Discussion
I read an interesting review of the new Canon EOS 400D on DPReview today and it mentioned that Canon took the unusual step of still including CF support instead of using SD cards as the Nikon D80 does.
Does this therefore mean SD cards are the future and are now faster than CF? Certainly in the past this was not the case but obviously things are changing!
My Canon IXUS 65 uses SD but I always thought that was restricted to smaller cameras. I've also always been marred with corrupt SD cards at times and that's not through using cheap manufacturers. Both my SD cards (2x 1GB cards), are Kingston Memory so this is usually a respected make.
Does anyone know of a good site with comparisons of the two technologies as I'd very much like to read up on it.
Ta!
P.S. I want to buy a nice flash this Christmas for my 300D. Still haven't got around to doing that and it's been a long time coming!!!! I've had the camera now for 2 years!!!! (If you have a 2nd hand flash, i'd consider that too)
Does this therefore mean SD cards are the future and are now faster than CF? Certainly in the past this was not the case but obviously things are changing!
My Canon IXUS 65 uses SD but I always thought that was restricted to smaller cameras. I've also always been marred with corrupt SD cards at times and that's not through using cheap manufacturers. Both my SD cards (2x 1GB cards), are Kingston Memory so this is usually a respected make.
Does anyone know of a good site with comparisons of the two technologies as I'd very much like to read up on it.
Ta!
P.S. I want to buy a nice flash this Christmas for my 300D. Still haven't got around to doing that and it's been a long time coming!!!! I've had the camera now for 2 years!!!! (If you have a 2nd hand flash, i'd consider that too)
well SD have just launched a new standard of card called the SDHC. These cards have a much higher write speed which is said to be the same write speed as Firewire connections!!
The problem with the old SD cards was that they had an inherent limit of 2GB maximum size. That limited them when trying to use them in modern DSLR's which can output huge file sizes.
But as the new SDHC format has a maximum limit which is the same as CF cards (FAT32 formatting means they can go up to about 32GB) and the fact that the cards transfer data as quick if not quicker than CF and are much much smaller this is more attractive to manufactuers. If you have a smaller card you have more freedom to make the camera smaller if you need to or make it more ergonomic.
Expect to see more DSLR's supporting SDHC in the future!!
The problem with the old SD cards was that they had an inherent limit of 2GB maximum size. That limited them when trying to use them in modern DSLR's which can output huge file sizes.
But as the new SDHC format has a maximum limit which is the same as CF cards (FAT32 formatting means they can go up to about 32GB) and the fact that the cards transfer data as quick if not quicker than CF and are much much smaller this is more attractive to manufactuers. If you have a smaller card you have more freedom to make the camera smaller if you need to or make it more ergonomic.
Expect to see more DSLR's supporting SDHC in the future!!
crmcatee said:
As long as your card is fast enough to handle the camera bus so the images can be transferred to the card fast enough so the buffers don't get too full I can't see a problem.
In some cases there's no need to buy an 80x if your camera can only really write upto 40x.
In some cases there's no need to buy an 80x if your camera can only really write upto 40x.
That's one of the biggest flaws of my 300D. The write speed on the camera bus is so slow and even with my Kingston Ultra memory, it doesn't even touch on half the memory's performance.
I believe Nikon only put SD on the D50 (and D80), all their higher end cameras are CF (although the D80 and D50 are the latest models, the others have been around a bit longer). All the Canon DSLR's are CF. I think CF has been the most common standard, originally it stole a march on the otehr formats when memory card sizes were smaller and price per MB storage was at least 4 X as much as it is today, IBM's Microdrive format (HDD in a CF card) was offering storages way in excess of solid state memory. Although today the gap has all but disappeared and Microdrives are seen as a bit old hat/ risky due to poor shock resistance, I guess it gave the head start to that format. Also CF cards were cheaper than the other formats, although they are all more or less stabilising now.
So where today - from where I am I can't see much in the way of performance differences between the SD/CF cards, however for the kit I have, all of it is CF, even my old Fuji M603 has both CF and XD slots (given up with XD now!). On top of this I have an Archos portable MP3 HDD thing, one of the benefits of this is that it has a CF card slot in one end, I can just plug the card in and quickly empty it onto the 20Gb HD.
However - I guess CF's are losing ground now, just looking at the multi-card slot fitted on this laptop (and many others out there are similar) it takes SD, MMC, Memory Stick SmartMedia and even XD, but no CF, I guess due to space constraints.
So where today - from where I am I can't see much in the way of performance differences between the SD/CF cards, however for the kit I have, all of it is CF, even my old Fuji M603 has both CF and XD slots (given up with XD now!). On top of this I have an Archos portable MP3 HDD thing, one of the benefits of this is that it has a CF card slot in one end, I can just plug the card in and quickly empty it onto the 20Gb HD.
However - I guess CF's are losing ground now, just looking at the multi-card slot fitted on this laptop (and many others out there are similar) it takes SD, MMC, Memory Stick SmartMedia and even XD, but no CF, I guess due to space constraints.
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