Compact Flash Cards for the E-1

[The Trooper]

The E-1 uses Compact Flash (CF) cards. Up to which version of CF card does the E-1 work best? I currently use SanDisk Extreme III (200x) 4Gb and 8GB versions.
I always shoot using the RAW format which means a large file has to be written to the card. A single shot takes a few seconds to store onto the card, but if I use a sequence of shots, taking it to the maximum of 12, it takes ages for them all to get stored on the card.
So I'm wondering if the E-1 can use the CF Extreme III efficiently or should I upgrade to another version? I see that there are versions IV (300x) and Extreme Pro (600x).
Would I also need to upgrade the firmware on the E-1 at all?
Anyone's view or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[JohnGG]

Re: Compact Flash Cards for the E-1

I have been using a couple of desperately slow 1GB Toshiba cards and a couple of 50x 2GB Kingstons in my E-1. The Kingstons are appreciably faster than the Toshibas. I use Sandisk Extreme III 4GB cards in my E-3 so, prompted by your question, I thought I'd see how one of those compared with the Kingstons in the E-1.

I did a rather un-scientific test by taking a series of single shots with both E-1/Kingston 50x and E-1/Sandisk Extreme III, timing the writing of the image by observing the second hand of my watch while the card activity light flickered. I also took a couple of shots with the E-3/Sandisk Extreme III as a control. In the E-1 both the Kingston and the Sandisk took between 3 and 4 seconds to write the image whereas the E-3 took 1 to 2 seconds to write to the Sandisk. Both cameras were shooting RAW, the E-3 images generally being about 9MB compared to the E-1s 10MB files.

I think the conclusion to draw from this admittedly crude test is that the E-1is the limiting factor here, not the CF card and you are unlikely to see any speed-up by going to faster cards

Cheers,

JohnGG