I just bought Hoodman’s new FireWire RAW CF card reader and have to say it rocks. I’d been using a previous Hoodman RAW USB 2 reader for the past couple of years, and while faster than most other USB card readers I’d tried, the thing doesn’t hold a candle to this new FireWire reader.
For my first test of the reader it moved 90 full high res RAW files from my SanDisk card in less than a minute. The reader boasts download speeds of 42MB per second!
As the megapixels (and files sizes) on digital cameras continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger (my Canon 5D M2 is up to 21 megapixel per frame now), getting these large images off of your camera faster and faster becomes more of a task.
Don’t be confused by Hoodman’s “RAW” moniker on this product. It’s just a name and the card handles both RAW and JPG format images. But they should probably rename this product simply to RAW SPEED. The reader comes with a standard FireWire 800 connection which is native on my MacBook Pro. It also has an adapter that comes with it if you need to use it with a FireWire 400 card. Of course, since you are all about speed though you’ll want to use that faster FireWire 800 connection.
No more waiting around while cards offload. This reader makes offloading your images a snap, getting you your empty cards back as quickly as possible to keep you shooting and shooting and shooting. The jump from USB to FireWire 800 speeds make this upgrade a pretty damn good one to make. I also find that frequently I’m using all of my USB 2 ports on my MacBook Pro and so I don’t have to unplug anything else to keep it going.
