Need CF Card Advice

[Ruger]

I just purchased my first digital camera, a coolpix 4500 from ebay. It comes with a 128mb SanDisk CF. The seller recommended purchasing another sandisk, but when surfing ebay there appeared to be many types of the cards(sandisk, sandisk SD, SD secure digital). There also seemed to be differences in speed.
Which card would you recommend(that is compatible with a sandisk card reader), and is there a significant difference in speed?

Also, in a previous post someone mentioned a compact, portable storage device for carring in the field (as opposed to buying lots of memory or lugging a laptop with you). Does anyone know the name of this devise.

And lastly, I've read that the coolpix software program has major problems. What is the alternative?

Thanks, Ruger

[Andy Bright]

I wouldn't worry too much about the speed rating of cards...it makes little difference in write times for cameras like the cp4500, most of the compact digital camera's don't use internal software to utilise accelerated write time.
Just make sure it's compactflash you get...which is still the dominant 'digital film'. I prefer Lexar but I know Sandisk is very reliable as well.

I'd advise purchasing a card reader rather than plugging your camera into the pc when you want to download images from the card. Makes life a whole lot easier and doesn't use up camera battery power, therefore no worries about power shut-off when transfering images.

Use your card reader as another disk drive, just open the photos in photoshop/whatever from the card itself if you wish. No need for dedicated camera software at all.

[IanF]

The 40x cards do write more quickly to the Cp4500 - noticably so. However be very careful I have a 40x card which whilst it writes quickly it leaves notcieable vertical bars across the images. They aren't too noticeable but once you know they are there and aren't on the standard speed cards, it means I keep that one in reserve!

[Andy Bright]

The 40x cards do write more quickly to the Cp4500 - noticably so. However be very careful I have a 40x card which whilst it writes quickly it leaves notcieable vertical bars across the images. They aren't too noticeable but once you know they are there and aren't on the standard speed cards, it means I keep that one in reserve!
I've never noticed any difference in write speeds of Lexar cards from 4x cards to 40x ...though there may be some minor speed improvements due to the fact that the faster cards will be newer and more efficient all round, though it's surprising if this speed improvement is noticable without specialised timing. I'm pretty sure WA wasn't built in to the cp4500.

I have to say that there are some oddball cards out there (by Lexar and a few others) that are really slooooow ...watch out for odd sized cards, like 80mb.

[IanF]

My 40x is an F1 purchased off Ebay and in sequence mode only takes a few seconds to write to the card. The normal Sandisk one seems to take for ever in comparison. The trade off though is the quality of the result!

[Ruger]

Brian, Andy, & Ian,

Wow, such quick and good advice, a million thanks!

The camera comes with a sandisk card reader, so no need to purchase. Yes, I was speaking of the PC software, I'll checkout the adobe products.
No I haven't seen Andy's website, but I'll be going there next.

Thanks again,I've received much great advice the last few days.
How do I make a credit card donation to this wonderful site?

[IanF]

I use Thumbs+ for cataloguing and wouldn't be without it - it reads the card reader as an additional disc drive and is simplicity to use.

As regards donations to the site up keep, simply click on the 'Support BirdForum' button top left of this thread.

[Andy Bright]

Thanks again,I've received much great advice the last few days.
How do I make a credit card donation to this wonderful site?
No problem, Ruger, that's what Birdforum is all about.

Many thanks for your kind offer, any contribution to the running costs of the site is much appreciated. You can make a donation with paypal or credit card using our secure server here http://www.birdforum.net/donation.php

Regards,
Andy

[jad29]

this link has some write speeds to d70 in case your interested

http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6816