Home > Consumer Reviews > Kingston Elite Pro 8 GB 133x CompactFlash Memory Card CF/8GB-S2

Brief evaluation:
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The Kingston Elite Pro 8 GB 133x CompactFlash Memory Card CF/16GB-S2 offers a large amount of storage and, when used with an SLR camera that takes mostly single shots with occasional 3-frame bursts and rare 'continuous shooting', it appears to perform well.

To the extent that the CF technology advantages and disadvantages are understood and accepted - low cost per gigabyte, relatively slow speed, issues with numerous erase/write operations on the same block of data, the Elite can be rated as a good price/performance compromise.

For an slightly better price per Gigabite, consider the larger 16GB size.

Briefly, the main features are (more detailed explanations follow below):

- stores 2000+ pictures taken at 10M/fine JPEG
- average speed for a CF card
- relatively inexpensive
- should not be reformatted and reused when full
- may be incompatible with cameras that format their cards as FAT16

Evaluation and my rating:
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- I find the card to be the perfect storage medium for my Sony Alpha D-SLR camera.
- I like the large storage - thousands of photos - and I find the speed to be adequate for my needs.
- I am not bothered by the limited number of erase/write cycles the CF cards support because I am not likely to perform lots of deletions. In fact, I am planning to keep the card as an archive medium once it's full rather than reformat it and reuse it.
- The card 'average' speed is mitigated by its low price. My current camera would not be able to take advantage of a faster card. Those who need more speed should seek CF cards rated 266x or 300x but be prepared to pay a lot more for the same amount of storage.

Considering all of the above, my rating for this card is a 5-star.

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Read below only if additional details are needed.

General background on CF cards:
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Since most cameras support more than one standard, I thought it would be helpful to write a few words on the CF cards from the point of view of a camera user. Full information is easy to find online.

The relatively cheap cost 'per gigabyte' and the technology makes the CF cards well suited for D-SLR use but not recommended as replacement media for hard disks or any devices that require intense, random I/O. The CompactFlash technology is not designed to support 'many' random writes, the way a hard disk is. The card data blocks tend to 'wear out' if they are written to many times and, eventually, the card's ability to store data reliably may decrease.

Not many computers and/or laptop come with a CF interface these days. When one's own computer/laptop lacks a CF interface, 'CF to...' adapters are available or the camera's own facilities can be used to transfer the data out. This should not be as big of a problem as it may seem because nearly all D-SLR cameras do allow transfers out through a USB cable.


My frame of reference:
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I purchased this 8GB CF card for my Sony A-100 SLR camera. This card will be used by one of my kids to store his A-100 projects. In the past, I've used a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive. My discussing this card is going to be within the context of the A-100 camera using the card and a number of laptops, a PS3 console and one desktop on which the data would be transferred.


Performance:
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The 133x rating places this card somewhere in the middle as far a CF cards speeds is concerned, indicating 20MB/s. For the sake of comparison, the 300x rated cards have a 45MB/s data transfer speed.

After the initial format, the camera indicated that it had room for about 2000 pictures at 10M/fine resolution. Past experience with a 4GB Microdrive that's almost full shows that the estimated figure is likely to be exceeded and I may be able to have as many as 5-6000 photos.

On the same platform (the Sony A-100 D-SLR), the Kingston Elite Pro was consistently faster when compared to the Hitachi 4GB Microdrive. The 3-shot bursts and the continuous shooting seem to be advancing at a 2-3 frames per second clip while shooting 'large' 10.4 megapixel photos. When in continuous mode, I did not notice a slow down after taking about 20 shots. Again, when compared to the Hitachi Microdrive, scrolling on the camera was marginally faster and so was zooming.

Moving the data out of the card appeared to be significantly faster than the Microdrive's both when directly plugged into a PS3 or desktop CF interface or when transferred out of the camera through s USB cable.

It should be noted that the card is designed to support the FAT32 file system. This presented no problems for my Sony Alpha. The card was quickly formatted as FAT32 by the camera and 7GB were available for storage. Both the PS3 and the PC recognized the camera as a 7GB external drive. My understanding is that some D-SLRs will attempt to use FAT16 and may not be able to handle a 16GB card at all.

The card passed the following tests successfully:
- 3-shots bursts
- continuous shooting
- single shots
- erase individual and blocks of pictures
- data transfer through a CF/Microdrive interface


Interfaces:
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The CF standard, while popular with D-SLR camera users, is no longer preferred for other uses. None of our three laptops Sony Vaio, Toshiba Satellite, Thinkpad T60 had a CF/Microdrive port. Our 2 year old, $[...] e-Machines PC did have one and so did our 'classic' 60GB PS3.

I was able to transfer data out to the PS3 and the eMachines home computer through the CF/Microdrive interface and to the other laptops by connecting the camera to the computers via a USB cable.

I cannot say much about the longevity of this CF card - as I got it recently. Nonetheless, this CF card works just as fast as my Sandisk UltraII and Extreme CF cards. Great price on it too!

I'm using this card with a Canon 10D DSLR. While I really like the storage capacity of this card (my readout never drops below 999 pictures remaining on the card, shooting Large/Fine JPGs), at the same time, I can't believe how slow it is compared to other CF cards I've used.

The first day I used this card (after formatting it in-camera), I decided to shoot RAW. My buffer would continually fill up, and I would have to wait a while for it to clear. I was not shooting high-speed sports photography or anything else quite so demanding. Also, while the camera is writing to the card, none of the settings functions are available. Occasionally, I would take a shot, realize I had a setting wrong and try to fix it before I even look at the picture. All of my previous cards have been fast enough that the data is written to the card before I get a chance to fiddle with my settings.

With this card, my camera ends up having to reboot itself because it got confused about whether it's supposed to finish writing the file, or access a camera setting. Several times, this has corrupted the file.

Never before, in the roughly 6 years I've owned my camera, have I ever experienced a corrupted image.

Now, I admit that part of this is my fault, and the camera's fault. Also, I do not have any experience with any other 8GB CF cards. Maybe all 8GB CF cards are similarly lethargic, but I highly doubt it.

Ever since, I've gone back to shooting JPGs instead of RAW. I still run into the data corruption once in a while, but it's taking some time to train myself out of my habits.

Overall, I would not recommend this card. It is just too slow to keep up with high-speed environments. It may work in a studio setting where you have ultimate control over your environment, but I wouldn't recommend it for photojournalistic shoots in the field.

[ UPDATE: Make sure you format the card in the camera. After doing so, this card is working much better. The following was written when using the mem card straight out of the package (it was pre-formatted). ]

I bought 2 of these a few days ago, before reading the reviews here. After reading the reviews, I decided to see how it compared to my previous 2Gb Kingston 50x card.

Using my Canon Rebel XT camera, with picture setting on Large/Fine (8 megapixel photos) and in burst mode I was able to take 13 consecutive photos with this new card, and the camera completed writing to the flash card about 43 seconds after first pressing the shutter button. So yes, it will work fine for everyday shooting.
I then tried the older 50x card which I probably bought sometime around 2005. With it, I was able to take 16 consecutive photos (before it started lagging), and it completed writing all those to flash after 14 seconds. (I did both measurements 3 different times, and they all turned out pretty close)

So to make a comparison - for the 13 picts in 43 seconds, would be equivalent to 16 in 53 seconds. So the 50x card will write 16 photos in 14 seconds, the new 133x card will write 16 photos in 53 seconds.

Therefore the new card is about 4 times SLOWER than the older 50x card. Maybe someone at Kingston made a mistake and these were really 13.3x, not 133x??

The only plus to this card is its low cost and large storage size.

UPDATE: After formatting the 133x card in the camera, it is now performing comparable to the 50x card. Which that could indicate its a limitation with the camera memory interface at this point. I would up the star rating, but seems that I can't do it after the review was initially written.

I use a Nikon D-200 for Travel Photos and shoot mostly RAW and edit my keepers in Photoshop.
the card served my purposes.. I had no problems with it and you couldn't beat the price for that much storage...I would buy another.