Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

Guys,

Does my 7D have a connection and if so what cable do I need. Im getting the feeling it hasnt and maybe I have to get a Firewire CF card reader?

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

No FW on the 7D - USB only.

Why do you need/want FW? Not challenging, just asking, in case there's a workaround.

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

Offloading the video files from the Compact Flash card will be much faster if you take the card out of the camera & use a Firewire 800 reader rather than connecting the camera to the computer by USB or using a USB card reader.

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

Hi Nick,

Purely the speed of data transfer.

I will be traveling/filming a lot this summer and expect to be filling 3 x 16gb cards every day. Ive bought a FW 750GB external hard drive so as not to clog up my MacBook.

To get the footage from a USB CF reader through my MacBook and onto the ext drive is currently taking 20min per card, FW800 would half this time every day.

I would welcome a faster work around if you know one.

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

You will find that a FW800 CF reader can transfer at more than double the speed of a USB2 reader. Another thing to remember is that the performance of the cards themselves can be the limiting factor in transferring the files. Faster cards will copy across faster.

The other possibility is to use a standalone card backup device like the HyperDrive Colorspace UDMA that I use

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

Interesting - thanks. Despite the fact that I know that FW800 is faster than USB, it had never occurred to me to get a FW-based reader. Blind spots, eh - who needs 'em :)

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

Theoretically USB2 is faster than FW400 (480Mbps vs. 400Mbps) but in real life is slower.

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

I was looking for a FW CF reader but struggled to find anything here in the UK. I have a 1st Gen Core i5 17" Macbook Pro which has a Express Card slot. I ordered a compact flash card adaptor for this slot and its lightning quick. We can do data dumps on set direct to the MBP hard drive and then immediately back that up to a G-RAID drive.

Re: Firewire 800 with my 7D
 

It seems that Lexar have stopped producing the FW800 reader that I use now that they have a USB3 one which is useless to us Mac owners. All the 17" MBPs have an ExpressCard slot as do older 15" models. I have an Kensington SD reader that permanently sits in the slot of my MBP as it is flush with case. The CF reader sits well proud so only gets put in when I need to use it. I can confirm that it is very fast although I am not sure that it's any faster than the FW800 despite the higher theoretical throughput as the read performance of the card is more likely the bottleneck rather than the interface bus.