing system cleaned up.

This CF card works perfectly as a direct replacement for a 1st-gen iPod mini's 4GB microdrive. I installed it (along with a replacement higher-capacity battery), plugged it into my Mac, and did a restore thru iTunes, which left it blank with a bit more than 29GB of empty space. Syncing is fairly quick.

If you're looking to max out a mini with solid-state memory, I can't imagine getting anything with more "X"'s will be a whole lot faster, and definitely not worth the price difference. I would bet that 128GB would be the max the mini could take, even if you could get a CF type II device packed that densely which AFAIK you can't.

I believe the 2nd gen mini should also take this card without problems, the main difference is in the battery AFAIK.

I loved this card the first month I had it. The price was great for a decent speed 32gb CF card. I've used Transcend cards in the past and never had any problems. I was impressed with the write speed in my Canon 7D and xsi. No more "busy" signals!

But then I started losing images when I imported them to Lightroom. At first it was one or two...then almost half. Then I started getting error messages both on my Mac and the camera about card readability. After formatting on the camera, it would work again for a couple of days, then start with the bad imports into Lightroom and readability issues again.

3 months later and the card is completely useless. I've never had so many problems with a memory card and I've definitely never had one fail completely on me. Obviously, by reading the other reviews, this is not an uncommon problem with this card. Definitely a waste of money. I'll spend a little more on my next card, which won't be Transcend.

I recently bought this 32GB compact flash card for my Nikon D700 because I found that I was eating up the capacity of my 8GB card by taking all my photos in both RAW and HQ Jpeg. My 8GB card (a SanDisk Extreme Ducati) was rated as one of the fastest on the market, but there are currently no equally fast 32GB cards on the market. So I ended up going for this Transcend card for higher capacity.

According to highly regarded websites that measure the actual card speeds, The Transcend 32GB card should only be giving me 8-10 MB/Sec actual store speed in the camera -- Remarkably slower than the 21-28 MB/sec of the SanDisk Ducati. I can see the difference if I am taking lots of photos in rapid succession, but as one would expect there is little difference if you are not clicking the shutter like a machinegun. The biggest difference is when transferring the photos to the computer, where a fast card like the Ducati can dramatically reduce time spent waiting.

All that said, the 32GB Transcend card is actually cheaper than the 8GB Ducati. And it has been a great and reliable card for me. For the price, I recommend this card if you need the big capacity.

This is a great value but don't buy it if you're planning to use Continuous Shooting mode of your camera because it's too slow for that. I bought it for a different application (mp3 player) but wasn't thrilled with the sync times. On the other hand, its HUGE so that maybe reason enough for some to go with it.