Hi, I haven't been able to find this tidbit on any digital camera websites, but is there really a benefit to faster digital film? Such as Lexar's 4x CompactFlash? I have a Kodak DC290 and I was wondering if there was benefit to faster CF film at all or not. I do notice once in a while that the camera takes a bit longer to store an image I just shot (this usually happens if I take 4-5 shots in succession).

Thanks for the help!

-- Jeff Mano (mano@great.8k.com), June 07, 2000

Answers

All I can add is that I use the Lexar 80MB 8x card in my Nikon950 and it doesn't seem to make any difference in speed over the stock 8mb card that ships with the camera. I dont have a good answer except that Lexar says its faster but I don't see it.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), June 07, 2000.

Yes, the cards are really faster. BUT, most consumer digital cameras are the limiting factor. They can't transfer data as fast as the card is able to read it

-- Ralph (REObert@aol.com), June 07, 2000.

I'd say Ralph(above) nailed it! Give the manufacturers a while to increase processing speed again and maybe they'll start exploiting some of that ability. My Pdr-M1 took about 10 seconds to compress/ save a 1280x1024 image to smartmedia(at least that was the shot to shot time), but my Pdr-M5 only takes about two seconds to save and compress a 1600x1200 file with the same media card. Not bad at all when you consider that's really about a 7.3 to 1 speed improvement based on actual image size!

Give them another year or two and it might just get interesting. When they get down to the point where you can take 2 or 3 shots a second until you fill up your smartmedia or compactflash, or whatever, on a consumer model that's going to be pretty good. It may not take too long since that's only a 4 to 6 times improvement over current speeds and could probably be done by using a dual ported fifo buffer and a second processor to read the data out, compress it and save it to media as another processor runs the camera and a third stuffs another image into the other end of the buffer... of course, they may be doing something like that now. :-)

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), June 08, 2000.

Camera manufacturers have been combatting the issue of writing to a CF card in part by installing huge RGB data buffers (32MB on the Nikon 990, I believe). This allows a shot another shot in as little as 1 to 1.5 seconds or faster (depending on camera mode and image size/quality). When you fill the buffer, you are going to have to wait for data to write to the CF card before you shoot again, and I agree with several others that this seems not to be as dependent on the card as the device writing to the card.

I have noticed, for instance, in READING the cards on a CF reader, that they downloaded about 3 times faster using the same hardware but an updated version of the Image Expert software from Sierra Imaging (provided with Epson cameras). That totally shocked me.

Personally, given that I now own a camera with a buffer (my Epson 600 couldn't cue more than one shot without writing to the CF cadd), I would rather spend my money on doubling my storage than doubling the speed of the CF card. The high quality, fast, USB enabled 8X Lexar CF media are VERY expensive and I can get a name brand but cheaper card with TWICE the storage for almost the same price...your priorities might be different.

-- Jarrod (deepsnow@freewwweb.com), June 15, 2000.

Jarrod is right but I like to add that with Lexar 8X USB ready in conjunction with the JumpSHOT CF card reader connected to the USB port, the system will "see" the CF as another hard drive and you can transfer (I use Windows Exploror to highlight and select either MOVE or Copy to the file) your images very easily and fsat.. The speed is a lot faster than when you transfer directly from the camera which you has to go through another software.

-- Tanasit Siriluck (tanasit@flashcom.net), June 19, 2000.