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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."
is still the time it takes for a camera to transfer from on-memory to the card... no matter how big the card is, until this time is reduced, it'll still be hard for some applications ..
But it's definitely good.. I use a CF-Reader on my laptop instead of a diskdrive, and obviously, a 4 GB CF card would definitely be nice.. now I can easily transfer data between machines!
Of course, again, though, bandwidth is still an issue..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
How long until solid state technology replaces hard drives outright, or at least supplements them?
And, only slightly offtopic, why must PCs have pagefiles created on a hard drive? Why not have a bunch of SDRAM slots, even on a PCI card, and have 4 gigs of uber-cheap PC133, then create a 4 gig swap file in RAM (if not natively supported).
I hate having to swap to HDD, and my only option being super-pricey DDR or RDRAM upgrades.
A machine would do just fine with 256 Megs of Dual-DDR400, and 4 gigs or so of PC133. Then HDD as an absolute last resort. It plugs right in to the tiered-memory architecture, so why would this not work?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
a quick google search reveals that a 1 GB version is about 170... 170 * 4 = 680. At 1500 bucks, I think I'd rather just keep three other 1 gb sticks in my pocket/camera bag/whatever... granted, if you're a professional photgrapher you might think otherwise, but I recall something that we used a few years back that had to be changed every X number of pictures, what was it, oh yes... film.
I'd say it has to be easier to pop a flash card in and out of a digital camera as opposed to a roll of film... but thats just me.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
unrelated note... I wish all PCs would come with CF slots on them standard. i think its the best alternative to the floppy. ive even started carrying arround a card reader so i can use CF to replace my stacks of zip disks.
I want 2D games back.
As far as I can tell, this thing is only useful for professional photographers. When getting my picture taken for the cover of Pro. PHP4 MM Programming, I saw that the photographer had several 1GB CF cards strewn over his desk. Digital photos are becoming more popular because people can get them reprinted and such. There's not really a loss in quality either, since the photos are 5-7 megapixels. But you end up getting 27MB TIFF files (in B/W)! I'm sure there are other uses for this sort of storage, but this is the best example I could think of.
I think that the price to pay for CF is way too heavy for this card to fit into general use. CF cards don't have the longest lifespan in the world either. Until these prices go down, I don't think CF will become a really hot item. I mean, look at iPods. 20GB of storage at less than half the price (and it'll play your MP3s).
The other disappointment regarding the price is that it's too high to push the prices down on 1GB models, so we won't see these being shoved into consumer electronics anytime soon either.
I think that by the time CF gets to be reasonably priced, other devices of similar size and much higher capacity will be available. I don't have a good feeling about the lifespan of CF.
On the other hand, I'd like to know some of the uses that this card may see. I may be completely oblivious to its practical usage. Feel free to enlighten me as to where this could be used, what it will replace, and whether or not the price is right for that application.
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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
But if you only have 1 card- its in your camera. If you lose that card, you have FAR greater problems on your hands!
Conversely- if you are juggling 4 different little pieces of plastic, the ability to lose one is a lot easier!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
What's the MTBF on these things? I've had CF cards go bad on me before, and it's always a bummer when you lose photos. I personally think it's best to go with several mid-sized cards rather than one gargantuan one. That way, if a single card goes bad, you don't lose everything. Even for pro-tographers who take zillions of pictures, it's a good idea. Changing a CF card takes less time than changing a roll of film, so it won't interrupt the workflow all that much. Plus it might save you a major headache should you lose everything.
On the same lines, I think someone should come out with a redundant flash card. Instead of a single 4GB card, perhaps two 2GB cards in one, with the storage mirrored as in a RAID. I know some people might pay extra for the added security/redundancy.
And whats in the palm of your other hand?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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?
What's the deal with measuring speed as multiples of ancient cdroms? How long is this gonna go on? Am I supposed to walk around with a pocket calculator in order to figure out what the actally speed of merchandise is? Quick: how many MBps in 48x?
It's like measuring the power of a space shuttle's lunch rockets using horse power. "Oh, you mean if we tie down 1 million and a half horses to the shuttle we'd be able to get it off the ground? Impressive..."
The power of Christ compiles you!
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 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-
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