Canon 5D Mark III Memory Write Speeds

I recently bought a Canon 5D Mark III body on the cheap for $2699 from a Canon authorized dealer during the 2013 holidays.   I also got camera goodies to go with it.  Free shipping.  It was too good to pass up.  I had a Canon 50D for about 5 years and it was having mechanical problems, so it was time to move up.

There was one issue that I read about and it was about the write speed for the SD card.  The write speed for compact flash was good, but SD card write speed was subpar.  So out of curiosity, I did some write speed measurements from my 40D, 50D, and 5D Mark III and see how they looked.  I had a handful of memory cards, not many, so this is not an extensive test.

Testing

To setup, I set to manual mode, set the shutter speed to 1/8000 sec, and set the drive mode to high speed.  I set the image format to RAW.  (I photograph RAW all the time.)  I format the flash memory for each card.  I left the camera lens cover on, so there is no lens attached to the camera.

To test, I held the shutter button down for 30 seconds.  After 30 seconds, I monitor the red light on the camera.  Once the light is off, I log the time.

 

Canon 40D

Compact Flash # of shutters Time (sec) Total Bytes Write Speed (MB/sec)
Lexar Professional 64GB 1066x 49 38 431,526,421 10.8
Lexar Professional 64GB 1000x 49 38 431,544,418 10.8
Duracell Pro Photo 32GB 600x 47 40 422,914,089 10.1
Lexar Professional 8GB 300x 46 40 413,916,208 9.9
RiData Lightning Series 32GB 233x 40 42 359,952,888 8.2
RiData Lightning 16GB 233x 41 43 368,910,272 8.2
Kingston Ultimate 16GB 266x 46 40 413,910,593 9.9

 

Canon 50D

Compact Flash # of Shutters Time (sec) Total Bytes Write Speed (MB/sec)
Lexar Professional 64GB 1066x 105 34 1,699,319,781 47.7
Lexar Professional 64GB 1000x 111 34 1,723,978,375 48.4
Duracell Pro Photo 32GB 600x 53 44 837,474,530 18.2
Lexar Professional 8GB 300x 69 38 1,090,239,240 27.4
RiData Lightning Series 32GB 233x 50 43 789,865,187 17.5
RiData Lightning Series 16GB 233x 53 44 837,224,823 18.1
Kingston Ultimate 16GB 266x 47 45 742,417,602 15.7

 

Canon 5D Mark III

Flash Memory Type # of Shutters Time (sec) Total Bytes Write Speed (MB/sec)
Lexar Professional 64GB 1066x CF 138 33 3,147,136,648 95.3
Lexar Professional 64GB 1000x CF 138 33 3,146,455,481 95.3
Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB CF 138 33 3,146,779,170 95.3
Duracell Pro Photo 32GB 600x CF 48 42 1,113,530,223 25.3
Lexar Professional 8GB 300x CF 64 38 1,484,841,046 37.3
RiData Lightning Series 32GB 233x CF 43 43 997,486,322 22.1
RiData Lightning Series 16GB 233x CF 44 44 1,020,629,518 22.1
Kingston Ultimate 16GB 266x CF 37 48 858,341,337 17.1
Kingston 32GB SD 27 61 615,675,325 9.6
Patriot Signature 64GB MicroSD OEM Micro SD 27 58 615,666,701 10.1
PNY 64GB microSDXC Class10 UHS-1 Micro SD 34 49 774,943,851 15.1
Sandisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I 64GB SD 41 45 934,784,686 20.8

 

Flash Card Reader

I decided to measure the read/write speeds by using a Transcend USB 3.0 card reader.  I used the ATTO Disk Benchmark with the Direct I/O setting, the Neither setting, and a transfer size of 8192KB.  The following are the results:

Flash Card Type Write Speed (MB/sec) Read Speed (MB/sec)
Lexar Professional 64GB 1066x CF 126.9 145.9
Lexar Professional 64GB 1000x CF 126.3 148.9
Duracell Pro Photo 32GB 600x CF 38.5 89.5
Lexar Professional 8GB 300x CF 47.3 43.3
RiData Lightning Series 32GB 233x CF 23.6 45.4
RiData Lightning Series 16GB 233x CF 24.0 45.3
Kingston Ultimate 16GB 266x CF 38.4 48.4
Kingston 32GB SD 10.4 23.1
Patriot Signature 64GB MicroSD OEM micro SD 15.3 46.9
PNY 64GB microSDXC Class10 UHS-1 micro SD 21.6 87.4
Sandisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I 64GB SD 90.8 96.9