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12GB CompactFlash Cards Coming Soon
Anonymous Photographer writes "As Digital Photography Review reports, Pretec will release a 12 Gigabyte CompactFlash card by the end of the year... for just $14,900. Of course, you could save $14,300 by purchasing three Creative Labs Nomad MuVo 4 GB MP3 players and removing the Hitachi 4 GB microdrives to get the same amount of CompactFlash storage. Heck, I'll do the CF removal for you, at the low price of only $10,000. Think of the money you'll save." And for those seeking a different sort of windfall, VL writes "With MuVo 2 shells going on the cheap now, now is as good a time as any to pick one up and installing your own Compact Flash card to get it running again."
Except the ones in MP3 players are Compact Flash compatible hard drives, not flash drives.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Really, I know there are a few niche applications for that much space in compact flash, but where's the real market for these? Aren't most pros still using film, making the ammount of people willing to spend that much money on a CF card even smaller?
Banaaaana!
Thing is, even though microdrives are rugged (I have several and have never had a problem with them), they are still filled with moving parts.
A lot of pro photographers are in really tough assignment areas (i.e. war zones, etc.) with digital gear like Nikon or Canon's professional offerings... These cameras can run $4-8k easily and are ruggedized, waterproof, dustproof, etc. If you're going to be hopping through ditches and onto freight trucks and getting your gear submerged in mud and water every five minutes, there might be a distinct advantage to storage with no moving parts...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There's a huge difference between Hitachi Microdrives and a quality CF card - speed! Professional Digital SLR cameras such as those made by Nikon and Canon are able to shoot very large frames at a pretty stiff frame rate. A professional photographer would quickly be frustrated at the time it takes to write such frames to a Microdrive, making them next to worthless.
As for the 12GB capacity, I can also see these being used in the recent crop of micro-size digital video cameras.
-JT
Who needs photos bigger then 3-5 mega-pixles? Any bigger and they cant be displayed on a monitor at full res. no printer can match the resolution and the files are bloody HUGE. Transfering 1gig pictures from a memeory card at any speed would still take ages. Some times its nice to know the tech is out there, but it has no practicle use.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Considering the space program essentially used flash memory to store just about everything on the Mars missions, I imagine they're a prime candidate. They'd have to wait for cards that are radiation and durability tested, which may take years.
Hard drives are a liability in space: one more gizmo that can fall apart from vibration, not to mention dust. Flash memory is far more reliable.
Everybody thinks this is a waste of space. But just you wait until those Holo cameras the doc used on Voyager go on sale. Then we will see who thinks 12GB is too much. Same thing went for my 10GB Hard Drive I got several years ago....never thought I would need more space.
The technology comes first, they we wait for it's applications. Same thing goes for that smelling device in an article earlier which seems pretty useless to most now.
But tomrrow it will be cheaper, and drive down the costs of smaller CF card..
This is a good thing for all, even those that dont have the cash for a 12gb card...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A big downside to microdrives...there is a huge difference in transfer rates at different places on the disc. The outer surfaces are much slower to seek to..a friend had an early IBM md (512 mb or so) for his camera and noticed this....as the disc fills it takes a really long time to write images.
I love geeks and gadget freaks. For the most part, you can be a great and successful professional photographer without relying on $100,000 of equipment. In fact, you can get away with about $4000 for a good camera, flash, lens, reflector, and some storage.
Of course, if you like gadgets, there's a world of stuff out there for you. It's all too easy to turn the art of photography into a geek's paradise of analysis, formulas, and techniques. But I guess that kind of flexibility is just the beauty of the medium.
I think you need to define what you mean by "pro." Certainly most photojournalists and news photographers are using high-end digital SLRs, but there are plenty of portrait photographers (above the level of a Sears Portrait Studio) still working with film-based medium-format cameras. And art photographers, which you may not regard as "pros," work with a variety of cameras, from crude pinhole cameras to expensive single-plate box cameras. Moreover, much art photography still involves chemical processes in the darkroom.
Somebody please, tell this machine I'm not a machine.
Ain't gonna happen. Compact flash media has a limited number of times that it can be written. Using one as the main drive in a computer would chew it up. Just think about how often your HDD gets written to during normal computer usage. (mostly swapping/page files)
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.