Expresscard/34 Compact Flash card reader?

Supports xD, SD, MS, MS-PRO and MMC but no CF, which is what the original poster was asking about. Still pretty cool for those who don't need CF.

I am a freelance photographer myself and require fast transfers from my CF cards to my computer. Right now I am using a blazingly fast Lexar FireWire 400 CF reader. Super fast.

It would be nice to have a slot built in for CF but since this is going to be hard to do with the express 34 slot, I will just continue to use my firewire CF reader. It works great. You can get it on the Apple store here:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/6234003/wo/A07UG zZFAePz2ftFB0zIaXSAyA8/1.0.19.1.0.8.25.7.11.0.3

eMac 700mhz G4..... MBP 2.16Ghz Core Duo on the way... Mac OS X (10.4.5)

I picked up a USB 2.0 CF card reader dongle (one-piece unit with an integrated USB connector) at Fry's yesterday for $8. I don't have my MBP yet (it arrives tomorrow), but the dongle was quite speedy when connected to the USB 2.0 ports (PCI card) on my dual 1 GHz G4 tower. It's compact enough that it should fit in a small pocket of most sleeves/bags.

Since we've gone a bit off topic, I'll suggest the Dell 2405 USB card reader as well. Which is attached to a 24" screen.

http://tinyurl.com/7uqag

You know how the ExpressCard slots have taht spring loaded thing to put the piece out. Well what if the CF ExpressCard/34 adapter had one fo those on it and you coudl push it, it pops out a slot for teh CF, download, take out the CF card, push the piece back in and you're done?

I'm RICH!

..unless one of you do it first...if any of that made sense. Maybe I'll draw a picture.

I really don't see all the fuss over needing one. True all us "pro" photogs shoot on CF, but I guarantee a lot of the CF cards out there couldn't even handle the fast read time of firewire, let alone even faster. I have seen some "pro's" use really slow cards, and even then a GB of RAW doesnt take all that long to pull in.

Most "pro's" have a digital darkroom with a tower, and on location shoots that they have to drop images off midshoot a FW will get the job done much faster than you can fill up another card. And Honestly if you don't have 2 cards, or have cards under 1GB, then this whole "pro" thing probably isn't for you.

I think having a CF reader in the Expresscard slot is more convenient than carrying around an extra FW reader that you have to plug in every time. I know that seems like pure laziness, but it's just simpler to have one in the expresscard slot all the time.

it might be easier on most, I never used my card slot on my powerbook (firewire was faster), however for me I would never leave a card in my book unless it was totally flush. Having a part of the card that sticks out would affect putting my book in my bag, most bags have a snug "landscape" fit to ensure protection. I haven't seen any expresscards (5/5 or 3/4) that are flush, so I just don't see how someone would actually leave it in permanently. To each his own I guess.

Additionally I think there will be a 3/4 that will just bump out to the width of the CF card, its not like the card needs to go inside the slot since the things aren't flush anyway.

You could definitely make a CF adapter card that is flush with it.

in that case i might fall into yr lazy ways than.

flush, i would be down with.

We could sell our camera equipment and switch over to a smaller card format that fits into the ExpressCard/34 slot. Just a thought. 🙂

This is probably the least sensible thing I've seen here.

I am a pro and my Canon 1D Mark II takes both CF and SD cards. Given that the SD cards are faster (see Rob Galbraith's tests), I use them exclusively. Just an FYI...
Matthew

The fastest cards I've seen (both CF and SD) are the Lexar x133 and Sandisk Ultra III which advertise 20MB per second sequential read and write speed. They advertise this as a MINIMUM but I haven't seen any reports suggesting they work quiker than this.

FireWire 400 is rated at 400 megaBITS per second (50 megaBYTES per second), so there is plenty of spare bandwidth/speed whatever you want to call it, using a Firewire 400 card reader.

Using a 256 MB/sec Expresscard 34 won't speed anything up until the media cards themselves can read and write at anything faster than 50MB/sec. To take Expresscard 34 to the max it would take a Lexar x1700 speed card - THAT would be fast, but then the cameras would have to speed up their writing too.

My maths may be wrong, and I'm not tech guru who understands much of this, but from what I can work out a firewire 400 card reader is currently the fastest way to transfer images to your computer from the fastest cards on the market.

Having said that I'd rather like it if Apple would build in a mega fast card reader into the MacBookPro so I know, no matter what card I end up using in the future, I'm transferring it the fastest possible way to my Mac.