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A Digital Camera Question... (1 Viewer)

Richard Travale

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I am looking at higher capacity CF cards for my digital camera. I am looking in the 128-256meg range. I have noticed that some cards like Lexar offer 12x cards. I was wondering what the difference would be between say a regular Sandisk 128meg card and a Lexar 12x 128meg card? Would it be worth the extra $40Cad for the 12x Lexar?

Another question is, speed aside, will the pictures be better with the Lexar card as opposed to a Sandisk card?
 

Jay H

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Speed aside, there should be absolutely no difference in quality between a 12x CF card or anything slower. As long as the 0's read as 0's and the 1's read as 1's there should be no difference. The 12x has to do with speed writing to the CF from the camera itself and/or from the computer. But interesting, you should check out this for a blurb on the differences between CF manufacturers and stuff, quite interesting:
http://www.mittoni.com/reviews/SanDiskCF.html
Jay
 

Cam S

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Actually, JUST like hard drives, speed DOES matter. I've used Sandisk cards over the years and they are great cards, very durable and can take abuse. I just recently bought 2 new Lexar 256mb 12speed cards for 85 bucks each, Canadian, yes you heard me that cheap! I got a G3 at the same time and I do in fact notice a difference between the Sandisks and the Lexar's, mainly when the buffer empties itself onto the memory card, not really when transferring over to the computer. Camera's like the Canon G3, Sony F717, Olympus C-5050z and other high end camera's need fast memory cards, as their file sizes can be anywhere from 1 meg, up to 3+ megs, and 6+ megs for Raw type files. If there is a huge difference in price between the 12 speed Lexar and the sandisk, then it's up to you, but if the difference is small, I highly recommend a 12x-24x speed card.
Check out this Compact Flash Card Review over at DPreview.com. They have everything you need to know about Digital's and the Forums are great.
Good luck and happy shooting.
 

Cam S

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Richard, I just noticed your in BC. Try going to Future Shop as they will price match memory cards if you bring in a cutout/printout of the price. They matched my price and gave me 50% off of both my cards, which is how I got them for 85 bucks.
CameraCanada.com has had the best prices for pretty much everything, and Future Shop has had no problems matching their prices when I bring in a print out.
Lexar 256mb 12 Speed CF $212
SANDISK 256 Mb Compact Flash
 

Richard Travale

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Thanks for the tip Cam. The only thing is that the site you posted seems to have prices that are higher than the Futureshop.ca prices.
is $264 @ CameraCanada and only $229 @ Futureshop.
Also, how were you able to get the 50% off? Just haggling?
 

Cam S

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Oh ya that's right Rich, Future shop has that sale right now for the Sandisk 256 meg cards for $160! Go for that then unless you can get the Lexar cards as cheap as that or for the price that I paid for mine. Happy shooting
 

Christ Reynolds

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think i got lucky, using amazon's gold box, i got a sandisk 256 mb card for $48 after shipping. i realize youre talking about $can, but i still think its a pretty good deal. could have turned around and made a substantial profit, but i can now hold over 200 4MP images on my camera now, i'll stick with it.

CJ
 

Jay H

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..but the quality is the same, which to me is the most important. I don't think a digital camera is going to have the same effective shutter speed as a basic 35mm P&S camera due to the electronics, so if you are really looking at doing some serious fast motion pictures one after another, the digital camera probably isn't the best unless you have lots of money to spend or do it at a lower filesize. You should also consider what kind of photos do you take and what kind of camera. Obviously Cam's 4MP camera will take larger filesizes at the least compression than an older 2.1MP with the least compression. Or if you're never taking hires photos, the speed wont be that much a deal.

I have a bunch of Sandisk CF cards and the original Kodak card that came with my older Kodak digicam. Not sure who actually makes the Kodak CF cards but I've haven't had any problems with either.

Jay
 

Cam S

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I don't think a digital camera is going to have the same effective shutter speed as a basic 35mm P&S camera due to the electronics, so if you are really looking at doing some serious fast motion pictures one after another, the digital camera probably isn't the best unless you have lots of money to spend or do it at a lower filesize.
How do you figure that a digital camera won't have similar shutter speeds as a P&S 35mm camera?? Have you read up on any of the higher end digitals such as the Canon G3, Minolta DiMage 7Hi, Sony F717, Olympus C-5050z?? All of those cameras are EXTREMELY adjustable, WAY more adjustable than a P&S 35mm film camera is. Most of those film P&S cameras are just that, P&S, meaning there's is absolutely no adjustment other than the flash, zoom, and the frame size if using APS film. Now as far as I know shutter speed is shutter speed, whether it's 1/60th, 30 seconds, or 1/2000th of a second. The ONLY difference between a 35mm camera SLR, not P&S, is the shutter LAG. This is the time it take for the shutter to start it's action from the time you fully press the shutter release button (not including the half press to focus on the subject). Now this "shutter lag" is hardly noticeable to the average person as it's less than .1 seconds on the higher end digitals. I could see 35mm film being fazed out in the very near future, as digital is becoming more and more cost effective as well as the quality which is darn near up to 35mm standards.
 

Jay H

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Cam, I meant not the actual shutter speed, but the electronics behind it. When you say take a picture with a digicam, there's that little delay, what I believe you are calling the "Lag" where the camera has to write to the storage media, be that a CF or a SSFDC card, or whatever. If you take enough pictures fast enough, sooner or later you'll run out of buffer size while the camera is trying to write to the media. I've haven't ran into this but then I don't use my camera to take action photos. At this point, I don't care if the camera writes 12x faster than the standard because I am not taking action photos where I may have to take alot of photos quickly. So, personally, I would focus on reputation, quality, and price, not really because so-and-so is googleplex faster than Brand X.
Of course, prices being equal, go fot it, but I'm just saying it would not be my sole reason.
:)
Jay
 

Cees Alons

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The difference in delay is the one immediately after the shutter release. The other (possible) delays are camera bounded and not influenced by the (speed of) the memory. If you're not using your photo camera as a video camera, you won't generally have any disadvantage from the (slightly) longer photo storing time. I currently use a Nikon 4500 (>4 Mpixels), before that a Nikon 990 (>3 Mps) and I have always used the Sandisk memory. No problem to me, ever.
(BTW the camera may also be responsible for the actual transfer speed. If the memory is faster than the digital processing allows, having a faster memory won't help at all.)

Cees
 

Cam S

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Cees, yout right about the fact that faster memory cards are a waste with cheaper digital camera's. There really is no point in buy a 12, 16, or 24 speed card, if the fastest you camera to write or read at is 4 speed. So really the more expensive the camera, the faster the memory you'll most likely need. Camera's like the G3, C-5050, F717, etc etc need fast memory, especially DSLR's like the D60, D100 etc etc.
 

Cam S

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It's not really in writing how fast your camera is, and even some more expensive ones are slow. I've used a Casio QV-3500ex and it was sooooo slow. The shot to shot time was like 2-3 seconds. With my G3, in Continuous High Speed Mode I can take 2.5 shots per second and that will take 12 pictures in around 5-6 seconds. The buffer will dump all 12 images in a few seconds, so from the time it's finishes the last shot to the time I can take my next picture is around 3-4 seconds, which I thought was incredibly fast.

To me, the Shot to shot speed (which is the time from when you press the shutter, take the picture, saves it to memory or buffer and your able to press the shutter again) is very important to me, as you can often miss alot of shots if you have to wait a long time in between shots. The memory card doesn't have all that much to do with this time, but mainly the camera's processor and buffer.
 

Thomas Newton

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Have you read up on any of the higher end digitals such as the Canon G3, Minolta DiMage 7Hi, Sony F717, Olympus C-5050z?? All of those cameras are EXTREMELY adjustable, WAY more adjustable than a P&S 35mm film camera is.
Those cameras are extremely expensive (nearly $1000 each, if my recollection of Canon and Minolta prices is correct).

If you want to compare them to 35mm cameras, how about comparing them to $1000 35mm SLRs, rather than to $150 35mm point-and-shoots?
 

Cam S

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I wasn't comparing them. Jay was the one that was sort of comparing the P&S 35mm/aps camera to the digitals. Most 35mm SLRs can be found much cheaper than a high end digital, but then you have lenses, film, the cost of developing that film, etc etc. With digital, the film is free, you can take 1000 pictures and print the best 20. I love how I can view the picture I took instantly, and I've learnt so much more about photography because of it. I was spending 400-500 bucks (canadian) a year on film and developing film, so digital made all the sense in the world to me.
 

Max Leung

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I picked up a Transcend 512mb 25x CF card to mate with my G3. The card is noticeably faster than the 30mb CF card that came with the camera. However, to really take advantage of the speed, you'd need two high-speed cards and an image tank (portable hard drive that can read flash cards) or a laptop/PC. So, if you take a lot of fast action shots, say, at a racetrack, then you can rush back to your imagetank, yank out the CF card and place that in the imagetank, and put in a fresh card, and go right back to the action. By the time that fresh card is full, the other card should be ready to go!
So, obviously, most people don't really need anything better than an ordinary CF card. And as usual, most of the less-expensive cameras won't read cards very fast anyways. Compatibility problems with cards may also impede your CF write/read speeds.
Anyhow, I agree with Cam, digital photography is GREAT. The freedom is breathtaking, and learning photographic technique is so much faster than tediously developing your mistakes using old-fashioned film. :)
Nice sig Cam, is that you? Did you use the remote control on your G3 to take that pic? :)
 

Cam S

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Max, that's me alright. It's a store called "Cows" that is on Robson street in Vancouver. Some buddies and myself went there this august and they took that picture of me humping the cow. It was hilarious, I had a ton of poeple standing around watching me, talking amongst themselves, hahaha.
The fullsize pic can be seen here. along with all my other pictures. None of my G3 pictures are on that site yet, as I just got it last sunday. I've already taken 380 pics though, hehe.
 

Max Leung

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What camera did you use to take those? Is the G3 noticeably better?
Nice pics, BTW. Did you drug your cats to hold their pose? :)
 

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