Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

Photokina, the worlds biggest photography trade show which is held every two years in Germany opened today. I think we can expect to see some interesting new camera equipment announcements coming out in the next couple of days. You can follow the announcements almost in real-time if you like on www.robgalbraith.com and www.dpreview.com.

Already Sandisk announced some pretty chunky CF flash card of 12GB and 16GB capacity, but for the suggested retail price of one of them you can buy yourself a brand new DSLR instead!

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--Saw those new Sandisk cards, but unless one is shooting a medium format back I think it is GB overkill. Though I have been using a 4 GB card, 2GB is pretty much enough even with the large RAW file from the 5D. I think it is a better idea to change the cards more often, though it is nice not to have to. Rather lose the images on a 2GB card than a 4GB one, as far as a 12 or 16 GB card those would be some serious tears I would be shedding if I lost that many images. That said I probably will keep using my Sandisk 4 GB cards, as I have not had any problem. I am pretty diligent about not filling the card and changing it before the last few frames are filled up, as that is when problems are most likely to occur.

[anna]

That was a good tip, David.  Been pondering whether to get 4G or stay with the 2G.  Good timing of your thoughts on it. Thanks.  Anna

[Marc Schultz]

When DSLR cameras were only up to 6MP I remember reading articles and books by Kevin Ames and others saying best to shoot with 512MB cards only and have 4 of them rather than buying 1GB or 2GB cards for the very reasons you stated. The problem is now that digital cameras have tripple the resolution as they did at that time and so if I shoot in RAW with a 512MB card I get about 25 shots. The principles of shooting to smaller cards has not changed and changing cards is not a big deal as you mentioned, but I am fortunate that the 1DS Mark II takes 2 memory cards, 1CF and 1SD, and writes a backup to the second card simulatanously in case one fails. Therefore, when I shoot, I always have two cards in the camera capturing the images in doublt-time in case of a failure in one of them. So I comfortably shoot with 2GB and 4GB CF cards without living in fear. But unfortunately no other DSLR cameras offer that at the moment as far as I know and hopefully that will be the way forward for other cameras in the future too which are not only at the upper end of the professional models.

On a related topic of possible interest, there is a company now developing a 1GB SF card which has a Wi-Fi network chip built into it: http://www.eye.fi/index.htm

[ThaiWorld]

Marc,

Are you using wireless transmitter also?

Some cameras (D200, D2X...) allow FTP file transfer with optional Wireless Transmitter (IEEE 802.11b or IEEE 802.11b/g).

I guess it is targeted for photojournalists but could be used also as a way to back-up your pictures.

[Marc Schultz]

Yes, Canon offers the wireless transmitters too, but so far I only use the Firewire connection sometimes when shooting in the studio and shoot using capture software on a computer.

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--I have always thought the writing of 2 cards in the camera was a great idea, as you already have backup from the start. Would have loved to have seen that in the 5D, but not having dual card slots is perhaps one of the things that makes it a smaller camera.

[Marc Schultz]

David, the extra card slot doesn't really add much size to the camera at all. I think Canon did not offer that feature on the 5D because they may want to leave a few features that are only available on the 1DS Mark II to differentiate it from the other models. Maybe I am wrong, but is just my initial reaction.

[AmazingThailand]

I do not understand the 'don't put all your eggs in one basket' mentality with respect to the memery cards.  It simply does not make any sense.  The vast majority of problems that occur are due to human error, not card failure.
How large is that hard drive in your computer?  10GB?  20?  Surely not 100GB, or 250GB.  What about all that data should your HD fail, and computer hard drives do fail, that's a given.  Just use the technology and enjoy the added conveniences it offers.

[Marc Schultz]

If you are asking me, I personally have a 1TB (1,000 GB) hard drive as my main hard drive split into 3 main partitions which I backup onto 3 other drives that are equal in total size to the 1TB. I also have various other portable drives and so forth. So I normally have 2-3 copies of all my work floating around on different drives. But I am probably not the norm.