Card size is a religious question I think, not a scientific one. On the one hand, loss and/or damage is minimized by not having to swap cards in and out of the camera, but there's that "all your eggs in one basket" mentality against using small cards. On a 40D with a typical RAW file size of 12.5Mb, you'll need a 2Gb card to store 100 pictures. For me, 4Gb is the right size with a 40D, good for about 600 shots, which is big enough for most events. If I have a 2nd or 3rd one, then I have adequate backup from the "Ooops, I formatted the card".
Formatting the card in the camera is certainly OK, but if you use cards larger than 2.5Gb, you're better off doing it on a computer where you can specify the cluster size, because the default cluster size is NOT the fastest. Google "compact flash cluster size" for more on that. Schlake's reliance on software RAID and lack of trust in optical media to me is a little off by my standards. Verbatim Ultralife Gold Archival DVDs are about $1.70 each, and they're more expensive than even the Taiyo Yuden Gold discs, so archiving on high quality discs is about a half cent a picture. Now, if you generate 400 keepers a day like Schlake has with the new camera, that runs about $700 a year in storage costs. For me shooting high school football and amateur stuff, I average 300 keepers/week at best, so it's less than a disc a week. One of these years, we'll have affordable HD discs, Blu-ray or HD, and the DL capacity will be 7-10x today's 4.7Gb ones. I too use a tree type arrangement to store my pictures, and my "catalog" is just Picasa, but it's fast, flexible and can resize and print in a pinch. We all forgot the most important thing - have fun! Tom P > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dale > Frederick > Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 6:31 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: EOS 40D advice > > I'd pretty much go with what Bob and others have said. I do however > have > one exception; That being the BIG CF cards. I have yet to do it myself, > but I have seen others accidentally do an /erase all/, or a > /formatting/ > of a card when that was not their intention. Now, the images in many > cases can be recovered, but not in the field, and without spare cards, > their shooting is done. So I feel safe with only around 80 - 90 images > on a card. As the cameras have more pixels and the files sizes get > larger, I get larger cards and try to keep to my safe image limit > comfort level on them. Suffice it to say, thats only my suggestion. > > As another tip, if you should be like me, and have a number of cards in > a wallet; I use a system to track exposed versus unexposed cards. All > cards are in-camera reformatted before a days worth of shooting, and > placed face side up in the wallet. After they have been exposed, they > are placed into the wallet face down. > > dale * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
