New info from a “reliable source” at Canon Rumors points to the upcoming Canon 5D Mark IV and its change over to a CFast 2.0 card slot for its primary storage. The rumors note that it would feature both a CFast 2.0 card slot and a SDXC UHS-II card slot – both of which are a substantial upgrade from the 5D Mark III.
The UHS-II bus interface offers the ability to build cards with up to 312MB/s transfer speeds, which is a big jump from the maximum theoretical speeds on the UHS-I interface at 104MB/s. Of course, the UHS-II card slot will still be compatible with older UHS-I and non-UHS bus cards. You just won’t get the speed benefits that UHS-II cards offer.
Of course, CFast 2.0 offers even faster speeds with its SATA-3 connection at 6Gbps (up to 600MB/s) max data throughput. That is the fastest current mainstream memory card (XQD’s PCIe-based theoretical limit is 5Gbps).
Either of the card slots should be more than competent for whatever kind of compressed 4K video the Canon 5D Mark IV throws at them. The biggest question remaining to the bottleneck is Canon’s processing capability for still images. Is Canon simply going to build a 1D X Mark II Jr. as the 5D Mark IV?
Based on previous feedback from some of your readers, this media card format “change” may not be a very welcome reception. Personally wish it was dual SDXC UHS-II, since that would be well fast enough for 4K video needs and everything else this camera offers. CFast is great if there’s a RAW video option, but I seriously doubt we’ll see that from Canon…
The difference b/w CFast and SDXC is negligible for compressed 4K video options. It needs to happen though to open up the bottleneck for still image capture at higher frame rates. And Canon needs to remain consistent on memory card formats for its pro camera line. The gap in price between CFast and CF is shrinking and should be inconsequential for a $4,000 camera purchase. If you’ve got a bag of CF cards, I understand a bit of groaning. But it’s time to move on.
your info on XQD seems to be a bit dated. XQD 2.0 is capable of 1000MB/s (1GB/s).
ref: http://www.compactflash.org/assets/docs/cfapress/xqd2_0%20_140213%20.pdf
Thanks for the link. I missed that announcement… Interesting that the 2.0 standard hasn’t produced a card that cracks the 500MB/s data rate yet. Or, am I missing that too?
it will, when it is “marketing ” necessary. you need product that can deliver that rate (create demand) for them to market a product that can capture it at said rate.
are you going to update that info about the limits on XQD?
As much as I will miss CF cards, change is inevitable. I wonder if the CFast vs XQD will be another VHS vs Beta (or BluRay vs HD-DVD) battle.
I think the size of the XQD card is a reasonable compromise, and I wish Canon would do what Nikon did, by having an interchangeable card reader block. That would be the best way to future-proof camera bodies during this period of media card uncertainty.
Oddly enough, both CF and XQD come from the CompactFlash Association.
Agreed on the interchangeable card slots though. That’s a win in Nikon’s book. Although, from what I hear, the orders for the Nikon D5 with the XQD card slots vastly outnumber the orders for the D5 with CF card slots.