Question on CF card

[hafele]

Hi all,

Newbies here.

Is a 30x CF card (256 & 512) fast enough for A1 and A2 ?

[pshing]

Originally Posted by hafele Hi all, Newbies here. Is a 30x CF card (256 & 512) fast enough for A1 and A2 ?

There is no absolute speed for a camera. As long as it serves your need, that's alright.
Unless you use continuous shooting very often, i think 30X is some how enough for normal users.
If you have the extra money, try to go for larger size CF instead of faster speed. Then can shoot more picture in raw mode~

[hafele]

I thought the speed of card is refer to the writing speed of the camera onto the card.

[alpie]

Originally Posted by hafele I thought the speed of card is refer to the writing speed of the camera onto the card.

Actually throughput is a combination of the camera and the card. If your camera cannot take advantage of fast cards, you may waste your money.

My old Fuji S602's write speed to a Microdrive was faster than many 40X CF cards. So I was very happy with my dirt cheap 2.2GB microdrive. It also gave me the chance to benefit the video recording feature... I don't carry my video camera anymore.

However my A2's write speed to Microdrive is slower than CF cards. But I continue using Microdrive, as it is much cheaper. But it is about 10-35% slower. This means you need to wait 1-2 sec more between shots.. Not a big deal if you're NOT taking shots every 5 seconds eh? Read my measurements below:

Unless you're using continuous mode a lot ( I mean A LOT ) you won't even notice the difference. A2's image buffer can hold up to 3 images (including raw). It takes about 20 seconds to write a Raw image. Basically you can shoot your 4th Raw picture 20 seconds after you take the first one.

8MP Fine mode takes 6 seconds to complete writing (Microdrive - it has to spin up first and spin down when finished writing ). Continuos mode takes 16 seconds for 3 pictures. Even if you take 3 pictures in continuous mode, you can take another shot 6 seconds later. You don't have to wait for Minolta to finish writing to disk. Raw mode 8MP takes 20 seconds for one shot, 56 secs for 3 raw files.


For CF ( 16X speed) , 8MP Fine mode takes 4-5 seconds (1 sec faster than Microdrive). Continuous mode 3 shots takes 12 seconds (4 sec faster than microdrive). RAW mode takes 17-18 secs for a single shot (2-3 secs faster than Microdrive), 51 secs for 3 RAW files (5 secs faster then Microdrive).

If you need to shoot every 3 secs, you better buy a fast card. If you can live with shooting every 5 seconds, you will be fine with cheaper media.

If you're taking a shot every 3 secs, then you're in trouble as you'll take 200 shots in 10 mins and you need about 650 MB storage. How much storage do you think you need to take when you're going for holidays? 5 GB?

[alpie]

Originally Posted by alpie 8MP Fine mode takes 6 seconds to complete writing (Microdrive - it has to spin up first and spin down when finished writing ). Continuos mode takes 16 seconds for 3 pictures. Even if you take 3 pictures in continuous mode, you can take another shot 6 seconds later. You don't have to wait for Minolta to finish writing to disk. Raw mode 8MP takes 20 seconds for one shot, 56 secs for 3 raw files. For CF ( 16X speed) , 8MP Fine mode takes 4-5 seconds (1 sec faster than Microdrive). Continuous mode 3 shots takes 12 seconds (4 sec faster than microdrive). RAW mode takes 17-18 secs for a single shot (2-3 secs faster than Microdrive), 51 secs for 3 RAW files (5 secs faster then Microdrive).

Check this out: FAT32 formatted Microdrive works much faster than FAT format in a Dimage A2.

I noticed that after upgrading from Fuji S602 to Minolta A2, I hadn't formatted
my microdrive as FAT32 (S602 cannot use FAT32, so it was FAT formatted). So I formatted it on my windows PC as FAT32. The write speeds improved by over 30 %. Folowing tests were done using max resolution. Results are in seconds:

.................... 3xRAW 1xRAW 3xFINE 1xFINE
................... ------- ------ ------ -----
FAT............... 56 ..... 20 .... 16 ..... 6
FAT32............ 39 ..... 14 .... 10 ..... 3~4
Improvement... 30% .. 30% .. 37% .. 35~40%

So the microdrive is as fast as (if not faster than) CF cards.

I am using Magicstor 2.2GB.