CF card or xD card better for E420 (shooting in RAW)

[harnamsc]

Greetings to everyone,

I'll soon be getting my Olympus E420 and am wondering about what card to use with it? I understand that this camera only accepts Compact Flash Type II and xD-Picture cards and I'll be shooting mostly in RAW mode. As this is my first DSLR I'm not certain which card would be better to support RAW shooting, i.e. in terms of size, durability, writing speed, etc. Could someone please advise me which card to get and whether getting say, CF Extreme III or CF Extreme IV cards would make a difference?


P.S: Can I confirm that Adobe Camera RAW supports Olympus E420?

[mojims]

The last time I did an event (last Saturday, on my own leisure) I was using an xD card, and I was experimenting with RAW. I'm not sure whether this happens to everyone here, but my RAW file sizes are only between 8-10MB.

This config doesn't seem to be a problem, unless probably if you're doing continuous shots.

I haven't tried shooting an event in RAW using my SanDisk Ultra II CF... (I actually forgot the CF card when I went to the event last Saturday)

[spidey89]

for me,I have both,but i prefer using CF card,I think a lot of ppl do being more stable and a lot faster than shooting with XD cards,CF cards,the high speed ones,really no diff I guess for normal shooting,if talking about high speed burst than i believe it does make a diff,lol

[dorts]

Definitely CF cards. I personally would not even touch a xD card.

Adobe Camera RAW do support E-420's RAW files.

[Benares]

Please ask for the CF card. You can see the difference in transfer speed (performance) here

Normally, CF Ultra II cards can do up to 15MB/s read/write speed (varies from camera to camera)
CF Extreme III cards can do up to 30MB/s read/write. CF Extreme IV/Ducati cards can do up to 45MB/s read/write (all values quoted here are with respect to Sandisk)

I have both the Ultra II and Extreme III cards. Personally, I feel that the bottleneck in writing speed is not really with the CF card, it is more of the transfer speed from the camera to the CF card. I remember using my friend's D200 with the Sandisk Extreme III card and go trigger happy easily over at least 20 frames of RAW+JPEG (avg about 8+4MB) continuously whereas, I on the other hand was using my friend's E3 with the Sandisk Extreme III card and see E3 'buffer' (slowdown in shooting rate) after about 15 continuous frames of JPEGs (avg about 7MB per file) only. Of course, the point of interest here is that, I do not know how big an internal buffer does D200 have over the E3. As far as I feel, extreme III cards are more than sufficient for Oly dslr bodies.

Hope this clarifies some of your questions.

[Benares]

To add on further on the transfer rate, you may want to take a glimpse here on the various CF card performance on the different bodies. Unfortunately, Olympus bodies are not benchmarked/listed...

But the point is, if you were to compare what you see on D200 vs D300 or D700 or D3 using the same card, the performance is different altogether.

Of course, the good thing about getting a faster CF card is that, you're pretty sure that if the writing speed slows down, it is not because of your card but more of the limitation of the body/firmware.

[say123]

to take advantage of the E3 transfer speed, you can consider the UDMA cards.

D200 does not support UDMA.


check here for some tests and explanations.
http://fourthirds-user.com/2007/07/h...ries_dslrs.php

[say123]

some more test results.

http://dpnow.com/4445.html

[say123]

to answer the TS question. def go for CF.

go for the fastest CF if you shoot raw a lot.
with reference from the E510 and E400 tested with 300x and 133x Lexar, there *should* be a marginal improvement over the writing speed. so it really depends on if you want to save time or money and also your shooting haibits.

go for the UDMA if u plan to upgrade to E3 or cameras that supports it.

[Mikefellh]

Go for CF as it's much faster than xD...the only reasons to use xD is for extra memory without the need of swapping cards, or you want to use the panorama scene mode (in which case you would need an OLYMPUS branded xD card, any other brand of xD won't enable that feature).

I think the ExtremeIII card is still the fastest card for writing on E-xxx cameras, no one has reported that the ExtremeIV is any faster (although it will be faster reading through a high-speed card reader).

Note that the UltraII cards will take twice as long to write an image than an ExtremeIII card; once you get used to the speed of a fast card, it's annoying to have to wait for a slower card to finish.

[egnaro]

CF card for me.

XD take years to transfer from card to PC.

[Sukoo]

Is there any DSLR that comes with dual CF slots?

[microcosm]

Originally Posted by Sukoo Is there any DSLR that comes with dual CF slots?

The Nikon D3 comes with dual CF, not sure about the D700. But yes, there are...

[VR Man]

Originally Posted by microcosm The Nikon D3 comes with dual CF, not sure about the D700. But yes, there are...

D700 only has 1 CF slot.

So want to buy a D3 with the new Zeiss lens

[microcosm]

Originally Posted by VR Man D700 only has 1 CF slot. So want to buy a D3 with the new Zeiss lens

LOL! Zeiss is always a carrot!

[Oly5050]

My recommendation for you is to buy the biggest and fastest CF card that u can afford and use it as the primary card to shoot. The XD card should be used as your backup. Do not ever discount the XD card. U will grow to enjoy the advantage of having 2 cards in your DSLR, albeit the XD will be slower than the CF.

[olymac]

xD card? What is that?

[Mikefellh]

Originally Posted by olymac xD card? What is that?

I'll assume you're serious.

xD is one of the many types of memory cards out there, compact flash (CF), smartmedia, SD, MMC, memory stick, etc.

xD is a format developed by Fuji and Olympus to replace Smartmedia. In the following image you'll see examples of the various cards, Smartmedia and xD in the rear, SD, memory stick, and memory stick pro in the middle, and CF in the front:


Your camera has two memory slots in it, one for CF and one for xD, and you can have both filled at once. The rest of the page should make sense now. You can use one or the other, or copy from one to the other.

[olymac]

Originally Posted by Mikefellh I'll assume you're serious. xD is one of the many types of memory cards out there, compact flash (CF), smartmedia, SD, MMC, memory stick, etc. ......... Your camera has two memory slots in it, one for CF and one for xD, and you can have both filled at once. The rest of the page should make sense now. You can use one or the other, or copy from one to the other.

Oh dear ... and I thot that additional slot was for a SIM card and my Oly could dial up something .. and that would like kinda tie in with the FL30/50R wireless flash .... thanks for the clarification

[OlyFlyer]

To answer the title question:

Get both. I keep a 2GB type H in the xD slot all the time. I buy only 4GB CF cards, I have Extreme IV and Extreme III cards. The xD has saved my day more than once when I forgot the CF in my computer after downloading images from it. The slow write speed of the xD is not a big issue with the E-3 due to the large image buffer, but to download images from the card to the computer is really a PITA slow. My philosophy is that if you have two memory card slots, use both. Even if the xD is not often used, it comes handy at times, it costs practically nothing today if you buy Sandisk. With your camera the Pano mode is also available, which is even if not always perfect, but can be fun at times. I don't buy larger than 4GB CF cards because if something happens there are too many images lost. My camera can save about 240 raw images on the card and that is already a lot. Another advantage of having one card in each slot is that if the CF is full you can quickly switch to xD, quicker than changing CFs.

Anyway, CF cards are faster and slightly cheaper, but because xD cards are also cheap there is no reason not to get one as well.