Comments on: Flash Memory Basics

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:19:17 +0000

Sandisk is great. I have been using them for 5 years now. Even the smaller cards I bought originally haven’t failed on me. I do generally stay in the 2 gig range. I would rather switch out cards then loose 100 pictures.

I am going to look into the Hoodman UDMA cards though, good info.

Great post!

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:19:17 +0000

I am going to look into the Hoodman UDMA cards though, good info.

Great post!

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:15:11 +0000

Lexar are optimised for Nikon? Well according to Rob Galbraith Lexar cards are outperformed in Nikon DSLRs by Sandisk every time. For my money I’ve gone down the Sandisk route.

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:15:11 +0000

Lexar are optimised for Nikon? Well according to Rob Galbraith Lexar cards are outperformed in Nikon DSLRs by Sandisk every time. For my money I’ve gone down the Sandisk route.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:38:18 +0000

Scott,
I think only few high end (d3 type) still use CF. Otherwise it is pretty much SD(HC) world for digital cameras.

I’ve used SanDisk all my life. Once I even had a very painful occurrence where I was doing a photo shoot on the water in Turks & Caicos and had the camera drop into the salt water. I know I know… But it happened. The good news… The SanDisk card worked just fine after I dried it, salt water and all.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:38:18 +0000

Scott,
I think only few high end (d3 type) still use CF. Otherwise it is pretty much SD(HC) world for digital cameras.

By: JayMonster

JayMonster — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:43:40 +0000

@Colin Barber @Mark Wilson

CF is different (and more expensive) than SD Memory because unlike SD, CF cards actually have firmware built into them (sort of like a disk controller) that allows, even a “standard” like CF to be optimized for certain uses.

I am not surprised that Lexar doesn’t name Nikon outright, after all they still want to sell as many CF cards as possible, and (at least in their view), even their cards that are optimized for Nikon are still as fast, if not faster as the competition in other cameras. Look at the following paragraph taken from Lexar’s FAQ about their “digital film” (CF cards)

“Lexar’s CompactFlash digital film features patented SpaceManager ™ technology, an innovative, indirect memory-mapping technique that significantly reduces the time a picture file can be written to the digital film card. While actual performance will vary between camera models, Lexar digital film offers sustained WRITE performance that is nearly two or three times faster than other CompactFlash solutions. In some digital cameras, Lexar digital film is 200% faster than general-purpose flash memory! Imagine the shots you could miss while waiting for your images to be stored: a baby’s smile, a wedding kiss, or any other precious moment.”
(The full FAQ is at http://www.digitalfilm.com/support/faqs_gen.html)

Note the words, “In some digital cameras…” those are the ones that are optimized for one camera or another. I wasn’t able to locate a direct article (from Lexar) about the Nikon optimization, but this press release (from 2002) was when Nikon optimized one of their Memory cards for the Canon EOS 1-D. (So, obviously they are willing to optimized when they see the opportunity and market for such).

It should also be noted that with announcement of the D90, SanDisk also released a new card that it claimed was optimized for the new Nikon camera. You can see information on that at http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/38145-sandisk-intros-extreme-iii-30mbs-edition-line-sdhc.htm.

Hope this helps clarify a bit.