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4Gb CF Card Announced
An anonymous reader writes "Lexar has today announced that it now shipping a 4 GB 40x Compact Flash card. The card's claim to fame is the ability to store 600 RAW images taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera. This card also features Lexar's WA (Write Acceleration) technology which can improve performance further with WA enabled cameras. Because this card is larger than 2 GB, you will need a camera which is FAT32 compliant. This card is available now at the heady price of $1,499 ($0.37/MB). It looks like Lexar has managed to be faster then Hitachi (Former IBM storage division) with their 4Gb Microdrive."
The mention of the need for FAT32 to access the card seems to indicate that it's larger than 2 gigabytes. It would be nice to see some consistency, though, rather than having to guess based on context.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
DPReview did a comprehensive review of a bunch of flash cards here but it's rather out of date now. Time to bug them to update it, I think...
You win again, gravity!
There is already a solid state hard drive for PCs called the QikDrive:
:-)
http://www.platypus.net/products/qikdrive.asp
Its based on standard RAM and luckily it has its own UPS connection
That is what the submitter was talking about with Hitachi, Hitachi bought IBM's HDD assets including the Microdrive line. Hitachi is supposed to unveil a 4GB Microdrive this fall. The Microdrive is less shock resistant, eats up to 4X the battery life, and has slower transfer rates than the high speed flash products out there, initially the 4GB Microdrive may be cheaper, but within probably 9-18 months the flash will almost certainly be cheaper, that's the way it happened with the origional Microdrive (actually there wasn't any 1GB CF card at the time that I could find, but there was soon after).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You are never going to be able to take that many pic's without changing batteries so why not have a couple of cheaper 1GB cards and swap em out with the batteries? 1GB CF cards are as cheap as $228 you are paying a more than 50% premium for the denser storage.
.jpg anymore. Plus, since this thing is CF and not a Microdrive, it sucks less power, as well. I'd bet you can darned near fill one of these things easily.
Won't I? I already can almost fill my 1GB microdrive using just one BP-511 battery pack on my Canon G1.
The new SLR Canon cameras have an optional side-grip that holds two more BP-511s. And they're shooting much larger images. And when you're a professional (or semi-professional), which is what this product is aimed at, you're probably not shooting
Add in the fact that this thing has some new technology write-to-it-faster-stuff, and there's plenty of reason for this product to exist.
-JDF
People have been doing this for years in a variety of ways. You dont even need PC133 unless it's going into something with PCI-X. Unfortunaly it's the cost of aquiring these drives that turns people off to using them the way you have described. The RAM may be cheap to sonk costs from your last box but the PCI cards generaly run more than your average PC same goes for the SCSI based ones (A little slower but it dosent take up a PCI slot by itself)
No sir I dont like it.
A while ago Pretec announced 3GB and 6GB CF card, while 3GB is out, 6GB capacity CF is still no where in sight yet. but the competition from 4GB card surely will start driving the price down.
600 RAW * 6M pixels = 3,6G pixels or 3,6gigabit. At a minimum of 8 bits color resolution per pixel, it'll be 3,6 gigabytes.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
CompactFlash Performance Database http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I am currently using one of the Lexar 2GB cards for a Hard Drive on an embedded box that I put together. It's faster than IDE flash drives and costs MUCH less. A 512mb IDE flash drive costs about the same as a 2GB Compact Flash card. I have also tried using the 2GB Compact Flash cards by Pretc. I do not recommend using these cards for a drive. They proved to be extremely slow and some applications would not function with them. Lexar has really come out with a nice poroduct here!
Sandisk is working on a 4GB card as well, but it is not yet released.
- Slew -
1) SDRAM was, and still would be, uber cheap if it was still in mass production. It's been relegated to the legacy and niche markets, so the price is climbing again. That's how memory prices work, they start out high, bottom out, get replaced by a newer tech, then rise again (look how much EDO costs these days).
2) RAM can actually saturate that 133MB/s, while no (consumer level) HDD even comes remotely close. Not to mention the fact that, compared to HDD, there is virtually no latency when you hit RAM.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This card is targeted to high end users with 6 and 12 Mpixel cameras. They shoot raw images (lossless compression). Very high file sizes are created. It is not geared to the 2 Mpixel consumer camera which is using jpeg compression. Tarring or zipping jpeg compressed immages would be pointless since the images are ALREADY compressed far beyond what normal compression can do.
People have been predicting that solid state will replace hard drives for at least a decade now, probably more. But HDDs have kept ahead in large capacity throughout that time, and manufacturers still hav3e quite a lot of technology up their sleeves. The only way that flash is going to catch up with HDD in the nect 5 years (I predict no futher) is if the need for space is satisfied. And when you have got video and broadbabd, people will carry on filling HDD space with downloads, or more software or... This gadget said $0.37/Mbyte. The last disk I bought ran about $0.015/Mbyte, and that was a while back.
And using flash for a swap drive... Remeber that flash as a limited number of write cycles - perhaps 1 million. For picture storasge - no problem. For file storage - not likely to be a problem, becauss eht file space will eventually find its way into a long-lived firl. But for swap space, you might run out of write cycles sooner than you hope.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
No, it's called *losing* a generation.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
There is a HUGE difference between png/tiff vs jpeg and raw vs jpeg.
Raw isnt just lossless compression, but rather using the direct output of the image sensor. This preserves a higher dynamic range (like 12bit per pixel) and you can later set a white balance ect in your computer.
Just make a underexposed picture with jpeg and try to salvage anything with photoshop. All formerly dark areas will be a happy 8x8 macroblock land...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
That's great, but there's a chipper solution with more storage.
Digital Wallet - 30GB $399.99, or 10GB $259.25
FlashTrax 30GB digital storage - 30GB $499
I've heard that FAT32 is very bad to have on Flash because it keeps updating the disk space counter almost with every write. If this effect happens on a card of this size it might not last for more than a month if you fill it often.
raw images aren't 'stupid'. They allow the photographer much more latitude in the post-production process in a digital darkroom. By recording everything the camera senses, you are allowed a greater range of exposure compensation than even the newer jpeg formats.
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
I have a digicam that has that annoying button latency problem (Nikon 5000). The secret to using that camaera is to use the LCD, and keep your finger hovering over first button pressing it down the first stop, vs the second, thus keeping the camera energized and focused.
With my canon 10D it has a lesser latency and the ability to change the iso so I can keep the shutter speed between 1/30-1/4000 so it becomes easier to capture a shot then 1-1/30.
I can do the same with the Nikon cp5000, but the latency seems to be more of a problem then the shutter speed.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
The "Real Story" link on JPEGs is quite amusing, to say the least. Saying "look at these images in your web browser -- you can't tell the difference" hardly leads to the conclusion "people never need to use uncompressed images, since there never are visible differences."
.JPX) is a more sophisticated technique employing wavelets. To my eyes, the artifacts (especially localized ones) are significantly less noticable than standard JPEG at similar compression levels. A technology to watch...
I *do* work for a professional imaging company, and here are some of my opinions on "the real story":
- JPEG is designed to compress images in ways that degrade the visibility of compression artifacts as much as possible. It works particularly well for photographic images, since that's what it's designed for.
- JPEG compression is often very appropriate for web images. Uncompressed images are often inappropriate for web images, due to their size.
- JPEG does produce artifacts, and many are objectionable at high compression levels.
- Even mild JPEG compression does visible damage to things like crisp text or sharp lines. This is a function of the compression scheme's photographic emphasis. (And, specifically, a function of the 8x8 pixel blocks and discrete cosine transforms used....)
- JPEG2000 (.JP2 or
- Digital SLR "RAW" files are different than standard uncompressed tiff's. Usually, they represent raw sensor data at higher than 8-bit color depth. As such, they are the digital equivalent of the negative, and various different kinds of post-processing is often applied to the same image, based on situation.
- Compression isn't free (as in clock cycles). It takes a lot less time to write the larger RAW file from a DSLR to a CF card than it does to compress it in-camera to a smaller JPG file. This effects burst rate image capture as well as battery life.
Phew. That was long. The conclusion that "there's really no reason to use raws over jpegs" was wrong on so many levels that I had to clear some misconceptions up, I suppose!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= John Reinert Nash -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I've seen two misstatements repeated over and over again in this discussion. Folks have been suggesting that flash cards like this might represent the future of hard drives. They've also been mentioning that it has a higher speed than the IBM microdrive.
.5 seconds as well. Typical UNIX filesystems like ext2 or ffs, keep their data structures in fixed locations. Most writes are to metadata, and they will cause the metadata parts of a CF card to be erased and overwritten over and over again. Unlike a hard drive which can survive almost unlimited cycles like this, you will only get a few thousand in flash memory. Copying a set of files might burn out some cells in a single operation.
While this is true in a camera, where you tend to erase an entire card and then fill it in a linear fasion, this isn't true when you use it as a hard drive. Flash memory has two things which make it unique, slow erasures, and limited numbers of cycles. Unlike a hard drive, where you can simply overwrite data, in flash memory you have to erase a region of it first. Usually you also have to erase a much larger region than a filesystem block (64k vs 4k). These erasures can be as painful as
The log-structured filesystem (lfs) presents a partial solution to this, by writing data in blocks, deleting it in blocks, and writing to the end of a disk before starting over again. Unfortunatly, lfs becomes unefficient once fragmentation starts to set in, as a "cleaner" is necessary to group data back into blocks.
I still think one of these would be cool in my camera, but I want a 4G microdrive for my computer.
Adam
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
For the purposes of digital SLR cameras, $1500 is not 3x the price of a camera.
Digital SLRs _start_ at $1500 and go up to $8000 for the current models.
Good lenses range from $300 to several thousand. The price of a $1500 CF card is not going to deter any professional photographer that needs the storage.
On the other hand Flash media isn't exactly cheap yet, so I don't see it being used for anything that doesn't require long battery life, no fans, and jiggle-tollerance (no boob jokes).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
I think, that an image in the raw format preserves information about alignment of RGB cells in every pixel of the camera. This is a sub-pixel data. It allows you to produce more accurate end picture after processing.
There are many configurations for camera sensors. For example:
GRGRGR
BGBGBG
GRGRGR
RGBRGB
RGBRGB
RGBRGB
R-G-B-R-G
-B-R-G-B-
R-G-B-R-G
-B-R-G-B-
From the Lexar Media website [digitalfilm.com] / [lexarmedia.com]
It is important to note that cards greater than 2 GB can only be used in cameras that support the FAT32 file system. Please be sure to install the latest version of Image Rescue (version 1.1.5) that is bundled on the card on your computers before using the card in a camera.
Image Rescue can assist you in properly reformatting the cards to FAT32 if they are mistakenly used in a non-FAT32 compliant camera.
At this time the 4 GB card can be used with the following cameras that support FAT32 and have a CF Type II slot.
Cameras that accept CompactFlash Type II that are also FAT32-compatible:
Canon Powershot G3
Canon Powershot G5
Canon Powershot S45
Canon Powershot S50
Canon EOS 10D
Canon EOS-1Ds
Kodak DCS 720X (A CompactFlash-to-PC Card adapter is required with these models)
Kodak DCS 760 (A CompactFlash-to-PC Card adapter is required with these models)
Kodak DCS Pro Back (all models)
Kodak DCS Pro 14n
Olympus E-1
Hmm, you may want to keep that in mind before you consider this product.
I've read quite a few comments from people speculating that a particular filesystem (fat32) will cause issues because all the wear is concentrated in the FAT sectors, etc. This just isn't the case because the card will do wear-leveling in hardware, including replacing bad blocks with good blocks from a spare pool. Other interfaces (Mem Stick/MMC/SD/SM) do not have this advantage, as CF has a built-in intelligent controller to manage this behavior. The others allow direct access to sectors, and thus it is possible to "burn" a particular sector by writing to it repeatedly.
Here's a link to a FAQ about a CF interface for the Apple II, which discusses the issue (or lack thereof): http://dreher.net/CFforAppleII/FAQ.html
Here's a link to a maker of CF controllers and a description of their features: http://www.mittoni.com/compactflash/article5.html