I am currently using two 16GB SanDisk Extreme IV CF cards with my Canon 5D Mark II. I have a trip coming up overseas and need to buy some additional cards. What is the maximum (or recommended) size for a CF card to use? Any recommendations on staying with the SanDisk Extreme IV or go another route? I've had no issues at all with the 16GB cards and would probably just buy a couple more of those unless a couple of 32GB cards would work too. Thanks for any input.

In my own personal opinion its better to have a bunch of small cards then a few larger ones. This way if a card is lost / damaged / fails you haven't really lost all that much. However, if you something happens to a larger card than you could potentially loose hours of work.

Great point Louis and its not like these cards take up much space. :) I'll stick with the 16GB cards.

On that note...I noticed there is now a 45MB/s like I have, 60MB/s and 90MB/s. I've read that the 5D Mark II uses under 7MB/s to record so I'm assuming the higher rates are not needed. Any thoughts on this?

The higher data rates are great to have if you need to get the cards emptied quickly. Great for if you have a firewire card reader and need to get editing asap like if you are doing weddings and working on an SDE, or if you are working corporate and want to get a rush together quickly on set to show the producer. If you're just using the 5D for personal video or if time is never of the essence and you can capture cards while eating dinner, or sleeping then there really is no need to get the faster cards... unless you like to brag to your friends.

I'm with Louis on the card size.

I have x6 16 gig cards, x2 ExtremeIII, x2 Extreme IVs and X2 of those 60Mbit UDMA ones. All Sandisk and they all work great.

I got the UDMA ones at a cool price a couple of months ago and it seems to handle the occasional 'frame skipping while panning' problem better than the other ones.

A friend's Hama 32 gig card went down just last week. Fortunately he didn't have a job on it, but still inconvenient having to send it back to get a replacement.


Avey