CF Question

[jliechty]

I wouldn't be comfortable carrying a 12GB CF card, unless it was to be used in a camera that only fit 100 shots on each card, and I had multiple cards.

Right now, I have a 1GB card for my poor old 2.7MP DSLR, and two 64MB cards that were left over from my P&S digital days. This provides more than enough capacity for everyday shooting, but I'd want the insurance of an extra GB or two before going on a longer trip.

[mikebinok]

Partly this depends on the file size created by your camera, of course.  For my 1Ds, I use two 2-gig CFs and a 1-gig CF for my main shooting.  They usually get me through a day, though on shoots with lots and lots of wildlife behavior opportunities I'll go through more, and draw on a hodgepodge of old 512 meg cards I used to use with my D60.  Each evening, images are backed up to a laptop hard drive, and duplicated on a USB 2.0 external laptop drive.  The laptop stays in my car trunk each day (assuming I'm traveling) and the USB drive stays stashed in my hotel room.

The risk of putting everything on one card doesn't only arise from card failure.  Twice in the field I have dimwittedly formatted a card with shots on it.  (I know, I'm a schmuck!) Having multiple cards is a lot better--Worst-case I've only lost part of my shots for the day, and even if (as has happened both times) I am able to recover the lost shots with rescue software, I can put the formatted card aside and continue shooting with other cards.  With one big card, I'd be shut down till I could go in with image rescue software.

In a crisis, I'll use battery power or an inverter to run the laptop and download cards to the laptop out in the field, but this doesn't happen often and I don't like to do it.  It was confusion during this process that caused one of the formatting incidents I talked about above.  At a really productive place like Bosque, I go back to the hotel for lunch in mid-day, and do a leisurely download of cards there.

[wolfnowl]

Hi folks:

While it wasn't that long ago that Hitachi 4GB microdrives were considered 'state of the art', I was reading today that Pretec  (http://www.pretec.com) is now offering a 12GB 80X compact flash card.  I haven't checked the price, but they're not likely to come cheap.  File sizes aren't getting any smaller, though, so it begs the question, what's your comfort level?  Is it better to carry 3 or 4 2GB or 4GB cards in case one fails?  Would you be comfortable carrying around 12GB of images on one card?  At best, all digital data is ephemeral.  Newer technology gives us more choices, but at what (potential) cost?  I don't see new cards/ drives/ readers getting any smaller, but with more and more in one place, redundancy becomes more and more important.

Mike.

[drew]

It just does not seem to be sensible forking out loads of dosh to store all of your eggs in one gigantic basket. I really think 4GB or thereabouts is a sensible limit on flash media. For me, flash media and microdrives are coming to a price point where it is starting to be affordable to have enough storage to leave all of my images, even on a longish trip on those media without needing to reformat or delete. I will then back-up to an Epson P-2000. I think this is enough belt and braces for all but the most doom-mongering.