Continuous writing onto the CF card

[oshmaid]

Dear all, I have two memory cards in the two slots of my Mark III.

Is there a way (or a setting) that will continuously write onto my CF card - which is my backup card? What I ideally want to do is, when it gets filled up, to just keep writing over the images without having to format the card and delete everything. Or is my only option to erase everything and start fresh?

Bottom line: Is there a way to just continuously write over top of images once CF card gets full or is my only option to format and erase everything?

Thank you in advance.

O

[jrhoffman75]

I haven't seen that setting on any of my various EOD DSLRs. Seems like it would be an invitation to a very sad scenario.

[oshmaid]

Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate it.

[TCampbell]

My immedaite question becomes:  Why would you ever want to do this?

Several possible reasons spring to mind... but all of them make me fear you are doing something you might come to regret (or making things more difficult to manage then they need to be.)

The short answer is no... That would sort of be like asking your computer operating system vendor to start deleting the oldest files on your hard drive if you run out of disk space.  That's a proverbial game of russion roulette that is likely to delete something you really didn't want to lose.

After unloading my cards into the computer, I always wipe the card (I never leave images on the camera cards after they've been successfully imported.)  Also, when wiping the card, you can erase images, but never do a "format" in the computer (and if you do, immediately re-format using the camera.  Basically you only want to use a card in a camer that was formatted in THAT particular camera.)

The 5D III does support extremely large cards.  SD and CF cards normally use the FAT32 filesystem format for card sizes up to 16GB.  Cards which are 32GB and larger are now usually formatted with the exFAT filesystem format.  It's similar to FAT except it eliminates the old 4GB maximum size for any single file and is also better at managing space on larger filesystems.  The Canon 5D III supports exFAT (many older cameras do not).

[oshmaid]

Hi There, thank you for replying. I hear your point. My immediate/quick answer is... Why not have a setting for this (even if it's not for all)?

My primary card is the small SD memory card. I pull images from it. The backup CF card is just a "catch all" card, that if current small card becomes corrupted, I can reach and retreive images on the CF. And I'm completely comfortable with continuous over-writing on the CF card because it's a back up. I never really take it out of the camera unless it's truly needed as a back up to my immediate failure of the SF card (for the current job). Therefore, if it keeps writing I'm fine with that.

I can of course format the CF card when it gets filled, but then I keep thinking that perhaps I'd like to re-visit some old images from the older jobs one day (as I don't save ALL my shots). I know it may sound a bit nutty to some, but all I hoped for, was an option to do this (which didn't have to be exercised by anyone, unless they wanted to).

Cheers,

O

[RobertTheFat]

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@oshmaid wrote:

Hi There, thank you for replying. I hear your point. My immediate/quick answer is... Why not have a setting for this (even if it's not for all)?

My primary card is the small SD memory card. I pull images from it. The backup CF card is just a "catch all" card, that if current small card becomes corrupted, I can reach and retreive images on the CF. And I'm completely comfortable with continuous over-writing on the CF card because it's a back up. I never really take it out of the camera unless it's truly needed as a back up to my immediate failure of the SF card (for the current job). Therefore, if it keeps writing I'm fine with that.

I can of course format the CF card when it gets filled, but then I keep thinking that perhaps I'd like to re-visit some old images from the older jobs one day (as I don't save ALL my shots). I know it may sound a bit nutty to some, but all I hoped for, was an option to do this (which didn't have to be exercised by anyone, unless they wanted to).

Cheers,

O

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Experiment a bit until you determine exactly how your 5D3 behaves when you remove one of the two cards. When you've done that, I can almost guarantee that you'll change your mind about that "feature".