In stock Delkin express card reader
looks like the right model number:

Delkin Devices DDEXP34-MULTI-1 - OneCall.com


You may want to call before you order.

Ordered 3 Delkins on December 1st from Adorama and the order was just fulfilled today, 2 days later.

I wonder how many of the older Delkins were snatched up over the past as a result of this forum.

I ordered 4 of the Delkins this morning from Adorama and just received my tracking number.

Brian,

Despite the picture, I thought that DDEXP34-MULTI-1 was the one that didn't work and that the model that works is model # DDEXP346IN11 ? Look at yesterday's post by Robert St-Onge.

John

The one that works is the old model that has eFilm legend on it not DD.

Understood, however I think OneCall has either the wrong picture or the wrong model number shown.

My guess is that it is the wrong picture and that you will get the one that does not work if you order it.

John

Yes, the one with MULTI in the model number is the one that does not work.
It appears they have a picture of the older one.

I just received an order update from Amazon.com US. The 2 cards i ordered on Nov 22nd have been shipped.

I also placed an order for 2 of the Delkins from Adorama 2 days ago. Order has been confirmed and shipped. The card manufacturer # is Mfr. Part: DDEXP346IN11.

Yesterday 2/03/08 i had the chance to use many Kensington 7 in 1 and SHAVED down Ultra 2 card in a real world scenario.

I shot a 30 commercial for DIY channel. This 2 camera shoot involved a lock off shot using the EX-1 in timelapse mode. Set @ 1 frame every 15 seconds, for 9 hours.

Both the camera and card combo worked flawlessly.

You can't go by the picture on the packaging. They may use the same packaging for both. You have to see the actual card inside. The correct card has "e-film" on it, not the "DD" logo. Here's a scan of the back of the packaging for the correct card - note the product number.

Since most sources for the Delkin have dried up - has anyone used the ebay card on the EX1? Laptop ExpressCard SD SDHC MS MMC Express Card Reader > Laptop ExpressCard SD SDHC MS MMC Express Card Reader - eBay (item 220322602498 end time Dec-06-08 19:04:34 PST)

Even Meades reported it works on EX3 with Sandisk 16gb Ultra 2's although the door doesn't quite close.

At $17.50 shipped it seems to good to be true.

Even do you think the door will close if you do the 'shave' cut?

Brian I will take several of your Kinsingtons!

I just got in 2 of the correct Delkins from Adorama today but one of them doesn't work. It records for a minute or two then up comes the error message Restore Media. I am using Transcend 16GB cards. I have a couple of the Sandisk 16GB Ultra II cards coming I might try them to see if it makes a difference.

At least I have 1 working adapter and I have a shoot on Monday.

This is not good news!

The AFT 7-in-1 works for 5 to 10 minutes in HQ then also gives the media restore errors. It seemed as if the problem was thermal related. The AFT was determined not to work.

Let's hope this was a "one off" on the Delkin. I have a couple on order myself.
Regarding the one that works. Can you run some overcrank test at 40FPS 24P and see if it fails?

I received 2 of the correct Delkins from Adorama 2 of the wrong ones from Delkin direct. I have started testing them you can not Hot Swap the adapters with the cards in them. The adapter has to be put in first , then the card if not you get a restore media error. The door does close but there is no clearance maybe .05mm. I do a lot of long shoots so if you are hot swapping the cards and opening and closing the door on the EX1 the door will sometimes hit the top of the card producing a restore error be careful. This want be a concern for me once the 32GB SanDisk SDHC cards are released.

What's the verdict with using cards other than the SXS ones, from Sony?
I have read most of the posts but man 80 pages. I have also checked out the link and the Kingston card seems out of date now.

Regards

Hi Kevin, well, all I can say is they work flawlessly with my EX3.
Guy says on his page that it was a bit hit & miss with his EX1 so not sure about EX1's.
Anyway, maybe take a chance and get one to try as they are so cheap!

ps, I use Sandisk 16gb Utra 11's

Evan

Nick, the verified info from this thread is available as a sticky - no need to go through all 80 pages :)

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...sxs-cards.html

Brian
I hot swap the cards no problem you just have to wait for the led to green, it's red when writing. I just eject the card and adapter then put another one in with a new card. You do have to make sure the card is seated correctly though or you will get media not recognized error message. I just pull the adapter out and then reseat the card in the adapter and return to the camera and it works.

Nick
All the info is here in the thread but at this moment there is only one card that works and that's the Generic one from Hong Kong. I have several on order at the moment. The link is in Kevin Cates post above.

Thanks Alex,
I have looked at that before. Is that the only palce to buy the Kensington?
I have also read that this wont work with my MBP 17" have you or anyone had problems?

Nick

Robert, I had those HK cards shipped to me Nov 21, and I'm yet to receive them :|

Unsure if 2-week delay between the order and delivery is acceptable for everyone.

Will test the cards when I receive them...

Unfortunately, Kensington's availability is extremely spotty, as we seem to have scooped all the online supply as the result of this thread :)

Try Amazon's Kensington link, sometimes you get lucky. It shows in stock right now, BTW - fulfilled by Amazon itself.

Do these 3rd party cards switch seamlessly from one card to the next while recording? Just as the Sony card do?

OK One of the my Delkin readers is Bad errors when card Changes Slot. Records about 5min Restore media error sending this one back.

Transcend 16 Gb stuck on Formatting- help
 

Hi,

Was ridiculously excited to finally get my 4 Transcend 16 Gb cards and kensington, BUT already in trouble !!

Its been stuck on Formatting 79% for about 20 min and won't turn off ? any suggestions ?

Thanks

Chris

proud new EX1 owner

Pull the battery.

I've only seen this exact issue with SDHC cards that were not fast enough.

It's possible that one of your Transcend SDHC cards has an issue.
I have yet to see or hear about a Kensington card create this issue.
It's possible your Kensington is bad.

Fake Cards?

Smart Computing Article - Counterfeit Cards: It Could Happen To You

Chris
This is what happened with my bad Delkin adapter. Hung in formatting then restarted camera and reinserted the card and adapter this time formated then media errors within 2-4 minutes in record. I tried all of my SD cards in my other adapter and no problems at all, All Good!

I am using the Transcend 16GB cards with 2 - SD Ultra IIs to be here soon, maybe today.

More tests today!

I just got off the phone with Delkin, great discussion btw. It seems like Delkin is really on the ball and the gentleman said that they could have new stock on the old adapters, most likely relabeled as something else, in 2-6 weeks.

He just sold me, what a great company.

Good news indeed!!!! Now if only Apple would listen to customer feedback as effectively!

they could simply make a bundle of a rebadged Sandisk 16gig ultra II card +their adapter, call it eXFilm or something like this.
I am even surprised that no chinese guy has not yet started to advertise for low cost fake SxS. Just glue a shaved SDHC in a kensington, change the sticker... et voila !

I wonder ...
 

Just how hard is it to make a real working equivalent to SXS? Kensington was almost there w/50 fps ... how hard is it to get up to speed? A chinese entrepreneur ... hell, any entrepreneur ... would be able to sell a ton of such cards at a reasonable price!

The trick is to get away from the USB bus - which all of these adapter solutions have been so far. The bottleneck is in the EX1/3 implementation of the USB bus, not the card/reader combo.

So, the question is, who can made an Expresscard with memory using the PCIe bus. That will be a sought after solution - full overcranking on a generic card. It doesn't have to be that fast, even - the current SxS are WAY faster than we are using.

Well apparently it's not as easy as it looks. The SxS cards read & write at 100MB/sec or 800Mb. The real killer is the write speed. Also the other thing is the SxS trade mark, is it open sourced or is it owned by Sony?

In my earlier discussion with the gentleman from Delkin the Really Fast memory they use in the SxS cards is really expensive right now, low quantities manufactured. That will change in the future but that's the deal right now. On the other hand there is no reason for pricing the SxS cards so high except to recoup their R&D costs but I haven't seen any indication that the prices will drop, even the Sandisk branded SxS cards are pretty close to the Sony cards in retail cost. Delkin did say that they have a express card memory card that reads at 50MB and writes at 27MB which is more than fast enough but the big question is the controller compatible with Sony's firmware, if so that could be a viable alternative in the near future for those of us who need moderately fast memory for everyday shooting. He had said that he has sent a few out for testing.

I would love to get my hands n one or two of those!

Time will tell.

I should have one real soon to test.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...ress-card.html

Just got my Delkin combo's up and running finally with Ultra II cards.

Recorded 15 minutes straight and then started swapping between the slots, each with a delkin and an ultra II in it and it was fine for normal swaps.. did that about 3 more times over the course of 5 minutes.

I then tried to break it.. hit the slot select button a number of times straight after each other, and after about the 3rd change in 5 seconds i got a media error. Which is what i was expecting.. its not normal thing to happen.

But apart from that they seem all good. Im going to do all my testing with my new ex1 using them and not the 8 and 16 i got with it. Will save those for my first shoot over new years. Hopefully i'll have a better idea when it comes to the Delkins by then and might even use them.

What's your source for the 100 MB/sec? Earlier this year, a few of us compared write speeds with various methods. The fastest transfer method was something like 45 MB/second with the SxS in the ExpressCard slot of a Mac PowerBook. The Sony USB reader was slower.

100MB/sec was derived from the 800Mb/sec spec that Sony published. This is a pro card which means Sony has a road map for utilizing the card over a period of time. You really start to need the speed when you start using codec data rates 50Mb and above. I would assume Sony wants to grow into the card by utilizing for the next XDCam HD camera. The current one records 1080/24-30 4.2.2 at 50Mb/s. That is about the limit with the BD media they are using now. With the XDR recorders working at 100Mb Sony will have to compete with that.

Anything on the USB bus is slower, USB is not a good bus for storage but has grown into that use since it's really cheap. Firewire is a much better bus for storage since it's processor independent.

The slow speed you got on the MacBook Pro PCe slot is due to it's PCe bus being pretty slow but it's real fast for a laptop. I think using a raid the fastest speed out of the MB Pro is only 150MB/s to a SATA array.

panic over :-)
 

Thanks for your help Steven and Robert, panicked there for a while, tried again the next morning, the other 3 cards formatted in about 2 sec each and then a bit hesitantly put the card in that originally got stuck, that also formatted in 2 sec ?? Don't know what happened there BUT there all working which is great.

Have left the Kensington card in the camera, with the original Sony 8 GB, door closes fine, the other 4 Transcend 16 Gb cards live in there little pelican Box, which I love, should be a must buy for everyone, it can carry 4 cards in isolated splendor AND you can stack 16 !! cards on the other side !

So you could have 20 16 Gb cards in this tiny waterproof box, 20 hrs of filming in a tiny shock and waterproof container, or 40 hrs of footage in it when the 32 GB cards become more available and cheaper.

Its a brave new world, so much more compact than carrying tapes for a big trip, then the only thing you need to worry about on extended wilderness trips is the matter of charging the batteries, a solar charger ?

Cheers

chris

FYI - amazon.com shipped some Kensington cards today. Not sure of their stock status

OK people, Kensington adapters are available at Amazon right now, in stock, and actually shipping - I just got an email that mine has shipped today!

The catch? Apparently, only one adapter can be ordered at once.

Sony EX1 cams can still be ordered in any quantity though :)