# Camera Card Question  CF VS SD



## Sandyjas (Jan 4, 2017)

I know this doesn't fall in with Lightroom and I should probably contact San Disk, but I thought if anyone here had any knowledge of why this is?


I have a Nikon D800E Camera bought approx. 2013.  I also got a San Disk Extreme Compact Flash Card 32GB and a San Disk Extreme SD card 32GB at the same time.  In my understanding these cards record the digital numbers from the camera’s sensor to make up the digital image.  The images are only numbers.   If each card recorded the same image, the images they took would be much the same?  Right? There wouldn’t be a more refined image from one kind of card, than the other?  Right?  Why then,  does the Compact Flash Card’s image look better in the camera’s monitor than the SD card?  I'm not dreaming, it does look somewhat better and more refined when I look at the two different images (of the exact same thing) in the camera's monitor after the pictures were taken.  I didn't continue this test on the computer screen, just the camera's monitor. Or should I question Nikon?

Thank You for any information,

Sandy


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## Hal P Anderson (Jan 4, 2017)

Try looking at them on your computer monitor in Lightroom. The card they're coming from should make no difference.

Do you have your camera set up to record identical images on each card? Or perhaps JPEG on one and raw on the other? If the latter, I figure you still should see identical images on the camera's monitor, but they would look different in LR.


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## clee01l (Jan 4, 2017)

At one time CF cards were considered superior to SD Cards. With SDXC cards available today, there is little to recommend CF cards over SDXC.   CF cards behave somewhat like an SSD but running using the older parallel IDE/ATA interface where as SD cards use a serial interface.  CF Cards contain an on board controller that is not found on SD cards.  More important is the actual r/w speed of the cards  A faster SD card will outperform a CF card and vice versa.  Bytes are bytes so it does not matter which card you use, you will still get the same result.   For a test (with nearly identical speed cards) fire off a burst of shots and see how many you can get before the buffer fills and how long it take to empty the buffer.  

I have 32 GB CF & SD cards in my D800E and D810.  I use the CF card for overflow only.  I do this out of convenience because I have built in SD card slots on my Macs and need a special card reader to read the CF cards. 

Though I've never had it happen with the Nikons, I have had CF cards bend and damage the pins of the CF card reader.  This is IMO a design flaw of card readers with shallow throw and lots of play in the slot.  Because there are no easily bent pins in the SD card readers they are less susceptible to malfunction.


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## Sandyjas (Jan 4, 2017)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Try looking at them on your computer monitor in Lightroom. The card they're coming from should make no difference.
> 
> Do you have your camera set up to record identical images on each card? Or perhaps JPEG on one and raw on the other? If the latter, I figure you still should see identical images on the camera's monitor, but they would look different in LR.



No it was not set up to do that.  I took one image on the CF card and took an identical on the SD.  No I never take Jpeg and Raw.  Both images were Raw, the same size and everything was the same.  I'll try doing it again and look at them in Lightroom.  I don't know why this was, maybe could it be how the camera is displaying images from a SD card as opposed to a CF card?  Your right, I'll  have to look at them in Lightroom, and I wish I  had remember to do it the first time...     If you have any other knowledge on this...    I don't know why it would be?

Sandy


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## Sandyjas (Jan 4, 2017)

clee01l said:


> At one time CF cards were considered superior to SD Cards. With SDXC cards available today, there is little to recommend CF cards over SDXC.   CF cards behave somewhat like an SSD but running using the older parallel IDE/ATA interface where as SD cards use a serial interface.  CF Cards contain an on board controller that is not found on SD cards.  More important is the actual r/w speed of the cards  A faster SD card will outperform a CF card and vice versa.  Bytes are bytes so it does not matter which card you use, you will still get the same result.   For a test (with nearly identical speed cards) fire off a burst of shots and see how many you can get before the buffer fills and how long it take to empty the buffer.
> 
> I have 32 GB CF & SD cards in my D800E and D810.  I use the CF card for overflow only.  I do this out of convenience because I have built in SD card slots on my Macs and need a special card reader to read the CF cards.
> 
> Though I've never had it happen with the Nikons, I have had CF cards bend and damage the pins of the CF card reader.  This is IMO a design flaw of card readers with shallow throw and lots of play in the slot.  Because there are no easily bent pins in the SD card readers they are less susceptible to malfunction.



Lost in the technical side, but the SD card says  EXTREME SDHC  UHS-1 Card for Photos and Video...45  up to MB/s    300X     on the box.
                                              the CF card says  EXTREME CompactFlash Card                                 60  up to MB/s     400X    "               "  it also says UDMA enabled.

Speed is not too important with me.  The pins do worry me on insert but I have had no problems.  I have used my iMac's SD slot, but mostly use a card reader for both cards.   I was wondering why the CF card looks a bit better on the camera monitor, so that led me to believe it took a better picture than the SD card.  Like I told Hal, I haven't compared both the photos on the computer yet.  So, like I thought, the quality of both the pictures should be the same?  I have no idea?

Sandy


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## clee01l (Jan 4, 2017)

What you are looking at on the camera back is the compressed JPEG thumbnail.  The tiny computer in your camera is creating the JPEG thumbnail and writing everything to the card. It should not matter whether the card is CF or SD.   One of the options that Hal mentions is writing the same file to both cards.  If you do that, then there should be no difference in appearance on the camera back.  Do you think it possible there the apparent difference is an illusion?  Imported images in LR should produce identical results. If they do not and show that same apparent difference as the camera back, then  you might have an issue with the Nikon Firmware.  The latest version is A:Ver.1.10/B:Ver.1.10 (2014/05/13)


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## Sandyjas (Jan 4, 2017)

clee01l said:


> What you are looking at on the camera back is the compressed JPEG thumbnail.  The tiny computer in your camera is creating the JPEG thumbnail and writing everything to the card. It should not matter whether the card is CF or SD.   One of the options that Hal mentions is writing the same file to both cards.  If you do that, then there should be no difference in appearance on the camera back.  Do you think it possible there the apparent difference is an illusion?  Imported images in LR should produce identical results. If they do not and show that same apparent difference as the camera back, then  you might have an issue with the Nikon Firmware.  The latest version is A:Ver.1.10/B:Ver.1.10 (2014/05/13)



I'll try writing the same file to both cards, if the D800E does that.  I'm glad to know the quality of both cards is equal.  What I thought was true.  Thank You so much for the help.

Thank you both,

Sandy


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