I just got my first digital camera a Canon Rebel with a 17-85 mm IS, I went ahead and got a 1 gig Dane CF but before I got it I bought 2 Compact Flash cards from Costco, they were scan disk but they were also very small compared to the Dane and they do not fit into the Rebel's cf compartment. Do they come in different seizes? If I shot snapshots of family wich setting would be good to print jpgs, fine large, LARGE, medium? I would never print a snapshot in jpge bigger than 8x10, problably 5x7 would be the biggest, I would problably use RAW for more serious photography. I saw a portable storage device for $ 500 dollars has anybody tried the Vosonic for less? Is the Adobe RAW conversion good enough or do I need a third party software, I heard the software that comes with the camera is not very good. Is Dane cf any good compared to Lexar and scandisk? Thanks, Andres

Do you mean sandisk?
The Sandisk ultra II and extreme III are both excellent cards as are the Lexar x40 and x80 cards.

I use Integral Pro high speed CF cards that are cheaper than the Lexar and Sandisk and rated at x100 excellent cards

Compact flash cards are a standard size, sounds like you have another form factor of card there is Compact flash II form factor/microdrive, these are the same size but thicker.

I would always shoot RAW without a doubt, but if storage is an issue shoot best quality Jpeg, you can make images smaller if need be but making them bigger isnt the best option.

Adobe camera RAW is plenty good enough for RAW conversion, if you have that why pay for something else?

Dont have an external mass storage device so cant offer an opinion

Simon

Message edited on: 01/02/2006 21:42

Good answers.I would just stick with the Lexar or sandisk though.

Thank you guys, the salesman at Samy's camera thinks I got an sd card instead. I will get an sandisk because it comes with recovery software.

Lexar High speed cards come with recovery software on the card that you need to copy to PC before use.

Integral Pro high speed cards come with a mini recovery software CD

Integral are recommended by a couple of professional photographers over here (UK) about half the price of Lexar and SanDisk.

As far as I know the Sandisk Extreme III are currently the fastest cards available, although with a Rebel or RebilXT/20D I doubt you will see a physical difference over the Lexar x80 or Integral x100 cards.

Message edited on: 01/03/2006 04:03

I have heard that the Kingston CF cards are pretty fast and reliable also...and just by having a quick look around, it seems they are low cost as well...might be worth a look. As for RAW vs JPEG; just a personnal preferance, but I always shoot in RAW. It is so much better having RAW to start with for colour adjustments, white balance, and even enlarging...raw allows you so many more options after taking the photo and with the price of CF cards now, space should rarely be a problem. Cheers

Thanks! I have not seen Integral Pro Crads in L.A problably in the Internet. I think RAW is the ticket, thaks again! Andres

Attached Link: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

Pros and cons of high speed cards; Pros: 1) Faster write times...this is a double benefit because it also saves camera battery life. The cam takes less time to write the data, resulting in less battery drain. 2) Faster read times...a real bonus when you want to dump a 1 gig+ card to your computer Cons: 1) Compatibility...make sure your camera is compatible with the super high speed cards. 2) Camera limitation...at some point, the bottleneck in write speed will be the cams ability to write to the card fast enough. 3) Cost...only slightly more expensive than reg speed cards I have recently seen 150X cards available, but I can't vouch for their quality or compatibility. For those interested, I have attached a link to a compact flash card performance database...lots of info with performance tests on a camera by camera basis...some interesting stuff... As everyone else has already said, RAW is the way to go!

There are several different kinds of flash memory cards SD MMC CF MINISD MEMORY-STICK XD etc... CF gets up to 8GB while SD gets up 4GB & 200X. SD is the most used (I think).

Ohh one other very important thing when getting any cards over 2GB...make sure your camera supports 2GB/FAT32. Cheers