If you own a LUMIX G9II or S5IIX, a Sigma fp or fp L, a Fujifilm GFX100S II, nearly any Blackmagic camera or Z-Cam cameras, or any camera that supports data over USB-C, whether you shoot photos or videos, you can add support for CFexpress type B media to your camera – a media format that is dramatically cheaper, faster, and higher capacity than SD cards. Let me make that clear – CFexpress type B is a quarter of the cost – or less! – of a fast SD card… ten times faster when copying files off the card… and come in capacities up to eight times higher than the highest speed SD cards. You'll save money, and slash file copy times dramatically. And it's not just for cameras; you could even add CFexpress Type B to your ATEM switcher or RØDECaster Video, your Blackmagic Video Assist, or any device that supports data over USB-C, using this Angelbird Card Reader PKT and these Angelbird CFExpress Type B Gen 4 cards. SD cards… are yesterday's storage.
Alright, so… how? Lots of cameras these days support recording directly to an SSD drive over USB-C. This has become popular because SSD drives are cheaper by leaps and bounds than SD cards, and, much higher capacity. For example, this tiny SSD2GO PKT from Angelbird comes in 2 and 4TB sizes – although many cameras, including all the LUMIX ones, only support up to to 2TB – but at 2TB for 380 dollars (or euros), that's just 19 cents per gigabyte. Meanwhile, a 512GB SD card – the biggest V90 rated SD card you can buy – is between five and six hundred dollars, depending on the manufacturer, so 98 cents to $1.17 per GB – that's five to seven times the cost of SSD. And SD cards are much slower – rated at just 300 MB per second, vs 1600 MB per second for this SSD. Now, that super-high performance doesn't really matter in most cameras for recording – unless you're shooting high bitrate ProRes, or internal RAW on a GH7 or the new LUMIX S1RII – but when it comes time to offload that media, the difference is – in real world tests – huge. A 30 minute file copy from an SD card is a sub-ten minute copy from this SSD drive. That's over triple the speed. Multiply that by multiple cards and multiple cameras on a shoot – that's a lot of multiplication – and the speed advantage for copying files is undeniable. And this isn't just about video. When we get to the test results, I compared capturing and copying still photos, as well. It'll surprise you.
But I started this video talking about CFexpress Type B, not SSD. So what's the connection? Well, any camera that can record to an SSD over USB-C, can also record to CFexpress Type B, using this little Angelbird Card Reader PKT. CFexpress type B is more expensive than SSD – at 30 cents per GB it costs over 50% more than SSD – but, it's also nearly triple the speed of SSD, which was already triple the speed of SD, and still less than a quarter of the cost of SD media. That file copy that'd take 30 minutes from SD cards will take just three minutes from a CFexpress type B card. So to line them up, by the numbers, you've got the biggest SD card at 98¢ to $1.17 per GB, SSD at 19¢ per GB, and CFexpress type B at 30¢ per GB. Then comparing real world copy speeds – forget about the specs, these are actual video file copy tests – 287 MB/s for SD, 960 MB/s for SSD, and 2,795 MB/s for CFexpress type B.
BUT… there's a caveat for that last number. A big one, really. We also need to consider the performance… not of the card… but of the card reader.
Let's take a step back. I'm using a 2023 MacBook Pro M2 Max. These ports are combo Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 ports. That's up to 40 gbps of bandwidth. This Angelbird card reader supports USB 3.2, 2x2. USB 3.2 is only 10gbps… “only”… and what that 2x2 means is that it supports dual lane transfer, so you should be able to get up to 20 gbps performance from this reader… buuuut, the Mac doesn't support dual lane. Some Windows machines do, so if you're a PC user, score one for you, but Macs do not. That even includes the new Macs with Thunderbolt 5 support – still no dual lane USB. So with this reader, on a Mac, you're limited to just 10 gpbs. But, this is still a great little reader, and lemme tell you why. First, it's tiny. It's actually the same size as this little SSD drive, which means it very perfectly fits in this PKT Mounting Bracket from Angelbird. The reader even has a magnetic door cover on it to protect the media, to keep the dirt out of it, but also to keep it from accidentally ejecting while you're shooting. The included USB-C 4.0 cable – so, it is future proofed – is removable, even though it doesn't look like it is. Check this out… it slids out perfectly from inside of here, and this is NOT proprietary – I can replace this with any standard USB-C cables. Here's my USB-C 4 cable from Kondor Blue, and that slides in perfectly. It even has a write-protect switch, making the media read-only. You can see that here, on the back. I'm gonna talk about why that matters, along with some other really interesting facts, at the end of this video – anyway, THIS tiny reader, with this media, is how you add CFexpress Type B to any camera or device that supports data over USB-C. But if the read performance of the CFexpress type B reader is basically the same as the SSD, limited by USB 3.2, then this makes no sense, because SSD is still cheaper. Well, it makes not sense until… you combine this card with a reader from another manufacturer. You may recall from an earlier video that when I compared a bunch of media speeds, one of the products I had was the OWC USB4 CFexpress type B reader, where I got 2,400 MB/s, or 18.6 Gbps copy speeds. So the solution for the overall best possible performance and experience is to put a PKT reader on your camera, and an OWC reader on your desk. Now, obviously you're initially spending more money, but for many of you watching I know that performance is what matters most, even if it costs more. And of course these readers are a one-time purchase; in fact you can buy a 1 TB CFexpress card, and the Angelbird reader, AND the OWC reader, for less than one 512GB V90 SD card. I ran a ton of tests, and I was tempted to use the “AJA System Test Lite” app as it was recommended to me for media tests, however I found the tests inconsistent and not applicable to real world results. I couldn't care less what the number on the box or what some speed test app tells me the performance is. What matters, is real world performance. So, I shot about 40 minutes of varying size video clips and copied those to several cards, and shot over 3,000 photos to those cards, and then compared copying times. Let's start with the video. And by the way, I'll post these charts on my Discord server, which channel members have access to, so you can review them there easily. If you click that JOIN button down by the SUBSCRIBE button, you can learn all about channel membership.
Using one of the fastest SD cards and SD card readers on the market, 42 video files taking 237 GB of space took 13 minutes and 46 seconds to copy to the internal SSD on my MacBook Pro. The same content took just 4 minutes and 7 seconds to copy from the Angelbird SSD2GO PKT drive. Then, I put the new Angelbird CFExpress Type B Gen 4 card into the Angelbird PKT reader, and that copy time was… actually slightly slower than the SSD, at 4 minutes 27 seconds, so 890 MB/s – but that's still 3x as fast as SD. But then I put that same Angelbird card in the OWC USB4 reader, and that copy only took a minute and 25 seconds. I actually also re-tested the OWC media that I did that video on a few months ago, using the OWC reader, and confirmed my earlier tests; it is slightly slower, at 18.3 Gbps, than this brand new Angelbird CFExpress Type B Gen 4 card, making the Angelbird the fastest I've tested so far. So… 237 GB of media, and under a minute and a half to get it into the computer. Wow.
Now let's talk about still photography! Unlike with video, where the fastest write times you'll ever need is fixed by the highest bitrate your camera records, with modern cameras that shot massive still photography frame rates, with huge RAW files, and never have a big enough buffer to hold more than a few seconds of shooting, the write speed of your memory card could make the difference between getting the shot… and, not. Listen; this is the G9II. It shoots 75 frames per second… and now the buffer is full. Take my finger off, wait a moment… shoot some more… get a few more frames, but then the buffer fills again. I can't shoot more until the buffer is clear. So, here's the shooting tests that I did. I used the LUMIX G9II, which shoots 25 megapixel RAW photos at 75 frames per second.
The first test was to see how many photos I could shoot before the camera stopped, and then how long it'd take for the buffer to COMPLETELY clear – meaning that the write indicator on the LCD and the red “writing” light stopped flashing. No matter the media, the camera always stopped at 200 frames. I dug into this and the reason is that while you're shooting, the buffer is filling, but the camera isn't clearing out the buffer until you stop shooting. This is for LUMIX cameras; no idea how it works with other manufacturers. So no matter what, the first stop is always at 200 frames. You can start shooting again almost immediately, as you heard, but of course you'll fill the buffer right back up. So, the faster the buffer can dump, the better.
The SD card took about 58 seconds to clear the buffer. That's just under a minute from when I took my finger off the shutter until the writing light stopped blinking. Switching to USB, both to SSD and to CFexpress type B, the buffer took 39 seconds to clear – so about 33% faster. The benefit of that becomes clear for the next test – how many photos could I shoot in one minute? This is the kind of question that matters when shooting any kind of action. I tested this a few ways; filling the buffer first, and not… waiting for it to mostly clear, and not… then shooting more – the results were always the same. The important part here was ensure that I was shooting frames up until the clock hit one minute – I wanted the buffer to be full at the end of that one minute timer, to maximize how many photos I could possibly capture in 60 seconds. And the results on the SD card was a maximum of 400 frames captured, while the SSD and CFexpress card were just under 500 frames captured. That is a big difference! Nearly 100 extra frames per minute when shooting over USB. That's a LOT more opportunities to catch the shot.
Now, the copy tests. I know that for many of you, how long it takes to copy photos from your memory cards to your computer is irrelevant. But this is for those of you who are counting seconds from getting off the sportsball game, the breaking news event, whatever it is – and getting those files onto your computer. I have a friend who shoots at the Olympics and for every Games, he's upgrading to the absolute latest and fastest media solutions, in an effort to get his photos up to the wire first. So, what do we got?
My test had almost 3200 photos taking up 124 GB. To copy from the SD card took 7 minutes and ten seconds, while the SSD drive cleared off in just 2 minutes and 28 seconds, and the Angelbird CFexpress type B card in the OWC USB4 reader emptied in just one minute and six seconds. From seven minutes to one minute for over 3,000 photos copied. From nearly 14 minutes to under a minute and a half for a quarter terabyte of video. So it's pretty obvious that if you CAN add CFexpress type B or even an SSD drive to your camera… you should. You'll save both time, and money. And, be shooting to a better media format. CFexpress cards are far more durable than SD.
I promised to share some interesting tidbits, starting with the lock button. Why does the PKT reader, and the SSD drive, and in fact all of the Angelbird card readers, have a lock, or read-only switch on them? While it's a statistically rare occurrence, media can be rendered unreadable by the computer that you connect it to. Have you ever seen where you insert media and your computer starts generating thumbnails for your photos and videos? That's the computer writing data to the card. Sometimes PCs, and even Macs as well, can read the partition table on a card as “damaged” and try to fix it – even though there's nothing wrong with it, and in the process, potentially render the card unreadable. This physical switch locks the media so it can't be changed. You know how lots of SD cards have that tiny little “lock” switch on them? Apparently, that's almost useless. That doesn't change anything on the card itself; it's supposed to just tell the reader to not write to it – but most readers don't support that feature! So, while the Angelbird Card Reader PKT may only be USB 3.2, and on a Mac only single lane, it is still the most secure way to get your files from the card to the computer. If you don't need the additional performance of the OWC USB4 reader, this little guy is a really good purchase. And I can promise you that if Angelbird comes out with a USB4 reader, I'll absolutely be checking that out.
A really clever detail on all Angelbird media is that they have no stickers. Most memory cards have a sticker on them, which can peel off. Getting that stuck in your camera would be… no bueno. The Angelbirds are all laser etched instead of having a sticker. And, you can have free custom engraving on just about anything you buy from Angelbird, if you buy direct. Look, they laser etched “PhotoJoseph” on the SSD, and on this sweet CFexpress type B card holder. Check this thing out. Really robust, holds four cards, and by the way, these cards come in 512 GB, 1 TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes. For my LUMIX people, 2TB is still the maximum you can use both for internal and USB media; other brand shooters – be sure to check before you buy that your camera supports 4TB. These cards can withstand incredible temperature and humidity ranges, get firmware updates, include a free data recovery service, are magnet and x-ray proof, and have lots of other impressive specs worth digging into on their website if you want to nerd out about it.
That's all for me. Now check out this video on shooting ProRes RAW internal on the LUMIX GH7 – one of the few situations where you NEED CFexpress type B speeds to capture up to 4.2 Gbps raw video internally.
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