fotoman150

Well the time of reckoning has arrived. The camera arrived in excellent condition from Adorama. Everything is great except for the 32 GB CF cards.

You may recall my post wondering if the 32GB UDMA 7 cards would work in the 5D mark II. BTW I see that I have the latest firmware installed.

The cards work and can be copied to and read by my card reader and test shots are on the hard drive with one caveat. The counter does not work on the 32 GB UDMA 7 cards. Put a cheap 8 GB card in and the counter works fine. Put a 32 GB in and the counter does not work on either of my 32 GB cards. It doesn't count down the shots.

I think it's a compatibility issue since neither of my two cards will count down. The count is 999 available and never changes.

So I ordered 4 Cheap 8 GB Transcend CF cards which I pray will arrive before my big wedding on the 29th.

I hope I made the right decision. I could shoot with the 32 GB cards but I would never know where I was in the count or whether the cards would register full or god forbid start copying over the first shots. Of course with 1000 shots per 32 Gig card can I really go wrong? I have never taken 1000 shots at a wedding.

But I am a major worrier and I can't shoot blind like that never knowing where I was in the count.

What do you guys think. What would you do?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I'm not sure what to think, I am more curious by your posting. I don't have a Canon 5Dii and my cameras only use SD cards not the larger CF cards. I never noticed that my camera / card counts down -- but they probably give that information somewhere. I've also never really noticed any real difference between 32GB SD cards (the type I currently use) and older 16GB and 8GB ones. But there could be a chronology issue. Perhaps the older smaller and likely lower quality cards had different features as they interact with different models of cameras. Your 5Dii is not a new 5Div so their might be compatibility issues with a newer type card. If in testing you find you can capture images and transfer them to you computer and PP software, I would not worry much about a "counter" function. I'd rather use the higher quality newer style Cards if I can. I never really think about how many more shots I can take. I'll shoot for hours and never even come close to filling a 32GB card. I shoot Raw as well. But it may depend on your shooting style and techniques, do you "spray and pray"? I never get close to a thousand in a day, the most I'll shoot is about 180. I also keep an extra card just in case and a spare battery. I've never needed the spares. If you are a worrier, why do you shoot weddings? That sounds like an incompatibility. Well, good luck. And I'm sure many UHH'ers who use the same equipment can help you out more.

Haydon

If the display reads 999 and it does count backwards, a 32 card gigabyte card holding approximately 1200 RAW files won't decrease the counter until 201 files are shot. If you hit the info button in the menu you should see how many shots have been taken. I never worry about about the counter. If I have two 32 gigabyte cards, I just switch them out halfway through the venue.

A simple math calculation 32,000/24 megabyte RAW = Approximately 1333 images (without taking into account the decreased spaced because of the formatting properties of the CF card & small variances in files sizes)

I've done about 10 weddings and I don't shoot more than 1100 images per camera. I usually take 2 bodies, 1 with a 24-70 & the other with a 70-200. Most of my images are shot with the shorter focal length.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Wow, that should have been obvious. I did not think of that either because like a told the OP I did not even know my cameras display that info and I have never looked for it.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

How about 16GB cards from Amazon - fast delivery.

mikecanant Loc: Texas

Nikon D800 stopped shooting when my CF card got full in London last week.
Deleted a few photos and it started working again. First time I have had
that happen.

Haydon

I was lucky actually, I had 2 brain cells functioning this morning. Usually 1 brain cell is lost and the other is trying to find the first one.

Haydon

The lesson learned here is bring more than 1 CF so you don't have to delete although I know there are fewer keepers than throw aways.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Probably something wrong with that camera, I use a 64GB UDMA7 card quite often in my MII with no issues of any kind. So far I have not put my 128GB card in it (I used that one only in the M III so far), but I can not see a reason, that that one would not work!

Japakomom Loc: Originally from the Last Frontier

This is correct! My previous 6D would start counting down once it was under 999. The 5DIV has a higher count down number.

jmvaugh Loc: Albuquerque

Yes in fact on my 80D the LCD counter can't show more than 999 so until I had taken many RAW and then started shooting jpeg and RAW did the 999 LCD counter start to decrease with a 32GB card. But the Info button does show the full amount of shots available.

fotoman150

Oh ok. You learn something new every day. I will keep the 8 gig cards so I don't have so many images on one card, but I'm planning to buy a mark IV in the future so a 32 gig card will come I handy since the markIV is 30 mp.

I wanted to wait until I heard back from you guys but the wedding is coming up and I didn't want to take the chance of not being able to shoot it right.

To the person who said if you are a worrier why are you shooting weddings. What I mean is I prepare for any eventuality and I am always looking for potential problems. I think this is a healthy thing for a wedding photographer. Don't you agree?

Bill_de Loc: US

Why not use the 32gb cards. As long as the count starts at 999 you have plenty of notice before the card is full.

Does it really matter if you have 1150 or 1075 shots left?

Nikon would show 1.2K and count down by hundreds until it hit 999.

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fotoman150

Because I feel like two cards are not as safe as four in case one goes bad. I bought (4) 8 gig cards. Standard operating procedure for wedding photographers as you may know. I ordered the cards late last night because I didn't have time to wait for replies on UHH. So now that I know the 32 gig cards could have been used, I chose to keep the new 8 gig cards on order.

I didn't know how hose 32 gig cards were going to act. When I get home tonight I am going to test them again to se if I can get the cards below 999.

I appreciate your help and also the suggestions from all.

cthahn

Did you consider reading the instruction manual. The manual always suggests what card to use.