Hoodman Review – CompactFlash Cards and Other Gadgets
Hoodman CompactFlash Memory Cards
- Available in on the Hoodman site – $49 and up
- Check the latest prices on Hoodman for 4 GB to 32 GB and beyond???
- Note: These cards are more expensive than comparable cards, but you get what you pay for… see the review below
Hoodman Review
Hoodman makes all kinds of stuff, but I know them most for their memory cards and their HoodLoupe. I’ll discuss both here briefly.
Hoodman CompactFlash Memory Card Review
Okay. These cards are awesome. I use them now, and you know that I only review stuff that I use. You won’t see any reviews here for Lexar or SanDisk or any of the others… they just don’t stack up.
In fact, I went through a number of years before I really started to care much about the manufacturers of the cards. This is kind of embarrassing to admit now, but it is true. I started paying attention as soon as my Lexar card failed during a very important photoshoot in New Zealand. All. Data. Gone.
I sent out a Tweet about this, and then, all of a sudden, all of my smart photographer-friends in-the-know told me I really need to check out Hoodman. And now I see why!
These cards are fast – rocket-fast. I should call Schrödinger’s card, since they seem to actually have the photo inside of them before I even look.
The cards I use are RAW @ 675X 100 MB/second. This is supposed to be faster than all other manufacturers, and this certainly does seem to hold true!
Hoodman Failure Rate
Here is an amazing stat I saw on their website. They have had ZERO failures worldwide in 3 years and counting. I can only assume they are not lying… since it’s hard to lie about that sort of thing on the internet nowadays. I know none of mine have failed yet!
This is a big deal, actually. You don’t realize how life-crushing it can be to lose a card’s worth of data. You never will see the exact same thing again, so it’s like that moment is lost forever. If you are like me, and each click of the shutter is a very personal thing, then losing all of that info because of a bad card can be a real heartbreaker.
I’ve heard that some other manufacturers have awful quality control when it comes to checking their products. Some of these Chinese companies will open up the factories “after hours” to go in and use spare/rejected parts to make new cards, which they sell on the grey market. Some of those products get mixed into the “good” products here in the states and consumers have no idea.
HoodLoupe Review
Available in on the Hoodman site – $79
- Check the latest prices on Hoodman — other accessories cost more
I also have a HoodLoupe that I carry around. This is a small rubber eyepiece that creates a “mobile darkroom” so you can look at your LCD with perfect lighting. It also magnifies a bit, which is useful even though my eyesight is pretty good.
In practice, I’ve found this device to be quite handy. Of course, it is really only useful in the daytime or at sunset, when you are dealing with a bright sun that makes your LCD as useless as using a computer outside! The loupe itself is kind of big, so it is not exactly a compact thing that you can hideaway. It has a lanyard attached, so you can hang it around your neck. It does look a little bit dorky, I gotta admit… but, I don’t really care about that sort of thing. I’m already carrying around a serious camera, so this only increases my dorkitude by 5%.
I often show this thing off to friends when they are nearby. The universal reaction is “I gotta get one!” — and that is cool… anyway, I certainly recommend this. It’s not a “must-have”, but it is certainly a “really-cool-to-have”!
[...] have put up a full Hoodman Review here on the site. They have two products – compact flash cards and something called a [...]
I had a 16GB Hoodman memory card fail. So it’s not zero. But, since I live just a few miles away, I drove to their facility and they replaced it after confirming it had inexplicably died. They said that failure ware typically a result of physical damage, which mine did not have. They couldn’t have been nicer. I love their products!!
My wife and I went on our honeymoon with three memory cards for my camera. One of those was a large (at the time), brand-new (literally; it arrived in the mail one day before we left) card, and several small no-name cards. We were at Versailles during the trip when the big card, mostly full, just died. The only good thing about it was that my laptop was at the hotel, and I was able to write a perl script to rescue most of the pictures that night. But the card lost close to half its capacity, and I had to ration my pictures the rest of that day. (Plus, I did lose some of the pictures.) Ugh!
Just wondering, the hoodman loupe is pretty useless to somebody who has to was glasses/spectacles, right?
Joe l the Hoodman has a diopter which is */- 3 and is fine for me.
Thanks — Joe – yeah I wear glasses and it still works just fine.
Joe and Scott:
Go to the Hoodman site and check out PhotoFrames, you will love them. They are glasses built for photographers.
oops!! I meant Joe and Trey..
Many thanks for the tips regarding the CF cards. Looks good but a bit too expensive for me (I’m not a Pro).
More interesting to me than a “zero failure” rate–which Tim has shown to be more marketing hyberbole than fact–would be how many cards they have in use. I suspect that Hoodman’s cards make up just a teeny-tiny percentage of all cards used. I suspect that many more Sandisk and Lexar cards have been used without failure than Hoodman has even manufactured.
I’m not trying to bash Hoodman. I have their loupe. I have their eyecups for my cameras. Both are fantastic products. I have no doubt that their memory cards are good, too. Zero failure? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing is perfect, regardless of what their sales and marketing departments want you to believe.
Eric
Thanks all – yes it could be hyperbole… I agree they are a VERY small player…. their total market share is not a big concern of mine though. I’ve been using their cards now for a bit and I have had no probs.
There is no question that Hoodman makes great products. My Eye Cup really helps block out light (and prevents me from smashing my long eyelashes against the camera), it is also nice that the Eye Cup can attach to the Loupe. As for the Loupe, yes it is a bit dorky to hang around your neck, but Hoodman just released a new product- the Hood Crane. It has made it easier for me to use my Loupe since it attaches to my camera’s hot shoe and can easily be rotated out of the way. As Trey said, you already look dorky with big equipment and lots of accessories, so if an extra product or two helps… why not!