Domain: robgalbraith.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to robgalbraith.com.
Comments · 58
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Re:Wonder why they left out Lexar
It's very odd to me that they seem to have left out Lexar completely from this little test.
The Lexar 1000X CF cards are still the gold standard for photography.
Back when it was still updated, Rob Galbraith's card performance database was the place to look.
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Re:Wonder why they left out Lexar
There's some rather more useful and still reasonably up to date testing on Rob Galbraith's site for a few high-end SLRs (unfortunately no longer updated):
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007
Lexar cards are included, up to 600x SDHC, and 1000x CF. XQD cards are the real speed demons now, of course.
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Nikon 1
I recently got a Nikon J1.
It's an awesome camera. It has a hybrid phase detection / contrast detection auto focus system, which makes focusing on par with DSLRs. I needed good auto focus, because I mostly take pictures of my kids.
You'll see people complaining about its small sensor size, but in my experience the camera takes amazing photos. You could get better high ISO (low light) photos out of micro four thirds cameras, but what good are they if their auto focus sucks?
I got the 10mm f2.8 lens and the stock 10-30mm lens combo. The 10mm lens is amazing, it's what I use most of the time. With the 10mm lens I can also carry the camera in my pocket.
The camera also takes very nice full HD videos. And the 400fps shooting mode (although at lower resolution) is a lot of fun.
The most accurate review of the camera (ie the one that actually matches my experience) is this one:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-11666-11988
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Galbraith is known being a flamer and ignorant
Rob Galbraith is the frequent butt of jokes about his ego and mouth- the man considers himself an expert on absolutely everything, loves to declare things horrible/worthless (he declared the Canon Mk3 autofocus to be "useless" as well, and that hasn't stopped news agencies the world-over from making the camera their standard equipment.)
His premise is that the laptop is worthless because of the glossy screen. Well, guess what? It's literally a $30 problem, and there will no doubt be at least a couple companies that produce lightweight fancy hoods that weigh next to nothing and shield the screen from glare for photographers who MUST do image adjustment in the field (which nobody does.)
He speaks as if he's an expert- but check out the qualifications of him and his team. He's a former photographer for a no-name Canadian paper....eight years ago. His partner shoots horsies for work. A third dude doesn't seem to have any qualifications except for being industrious in writing about photography and a former Nikon lackey. None of them have had showings of note. None of them are retained by any wire services that matter. None of them currently work in the field.
Ever heard about "splitting", where people tend to consider something all good or all bad? Galbraith is an almost pathological splitter, and he's completely ignorant of some solutions to the problem, if you otherwise like working with, or are required to work with macs/mac software by your company/agency/wire service. It's also a problem solved with about $10 of cardboard or plastic to make a viewing hood, which used to be extremely common back when (GASP!) everyone had "glossy" CRTs.
It also demonstrates how ignorant he is of how "real" professional photographers these days work. The big boys are told to send everything, touch nothing- they're in the business of shooting photos, not editing or adjusting them. Anyone who is anyone has a team of people sitting back at "HQ", with fast machines, professionally calibrated displays in controlled lighting, etc. Nobody (at least nobody doing it for money) does anything beyond rate/categorize images on laptops...which is what he claims the MBP "is only good for."
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Re:Labels
If you are shooting with a card that only gets 3.5MB/s write speed, you are still going to hit the end of that buffer and be waiting. And before you go into how 'only a crazy person would use a card that slow,' might I suggest that you check out some place like this and see that at least one 133x speed SD card did rate that slow in the nice new D3.
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Excellent article on the NC2000
Quite some time back, I read an article on the NC2000, an early-ish DSLR that really had a big impact on wire services and newspapers. It's very entertaining and amusing to read the travails of photographers working with this camera, including early experiences with color balance, anti-alias filters, or undesirable infrared sensitivity. Well worth a read:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6463-7191 -
Re:Japanese youth does not have their own room
You forget the Nokia 7110, which was massively popular in the UK after "The Matrix" (because everyone thought it was 'that phone' when it wasn't).
Based on my own ownership, I think this was the most popular phone ever (I had 6 of them in a year!). Either that or thin sliding covers with sprung trigger actions really aren't the best idea in the world ;-)
One of the most usable phones I've owned though. -
PrematureFujifilm recently said they were bringing Velvia 50 back:
Valhalla, NY, November 14, 2006 - FUJIFILM U.S.A., Inc. is pleased to announce plans to re-introduce an ISO 50 Fujichrome Velvia professional film, tentatively named Velvia II. Fujichrome Velvia (RVP 50) was the first high color saturation, high contrast transparency E-6 compatible film when it was introduced in 1990 and was a favorite among photographers. Its discontinuation was announced last year due to difficulties in procuring some of the raw materials used to produce the emulsion.
"Since we announced the discontinuation of Velvia 50, we have been inundated with requests from photographers worldwide to continue production," said Christian Fridholm, Director of Marketing, Picture Taking, Imaging Division, Fujifilm USA. "They had used Velvia for many years and consider it unmatched in terms of quality and character. One of Fujifilm's main priorities is to nurture the culture of photography, so we took those requests very seriously."
As a result, Fujifilm research and development teams have developed substitute raw materials and new manufacturing technologies that enable the company to restart production. The new film is expected to be available in late spring 2007. The characteristics of the new emulsion will mirror that of the previous product.
I note that it's now past late spring 2007. -
Safari's fonts, color space support
Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images. Lots of Windows people seem to hate Apple's font rendering, but as a Mac user I prefer it. Windows font rendering seems ugly.
The color space stuff is a big deal to photographers, and it's very annoying that no other browser seems to respect the ICC color profile in images. I've seen a lot of discussion about Firefox versus Safari on the Mac and why Firefox seems to "wash out" images. It's really a shame Firefox doesn't respect ICC color profiles, it's such an obvious thing for a browser to do.
So maybe yeah, Safari isn't as "powerful" as Firefox or MSIE. But it offers an easy-to-use, standards-compliant browsing experience with a level of display rendering not found in other browsers. Many people may not be impressed, but just as many may find it more to their liking. Time will tell. -
Not so fast
Fujifilm has announced plans to "bring back" Velvia 50:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp? cid=7-7900-8678
It's a new formulation, which they're tentatively calling "Velvia II," so don't write off Velvia 50 just yet :-) -
Re:No SanDisk CF review?
Rob Galbraith has a review of these new cards, but they're not on the market yet.
Also note that there isn't a DSLR on the market that can take full advantage of these cards, but SanDisk is launching new card readers that do. -
another comparison site
Another (and I think better) comparison site is here and it has also compares different cameras in conjuction with different cards, which is fantastic if you have one of those cameras. Even if you don't, you can tell whether the card is fast.
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Everyone already uses the Rob Galbraith tables!In the Photography Forums that I tend to read we get the "which CFcard is best" question several times a week and everyone always refers the poster to the tables from the Rob Galbraith test last year. They actually have a number of different pages, having tested cards with a number of different cameras, but that doesn't matter, nor does the fact that it's currently a little out of date - the salient fact is that for many of the expensive flash memory cards the bottleneck is the camera's write speed.
I currently have two CFcards for my camera, a cheapie that came free with the camera & a SanDisk Ultra II. The SanDisk Ultra II was about twice the price of the cheapie memory, but it'll also write about twice as fast. The Extreme III, however, is what SanDisk are currently pushing as their fastest highest-tech card for your camera, and loads of people buy it. Check the table, however, and you'll see it's only a couple of percent faster in my camera... and at twice the price, of course.
So this is why the Rob Galbraith tables are more useful than some 19-page review full of ads - you can just glance down the page & easily compare the brands that your supplier offers for a real-world comparison and see if they're worth the price.
Stroller.
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Everyone already uses the Rob Galbraith tables!In the Photography Forums that I tend to read we get the "which CFcard is best" question several times a week and everyone always refers the poster to the tables from the Rob Galbraith test last year. They actually have a number of different pages, having tested cards with a number of different cameras, but that doesn't matter, nor does the fact that it's currently a little out of date - the salient fact is that for many of the expensive flash memory cards the bottleneck is the camera's write speed.
I currently have two CFcards for my camera, a cheapie that came free with the camera & a SanDisk Ultra II. The SanDisk Ultra II was about twice the price of the cheapie memory, but it'll also write about twice as fast. The Extreme III, however, is what SanDisk are currently pushing as their fastest highest-tech card for your camera, and loads of people buy it. Check the table, however, and you'll see it's only a couple of percent faster in my camera... and at twice the price, of course.
So this is why the Rob Galbraith tables are more useful than some 19-page review full of ads - you can just glance down the page & easily compare the brands that your supplier offers for a real-world comparison and see if they're worth the price.
Stroller.
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Bookmark this pagehttp://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/index.asp
'cause it's slashdotted for the moment. The most complete CF / Camera database around (and not limited to 18 words on a page).
Maybe check back tommorrow....
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Rob Galbraith DPI has huge DB of performance
The Rob Galbraith DPI website has a huge database of performance with various cards and various cameras. I use this as a benchmark for deciding when I need a new CF card vs. the Camera I have, and the family of camera I'd love to upgrade too one day.
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READ vs WRITE and Power consumption
Rob Galbraith has a long more comprehensive list of CF cards rated by transfer to computer performance here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6133
The Sandisk Extreme III 1G vs Sandisk Standard 1G on the CF to computer test scores 12.859MB/sec vs 2.377MB/sec
In my Canon 10D
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6111
1.387MB/sec vs 806K/sec (sorry slower older camera that can't reach the speeds of the newer DSLRs)
READ and WRITE speeds may be different. I'm more concerned with how quick the camera writes to the card (Galbraith's numbers) than how quick I can read the data off the card (XYZs numbers)
However...for my money battery life is more important. I'm more concerned with how much battery life the Extreme III vs the Standard card consumes.
I have a 128Mb Sandisk Standard and it drains the battery on my Canon 10D much more quickly than the 512Mb Extreme III that I have. And when the battery gets low on the camera I get an "Error #2" very quickly when using the standard card.
Unfortunately neither Galbraith or XYZ give any numbers on power consumption.
Galbraith goes into more detail on how to compare and review cards here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007 -
READ vs WRITE and Power consumption
Rob Galbraith has a long more comprehensive list of CF cards rated by transfer to computer performance here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6133
The Sandisk Extreme III 1G vs Sandisk Standard 1G on the CF to computer test scores 12.859MB/sec vs 2.377MB/sec
In my Canon 10D
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6111
1.387MB/sec vs 806K/sec (sorry slower older camera that can't reach the speeds of the newer DSLRs)
READ and WRITE speeds may be different. I'm more concerned with how quick the camera writes to the card (Galbraith's numbers) than how quick I can read the data off the card (XYZs numbers)
However...for my money battery life is more important. I'm more concerned with how much battery life the Extreme III vs the Standard card consumes.
I have a 128Mb Sandisk Standard and it drains the battery on my Canon 10D much more quickly than the 512Mb Extreme III that I have. And when the battery gets low on the camera I get an "Error #2" very quickly when using the standard card.
Unfortunately neither Galbraith or XYZ give any numbers on power consumption.
Galbraith goes into more detail on how to compare and review cards here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007 -
READ vs WRITE and Power consumption
Rob Galbraith has a long more comprehensive list of CF cards rated by transfer to computer performance here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6133
The Sandisk Extreme III 1G vs Sandisk Standard 1G on the CF to computer test scores 12.859MB/sec vs 2.377MB/sec
In my Canon 10D
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6111
1.387MB/sec vs 806K/sec (sorry slower older camera that can't reach the speeds of the newer DSLRs)
READ and WRITE speeds may be different. I'm more concerned with how quick the camera writes to the card (Galbraith's numbers) than how quick I can read the data off the card (XYZs numbers)
However...for my money battery life is more important. I'm more concerned with how much battery life the Extreme III vs the Standard card consumes.
I have a 128Mb Sandisk Standard and it drains the battery on my Canon 10D much more quickly than the 512Mb Extreme III that I have. And when the battery gets low on the camera I get an "Error #2" very quickly when using the standard card.
Unfortunately neither Galbraith or XYZ give any numbers on power consumption.
Galbraith goes into more detail on how to compare and review cards here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007 -
Two good articles
A working pro discusses his transition from film to digital.
http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7- 7883-7913
A fascinating article on how far digital cameras have come in the past 7 or so years:
http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7- 6463-7191 -
Two good articles
A working pro discusses his transition from film to digital.
http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7- 7883-7913
A fascinating article on how far digital cameras have come in the past 7 or so years:
http://robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7- 6463-7191 -
Re:A sign of change
I've blown up portraits taken with my 4MP EOS 1D to 16x20 and they looks great. If you nail the shot (exposure, lighting) when taken and know how to handle digital files you can achieve great results with digital.
NixLover said, "The single place that I've not seen a digital come close to my T90 or F1 canons is in FPS.. I can crank 4.5 frames a second through either of those machines, while an 8MP camera is still downloading third image it recorded."
My Canon EOS 1D Mark II (8 MP) will shoot at 8 FPS. With a fast enough CF card (Sandisk Extreme III) I can keep shooting at that rate long past when you've had to stop to change film.
Here is a good article about a professional photographer who dumped film for digital:
Joey Terrill: from Hasselblad film to Canon digital
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-7883-7913 -
It's not only 35mm - Large Format is fading fast
Here is a story from a large format photographer who used to use Hasselblads - he went digital as well. You would have thought that large format would never go, since it offered the huge negative for great detail and elargements with no grain. Digital seems to be ruling...
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CF write speeds depend on more than that!
Don't forget Rob Galbraith's CF comparison for many dSLR cameras (you gotta use these cards somewhere!)
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Re:Allow me to translate
The Nikon WiFi support with the D2X does support standards, FTP and PTP/IP, which are both published and supported by Linux.
The ptp/ip protocol:
https://www.fotonation.com/
Linux support for digital cameras and PTP/IP in particular:
http://www.gphoto.org/
Raw image processing, including encrypted Nikon D2X images:
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp? cid=7-6459-7213
http://www.photoreview.com.au/Articlexasp/90c83053 -0a7f-45cc-ba68-9560e9f3c061/Default.htm
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C3218/
http://dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=News&fil e=article&sid=3061
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht ml;jsessionid=E0TTJLUSVT5NSQSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN?art icleID=47204433&_requestid=171509 -
Re:Let's get some FACTS down!
1. Nikon has obfuscated some of the data I produce with their camera.
True
2. Nikon tells me this is for my own good.
Well, sort of. What they're trying to say, at least as far as I understand their Japanese-English, is that they want to provide you with the best possible image you can get. They feel that since they are the only ones that know everything there is to know about the NEF format then only they can provide the best image. This, of course, isn't how most people feel, but I think that's what they're trying to say. So, while I don't feel they're saying that they added the encryption "for your own good," they are saying that you should use their software "for your own good" regardless of if the NEF has encryption or not.
3. Nikon has restrictions on it's SDK such that despite your assertions it is not for the asking, otherwise Bibble and Capture One would have licensed them. And as an end user, even in Japanese-English I am not a "bona fide" developer. I am a person who diddles with writing their own software for their own purposes.
Actually from all I've read it's quite easy to get the SDK, all you need to do is fill out a form and snail mail it to Nikon. You can get it here. That's it, no fees, no licensing fees, nothing. Ironically the form is in Adobe PDF format! The developer of RAW PhotoDesk describes it here. The reason why Bibble and Capture One don't use the SDK is because it uses the same code that Nikon Capture uses, which is very slow but produces great images. The SDK doesn't give you access to the RAW data that Bibble, Capture One and ACR require. It will take the RAW data and process it into RGB data using the same process that Nikon Capture uses. One of the advantages of Bibble and Capture One over Nikon Capture is speed. With the SDK they could get the same images that Nikon Capture produces, but they wouldn't have the speed advantage.
4. Under DMCA provisions, it is illegal for to reverse engineer the data I produce with the camera.
Um, no. Being able to reverse engineer is completely different from breaking encryption. There are no problems with reverse engineering which is why we have ACR, Bibble and Capture One. The risky issue comes with breaking the encryption of the White Balance, and this is by no means clearly illegal. At worst it's in a grey area and at best it's clearly legal for you to decrypt your own copyrighted content. Since you are the copyright owner of the pictures you take, Nikon has no standing in preventing you from accessing them. Even if the camera they created (which is also yours) encrypted part of your picture. It would be far better if Adobe decided to take a stand against the DMCA rather than grandstanding in support of it.
5. Nikon sells a product called Capture, that performs extremely poorly and essentially cripples a computer from doing anything but run Capture while it is in batch operation.
Yes, Capture doesn't perform well most of the time, but it does produce better results than anything else I've tried. -
Re:What's the performance like?
It depends on how you measure, what features you want, and what you consider as "performance".
You could for instance take the http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-6451-6410 and http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-4869-4882 as a testament to the Mac's lower performance vis-a-vis a Wintel PC.
You could also take other approaches, with different results (in either direction). This is fundamentally hard to measure, because ideally you need two real life systems using equally native software.
A real life Wintel system usually comes with some whistles and bells off by default, such as anti-aliased fonts, pre-installed fonts (for CJK, typically 30 MB each), language support (input systems), firewall, and so on. The Mac have these on by default, available for all applications.
A typical real life Wintel system also needs virus protection of some kind, and all instances of Wintel systems I have encountered slow down with time. Mac OS X doesn't slow down with time, and it also doesn't need any extras - it is complete and reasonably safe from the start, and works like a clock.
Now, what applications would we need to use to make the comparison fair? Native applications, not ports. Well, Photoshop started out as a Mac application, and has evolved to a bulky piece of bloatware with several major components being ports from the now dominant PC side. Photoshop is also a Carbon app, with substantial amounts of legacy code. It doesn't work like a genuine Mac OS X app coded in Cocoa.
A native Mac OS X app uses all the power unleashed with Quartz Extreme (offloading video entirely to the GPU), uses services (easily accessible extra functions), uses native Unicode rather than legacy MacRoman conversions, uses ATSUI for kerning, and so on.
Only such an application would do the Mac justice, and it would have to be a feature to feature equivalent app that is equally native on XP. Normally, native killer apps on the Mac are only ported to Wintel, and vice versa, which is a problem for comparisons. You'd be better off comparing Final Cut Pro on the Mac with a similar killer app on the Wintel side, rather than doing a comparison of After Effects on both platforms.
However, I really can't imagine you will feel that the G4 is too slow. -
Re:What's the performance like?
It depends on how you measure, what features you want, and what you consider as "performance".
You could for instance take the http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-6451-6410 and http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-4869-4882 as a testament to the Mac's lower performance vis-a-vis a Wintel PC.
You could also take other approaches, with different results (in either direction). This is fundamentally hard to measure, because ideally you need two real life systems using equally native software.
A real life Wintel system usually comes with some whistles and bells off by default, such as anti-aliased fonts, pre-installed fonts (for CJK, typically 30 MB each), language support (input systems), firewall, and so on. The Mac have these on by default, available for all applications.
A typical real life Wintel system also needs virus protection of some kind, and all instances of Wintel systems I have encountered slow down with time. Mac OS X doesn't slow down with time, and it also doesn't need any extras - it is complete and reasonably safe from the start, and works like a clock.
Now, what applications would we need to use to make the comparison fair? Native applications, not ports. Well, Photoshop started out as a Mac application, and has evolved to a bulky piece of bloatware with several major components being ports from the now dominant PC side. Photoshop is also a Carbon app, with substantial amounts of legacy code. It doesn't work like a genuine Mac OS X app coded in Cocoa.
A native Mac OS X app uses all the power unleashed with Quartz Extreme (offloading video entirely to the GPU), uses services (easily accessible extra functions), uses native Unicode rather than legacy MacRoman conversions, uses ATSUI for kerning, and so on.
Only such an application would do the Mac justice, and it would have to be a feature to feature equivalent app that is equally native on XP. Normally, native killer apps on the Mac are only ported to Wintel, and vice versa, which is a problem for comparisons. You'd be better off comparing Final Cut Pro on the Mac with a similar killer app on the Wintel side, rather than doing a comparison of After Effects on both platforms.
However, I really can't imagine you will feel that the G4 is too slow. -
Re:Real cameras.... and cloning drives.
You might also want to look at this. It's a battery powered USB bridge. Probably the more expensive solution compared to this, but it's available today.
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Sports Illustrated's Digital Workflow
I think this may have been posted to Slashdot long ago. However, if you're really interested in SI's digital workflow, it's documented in excellent detail here.
It's been said before, but those wireless transmitters really seem more at home in the studio. Guys in the field like to keep the number of images they put on a piece of media relatively small to mitigate the effects of device failure. A dead 512MB card loses a lot less images than a dead 4GB card. Of course, the larger cards will be needed as the megapixels go higher, but the number of images on them won't go much higher. -
Will also work with the Canon 20D and 1DmkII
Canon's WFT-E1 Wireless Transmitter reportedly also works on Canon's three newest digital cameras, including the 1DsmkII (as mentioned), as well as the 20D ($1500, 8mp, 1.6x crop factor, high end consumer level) and 1DmkII ($4500, 8mp, 1.3x crop factor, pro body).
Rob Galbraith has a much more information here, as Canon's site appears to still need an update.
For the non-pro enthusiast, the 20D looks to be a great camera. It can handle 5 frames per second, instant on, and has ISO 3200 performance that beats most ISO 400 digicams. They are finally trickling into the market, and Calumet likely has a few in stock (they have several kits locally here in Boston). Just give them a call. -
It's been done before.Nikon has a new camera with a connector to GPS units.
...GPS support for the recording of location information with shooting data: Location information such as latitude, longitude and altitude can be transferred from a GPS device and recorded with the shooting data for an image. Nikon has developed the new MC-35 cable (optional) for connection to NMEA0183-compatible GPS devices. -
Re:Time for a redesign
But... aren't CF memory cards anywhere from 3 to 5 times slower?
In a word, No
High end CF memory cards are 2 to 3 times faster than microdrives.
Of course they can cost up to fourteen thousand dollars for the really big ones -
Re:Time for a redesign
But... aren't CF memory cards anywhere from 3 to 5 times slower?
In a word, No
High end CF memory cards are 2 to 3 times faster than microdrives.
Of course they can cost up to fourteen thousand dollars for the really big ones -
Re:My camera
An article describing SI's use of digital cameras for Superbowl 38.
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Audio needs only "fast"
Large, fast flash cards like this are good for high-quality (no lossy compression) portable audio recording too.
Even at 24/96 stereo, live audio needs less than 600 KB/s sustained write speed. Recording in 3D Ambisonic surround takes only double that. This page claims that a CF-compatible Microdrive cartridge can write at over 4 MB/s, so it should have no problem with data rates typical of live audio capture.
You do still have a point about durability however.
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Re:Who's gonna buy em?
A lot of pros are still using film, but any sort of time critical photography (sports/news reporting/etc) has gone all digital. And if you're using a digital SLR and shooting RAW, those CF cards don't last that many shots. Check out this article for an insight into Sports Illustrated's use of digital photography (they use multiple 512Mb or 1Gb cards per photographer).
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Re:storage for my camera
I've been looking at this sort of stuff recently. I found a couple of things that look cool.
The first is a USB Master Portable Hard Disk / Media Player which can connect directly to Digital cameras and memory card reader devices and copy images from the camera.
The second is a USB Bridge which you can connect two USB slave devices and copy files from one to the other without the need for a separate pc. I think that there are also some other portable hard drive cases that have a built in memory card reader to perform a similar function.
Steve. -
Re:Who's gonna buy em?I'd suggest that many (perhaps most) pro's have converted to Digital and the trend is increasing. Digicam's (eespecially pro ones) can generate a LOT of data VERY fast - I "had" to go over to a friend who had a Canon Mark II - this is a $4,000 8MP digicam that will shoot 8 frames/second
... with a frame burst of 40 frames ... in RAW mode. Lets just say it was REALLY cool to hold that shutter button down!Check out this interesting article on Sports Illustrated digital workflow to see how the pros do it and how much data was generated
... with the last generation of digicams!Having said all that, that is one heck of a price-premium for this 12 GByte card, so I'd take it as just a bleading edge product, but you'll continue to see larger/faster (BTW, faster is REALLY important to the pro's because you want to be able to drain the digicam memory buffer) cards coming down the pipe for cheaper
... and they will be used! ;-) -
bet they get stopped...... -- more than a few times -- for "suspicious activity." Oh, the irony.
See, e.g.: Freedom to Photograph site, discussion: "Street photography - stopped by the police?"
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Good Reviews
If your interested in good reviews/information pertaining to photography and cameras you may try Rob Galbraith's web site, he tends to give good information as well as reviews of camera equipment, both digital and film, plus he has a forum if you have questions, where professional photographers can help you out. The information you'll fine will be a whole lot more accurate than that given by "The tech Lounge." For good information ask someone who works with whats being reviewed as their profession if you ask me.
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Oddly, there is still a delay difference
Not one that I notice, but apparently there's enough of a difference between a film and digital SLR to give Sports Illustrated photographers trouble:
For the photographers, shooting digital forced some of the same adjustments that their wire service and newspaper brethren had already made. "The shutter delay is definitely greater on the digital cameras," says staff photographer Damian Strohmeyer. "You know you're shooting the quarterback as he cocks his arm, and you think you've got it, but you look later and say 'where's the one with the ball in his hand?'"
You can read the whole article at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?c
i d=7-6453-6821. -
Another interesting story...
...on Galbraith's site is about National Geographic's first ever all digital shoot here. My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!
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Re:Is that a Corona???Apparently it really is a stressful job...
http://www.robgalbraith.com/data/1/rec_imgs/321_s
i _trailer_edit.jpg -
Like people need a reason not to RTFA ?
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Re: How the pros do it
It's worse if your living depends on it. Redundant backups are the rule.
From "Shooting the D1X for National Geographic":
"CompactFlash cards filled with captured NEFs -- he carried eight Lexar 1GB cards and shot the entire story in RAW format -- were popped into a Lexar FireWire CompactFlash card reader and copied immediately to his laptop's hard drive where the images were renamed. As soon as there was time, McNally or his assistant, Alicia Hansen, used a LaCie FireWire CD writer to burn each picture to a pair of CDs. One CD was sent to Bill Douthitt at the Geographic's offices in Washington, D.C. and the other to McNally's studio in Dobbs Ferry, NY. An original of each frame therefore existed in three locations."
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Re:PO'ed photographers speak out.It is a "professional" forum. They have the "free trial area" and the "Paid section" which is some 80 dollars a year. The idea is they want to have a place to discuss pricing, photography techniques, etc with out the customer being able to see the discussions. I can understand that, however recently they have gotten very strict with what can be posted in the "free trial area"*.
The "free trial area" used to be the "free forum" and anybody was free to post anything they liked (photography related), use the search function, view member's profiles, send Private Messages, post attachments (pictures for critique) etc. However recently somebody had the wise idea to make it just a "trial area" instead.
Now all the aforementioned features have been disabled for all but subscribers.
Furthermore they regularly move posts from the "free trial area" to the "Paid section" which they deem to have "confidential" information in them which they don't want the "public" to have access to. Sometimes they will move the post of a non-paid member to the paid section and the poster can no longer access that post.
For example you are not allowed to post ANY pricing info in the free section, regardless of whether or not you care if your clientele can access the info.
I was considering joining as it seemed like a nice group of fairly talented photographers and I would have liked to have the benefit of their input, however when they started locking up the free area that just really turned me off to the whole thing. I just go to some other forums such as Rob Galbraith's forums now.
I'd be interested to hear more of what they have to say also. My previous post was a quote of an email I received as I am a member of the "free trial area".
Maybe somebody will post a link to this discussion over there.
* Example. Photographer Costs in the FREE Section
Text (begin quote)
This has come up again and I thought that I should post this for everyone to read.
(end quote)
It is common policy for the pro4um that we DO NOT post prices in the FREE Section due to the fact that anyone can access the free section (i.e.: our clientele).
Please Note that any and all threads that contain photographers costs will be moved to the PDA section regardless of who started the thread (PDA member or Non-PDA Member).
Thanks for your posting and enjoy!
Sincerely,
Michael
Pro4um Moderator
Hrm... guess I should add tags :p...there -
Re:Is 40x worth it?
CompactFlash Performance Database http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?c
i d=6007 -
Adapter sets are cheap.I have 1GB SD with an SD-to-CF adapter and a CF-to-PC card adapter plus a PC card-to-USB adapter. It gets most things done. The adapter set cost about $30.The SD card spends its life rotating between my MP3 player, camera, cellphone & notebook.
Comparing SD & MMC, you might want to consider that an SD card has a write protect switch which MMC & CF do not (but I expect I'll be corrected on that), and is much faster than MMC (up to 10Mbps vs 300kbs or 1Mbps). Ignore MMC.
If you go with CF, a useful real-world speed comparison is at Rob Galbraith's site.
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Re:Film and digital resolution comparisonshttp://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp
? cid=7-4833-4853
and: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ 1ds/1ds-field.shtmlIt's just polite to make such links both active and accurate (extraneous spaces in both links -- probably inserted by slashdot because you tried to submit the URLs as plain text).