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Photo Forum / General Photo Topics / UK Photography / December 2003Compact Flash Cards ?
Hello, I am am very new (today !) to digital photography. The camera I was seduced into buying this morning (Minolta Dimage 7i) came with a 16mb card, which I have now found to be useless. I am now considering a Lexar 512mb card. Here is the question. Like film, does the make of the card have any influence on final image quality ? and are Lexar are decent brand. Should I have stuck to my rangefinder cameras and FP4...................and what is RAW ? Thanks, Church Yard Yew. > does the make of the card have any influence on final image quality ? No, with digital it's either there or not (on or off). There's no difference in quality between cards, just speed of transfer and this varies between makes of cards and makes of camera ...see http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/ > and are Lexar a decent brand. Yes they are a quality brand, also Sandisk are good too. > and what is RAW ? It's the image stored as it comes from the CCD, no compression, no modification. It allows you to store the original image for you to modify and save (compress) later, at the expense of a large file taking up your valuable Compactflash space. Assuming you are in the UK, try the following for good prices, I have used both these suppliers. http://www.warehouseexpress.com/ http://www.photoglossy.com/acatalog/PhotoGlossy_Sells_Compact_Flash_57.html HTH Andy McQuat -=Plane Mad=- > Lots of words enquiring about CF Cards In addition to Andy's useful reply, the Rob Galbraith site also carries useful info on CF cards ('performance for different CF cards in different cameras' wise) http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007 This site gives you lots of basic info on how CF works http://www.compactflash.org/ Hope these help, happy picture taking :-) Dave B.  SignatureTo email, first remove 'yourpants' if you get my drift > > Lots of words enquiring about CF Cards > > In addition to Andy's useful reply, the Rob Galbraith site also carries > useful info on CF cards ('performance for different CF cards in > different cameras' wise) > http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007 .... but Rob Galbraith doesn't include the Minolta 7 type of camera (or, as far as I can see, any Minolta) in his list. www.7dayshop.com sells CF much cheaper than the locations cited by previous correspondents. 7dayshop's 128Mb price is GBP17.99, the other sites are charging GBP28.99. 128Mb is a decent size for a 7i, because saved as a moderately compressed JPEG, the best resolution the camera can do puts around 55 photos on this size of card. Something else to look out for is that rechargeable AA batteries are different lengths with different brands. 7dayshop sells some of the shorter ones (and they are a good price). Jessops' own brand are of the longer type. The longer ones don't go comfortably in the 7i's battery compartment. The worst point about 7dayshop is that they are very slow. Someone wrote that they ought to be renamed 14dayshop and I agree! If you have USB 2.0, read the CF cards using a USB2.0 reader. The camera itself is USB1, and this or a USB1 card reader makes downloading a full 128Mb card pretty slow - worse for large capacities. The PCMCIA adaptors are also a lot faster than USB1. I have a number of CF cards of different brands, and cannot tell the difference between them in use (other than in capacity). Eddie B. I'd also add that buying several smaller (eg 128m) capacity cards makes more sense than one whopper. The 'economies of scale' aren't that significant in price terms, and if you did lose/nack/accidentally reformat a big card then that's the whole trip gone - if you took 4 128m ones then you've still got 75% of your pictures (assuming you don't drop your rucsac at 24,000ft on something large and himalayan, as one of my mates did...). > > > Lots of words enquiring about CF Cards > > [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > > Eddie B. > I'd also add that buying several smaller (eg 128m) capacity cards makes more > sense than one whopper. The 'economies of scale' aren't that significant in > price terms, and if you did lose/nack/accidentally reformat a big card then > that's the whole trip gone - if you took 4 128m ones then you've still got > 75% of your pictures (assuming you don't drop your rucsac at 24,000ft on > something large and himalayan, as one of my mates did...). Aha, I knew there was some reason I had several 128Mb cards, and nothing larger, in my collection of CF cards! There aren't any economies of scale after 128Mb, which is the sweet spot on price. Using the 7dayshop prices, the following table gives the price per Mb. The 128Mb card is the most economical - although there isn't much in between 2x128 and 1x256. size price (GBP) Price per Mb 32 9.45 0.295313 64 11.95 0.186719 128 17.99 0.140547 256 36.19 0.141367 512 75.99 0.148418 1024 151.99 0.148428 2252.8 199.99 0.088774 The last entry is the 2.2Gb micro hard disk, which is rather more economical than, but is not as robust as, a solid-state CF card. Why do people spend all that money on those data safes, which are more expensive per Mb than more CF cards? And why are people using those USB memory pens, when CF is so cheap? Eddie B Another point when talking about the speed of a card, is that you'll probably not notice any difference in the camera write/read speed in real terms, although there may be a few ms (milliseconds) difference on paper. You will notice any speed difference in downloading your images to your PC, especially if you use a USB2 of Firewire interfaced reader. HTH Andy McQuat -=Plane Mad=- > Hello, > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Church Yard Yew. OOPS! Typo should read "or Firewire" > Another point when talking about the speed of a card, is that you'll > probably not notice any difference in the camera write/read speed in real [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > > > Church Yard Yew. What does your camera manual say about image resolution & approx no. of pics per storage card. Why didn't u check more info before making your purchase anyway? ive >Hello, > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > >Church Yard Yew. |
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