Customer Reviews

Transcend 400X - 16 GB Compact Flash Memory Card TS16GCF400 (Blue)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Works perfetly in all Canon EOS 7d HD Movie modes. I purchased two of them along with my 7d and have just ordered a 32 GB Transcend to extend HD movie capacity from 48 min with this 16 GB to 96 min.

May 2011 Update: While this 400x Transcend continues to work perfectly with my 7d under almost all conditions, I have recently found one condition where the faster 600x Transcend MIGHT make a very modest difference. When you are shooting RAW at 8 frames per second with this 400x, the camera slows down to about 1 frame per second after the buffer is full -- about 16 shots. This would also happen at 600x, but I dont know how much it would improve. I just performed an experiment with my 32 GB 400x Transcend/7D and got the following number of shots off in five seconds:
1. Large JPG only: 39 shots (buffer never overloads).
2. Large RAW only: 23 shots (slows down after 16 shots). *
3. Large RAW plus Large JPG: 17 shots. (slows down after 7 shots) *
In summary, there is no reason for 7D owners to spend the big bucks to go from 400x to 600x for video and probably no significant improvement even for 8fps RAW. Check out the table on page 59 of your EOS 7D Instruction Manual and do the math for yourself. High speed (8fps) RAW generates about 200MB/s while the 400x cards and 600x cards handle only 60MB/s and 90MB/s respectively. Also note than if you are shooting RAW + JPEG, you can more than double your burst length by going to RAW only and converting later. Burst capability is therefore much more about the camera's buffer size and processing speed than about card speed. I have concluded that this 400X Transcend is the one for me and find no reason to spend more. If you are a 7D/600x owner who wishes to repeat this test with a 600x Transcend, I would greatly appreciate your reply to this post. For me, it would be an expensive experiment.
* Updated 8-4-2011, Note that this was for the 32GB card, the 16GB card might produce slightly different results.

While searching for a CF card for my new camera, I didn't find many specific card results. So if you are using a Nikon D300s, this review is for you.

This card works great in my Nikon D300s. Here are my results at 7 frames per second:

RAW-12 BIT - Buffer show 17 frames but shoots 25 frames before buffer fills. Pause for about one second and can shoot for about 5 shots. Pause for 3 seconds and can shoot for 16 before buffer fills. Capacity shows 770 shots available but goes over 800.

JPEG-Large-Fine - Buffer shows 21 but never fills and will shoot at 7fps up to the Nikon limit of 100 shots. It goes down to about 7 or 8 in the buffer but never slows down.
Capacity shows 1400 (1.4K) photos available. I don't shoot JPEG much so I don't know the actual totals. 1400+ is a lot for one card.

I consider myself a serious amateur photographer and this card fulfills all my needs. My photography is mostly HDR, landscapes, and my kids (both at home and playing sports).

Unless you need to shoot in RAW 25+ photos at 7fps consistently, this is a great card for the money. If you shoot JPEG, it will work as fast as the camera.

I purchased this 16GB card for the same price as the Sandisk 8GB card. So for the price of a Sandisk 16GB card, I bought two Transcend 16GB cards. Until this card, I always shot with Sandisk Extremes III sdhc cards.

Shipped fast with Prime.

I will update here if I have any issues.

One minute, I was looking through images from a very important shoot on the back of my 7D and patting myself on the back.

The next minute, after turning off the camera and putting the card in my card reader, I couldn't see anything in Finder.

I turned on PhotoRec and tried to bring the card up. It told me that the card was 31.5 MB, not 16 GB. I tried a couple of other software packages with no luck.

I consulted a forensic expert (seriously, he had a ridiculous, proprietary, homemade card-scanning machine, and does lots of work with data recovery for the legal field) who ended up using a dummy card to bypass this card's controller. He told me that all of the memory on this card contained zeros. And that somehow, this card's firmware was incorrectly reporting itself.

My client's photos can never, ever be recovered. Ever. And this is probably because someone at Transcend wanted to save $5 on this card and bought cheaper, less reliable memory chips than they should have.

I've had no response from Transcend tech support after several days and am never buying one of their products again, even if it's $30 cheaper than the Sandisk version. Even if it's $200 cheaper than the Sandisk version, for that matter.

Don't buy this card! Don't buy anything from this company! And feel free to e-mail me to confirm that I don't work or consult for anyone in the electronics industry. We can even meet for coffee and maybe draw pictures of Transcend CompactFlash cards with crayons and then rip them into tiny shreds.

Cheap memory cards are cheap because margins are cut. And these are not margins that you want cut when it comes to crucial images for your clients.

Loved the price. Warranty on box says lifetime, can't beat that. So since no one else put this information down, I figured I would. In a Canon 7D, shooting in RAW, you can take 25 pictures using high speed shutter setting (8 frames a second) before the buffer fills and you have to wait. Its more than a couple of seconds, but then I could do it again.I would suspect that using jpg would be more than double that and jpg lower quality or smaller size would much,much higher. Since I don't shoot jpg I didn't check. If you own a 7D and do shoot jpg instead of RAW, don't hesitate. Holds ~500 RAW images on a 7D. Since I rarely shoot at 8 frames a second, this card more than meets my needs, see [...]. I was instructed by Neil Cowley to never put all your images on one card in case something happens to it which is why I didn't purchase the 32GB cards. Very good advice from an excellent professional.

I bought a few of these for video on the 7D and have not had any problems. I used to use the Transcend 133X without any problems until I did a firmware update on the 7D. After that I kept getting errors. After much research I learned that, for some reason (after updating the firmware) my old cards were not fast enough. This was tested on several 7D's. With these newer 400x cards I have no problems whatsoever. I have shot hours and hours of footage on multiple cameras and have not had a single problem.

I'd much rather write a good review for a product whose name I have trusted for a while but I won't be doing that for this card. Over the course of a few weeks I took photos on this card and during transfer to my computer I got a message that the drive had been ejected improperly. But wait - I don't want it ejected; I'm still transferring files! I was afraid the card may have fried and when I placed it in the camera to see if it would read or maybe I could reformat it, I got nothing. It's a damn good thing I wasn't shooting a wedding for a client or any other jobs for pay because I would have been severely embarrassed to tell the client I couldn't give them what they paid for. I won't be buying any more Transcend cards, it just cannot be trusted. Looks like it's back to Sandisk exclusively. I see a few others have posted negative feedback on this card and its 32GB sibling and that's why I say I won't be buying any more of them. Unfortunately for me, I may not be able to get my money back since I have had the card in my camera for so long and exceeded the 30 day (today)Transcend 400X - 16 GB Compact Flash Memory Card TS16GCF400 (Blue) warranty period. We'll see how good Amazon's customer service is next.

I recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam. I took over 500 photos using this card. When I attempted to copy the files to my pc, I got a copy error.
Then the pc couldn't recognize the card. My camera said it wasn't formatted. I was able to copy about half the files. I took the card to a shop; they told me
the card was faulty. Needless to say, I'll never buy this brand again. Guess I'll have to go back to Amsterdam.

I bought this card because I had previously purchased Transcend's sdhc card and been satisfied with the purchase. I saw some reviews that said those cards were not as fast as the SanDisk Extreme sdhc cards, but after doing some timing tests between the two types of cards (you can see my review of the Sandisk Extreme sdhc cards for the results of those tests) I decided the Transcend cards were fast enough (as well as being much less expensive) and bought more of them.

My new camera requires compact flash cards so I started looking at the reviews of the Transcend compact flash cards. I saw some reviews by unhappy users, so only bought one card initially. I am pleased to say that I have had no issues with my card. Canon says that I should be able to take 15 continuous raw photos before the buffer fills up and I find using this card I can take 26 before the shutter slows down indicating a reasonable write rate. I have had no issues using the card in full HD movie mode and have had no problems copying the images to my computer. I was pleased enough that I bought a second card yesterday and expect to buy more in the future.

I have not done timing tests between Transcend's 400x and the equivalent SanDisk compact flash cards to see if there was any significant difference, but found with the sdhc cards the only real difference between the class 10 sdhc cards was the formatting time. As of now I am completely satisfied with this card and feel I can recommend it.

I've used this card with both the Canon 7D and Canon 5D Mark II. With HD recording, there have been no issues at all. The only time the card struggled to keep up was shooting the Canon 7D on high burst (8fps) in RAW. In that situation, this card did not have a sufficient read/write speed to keep up with the 7D. But, considering the reasonable price for this card, if you aren't going to be shooting a lot of action/sports where you need a prolonged high FPS, this card is definitely a good choice.

I've used Transcend cards before so bought this one after only glancing at the negative reviews.

It failed during the first day's use at an event. The Canon 40D body said "Card not formatted for this camera" and my Mac didn't recognize it as a valid disk. The only good thing is that it failed before there were many shots taken that day.

I understand that products can fail but this one where failure can have a high cost, Images that can never be taken again. After one failure, I won't ever buy another Transcend product. I'll be going back to better known (and more expensive) brands.