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Canon’s response to 16GB cards in EOS 5D
You can’t make this stuff up (uninformed “support”)— I previously reported that my SanDisk 16GB Extreme III card formats to only 8GB in the EOS 5D, even with the latest firmware update. Here is Canon’s response to my inquiry on the matter
Thank you for your inquiry. We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.
Due to the ever-increasing number of companies manufacturing and selling CompactFlash cards, we cannot test and evaluate all the different brands, sizes, and speeds of cards available in the retail market. Any card with a capacity up to 2048GB that adheres to the Type I or Type II CompactFlash card standards, and is formatted with either a 16 bit (cards up to 2GB) or 32 bit (for cards larger than 2GB) file addressing system, should work in your camera.
Unfortunately, because we have not tested the camera with all speeds, sizes, and brands of CompactFlash cards, we are unable to speculate as to the performance of the camera with a particular card installed, or to recommend a specific type of card.
We hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns.
Thank you for choosing Canon.
Sincerely,
Josh
Technical Support Representative
Canon can’t buy a few SanDisk cards to see if they work in the 5D? From the leader in compact flash cards? I wonder how Canon verified that the latest firmware for the 1Ds series cameras works with 16GB cards, since SanDisk is the only vendor offering them, AFAIK.
Perhaps “Josh” is correct that Compact Flash supports capacities “up to 2048GB” which is two terabytes, a single-disk capacity I hope to see within a few years in my desktop computer.
If he meant 2048MB (2GB), then he might want to refresh his stale knowledge of the current compact flash market, which has long offered both 4GB and 8GB cards, and both of which work in the 5D.
Let’s evaluate the idiotic platitudes in the response:
- “valuing me as a customer” — So long as I just buy their products and don’t actually ask for support which might fall outside the Top 10 Dumb Questions.
- “serving me”, “assisting me”— How exactly did a technically-incorrect canned response serve me?
- “We hope this information is helpful to you” — Hope is the first refuge of the incompetent.
Why won’t companies take responsibility? See yesterday’s blog entry on ATI’s response to the X1900 G5 sleep problem. Technical support is a bouncer-based system.