What I've attempted to say is that, if one wants to save a fair amount of
money over a larger size compact flash, a microdrive is a viable
alternative.
All things considered, if I can save $150 - $200 by purchasing a 4GB
microdrive instead of a 4GB CF, then I have that much to spend on something
else, like another lens, or even a second microdrive.
I'm not arguing for microdrives and against CF. My watch has moving parts
as well, lots of things have moving parts. Whether a microdrive is more
reliable than a compact flash is likely more a factor of how it's cared for
and the particular unit that arrived at my door. I may buy a microdrive
tomorrow that breaks a month from now, or it may never break and will become
obsolete long before it matters.
I'm only pointing out the obvious, that microdrives are made to work with
DLSR's and DLSR's are made to work with microdrives, and the price
difference for larger capacities is still significant enough to make me
ponder.
Tom C.
From: Bruce Dayton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net
To: Tom C <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Subject: Re: CF card: normal or Microdrive?
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 16:30:22 -0700
Guess I should interject - Until fairly recently I had only been using
CF cards. Three Lexar 512mb 40X WA, One Kingston 1mb (slow) and one
Dane Elec 512mb (slow). I picked up a new 4gb Hitachi microdrive
(latest version) and have done quite a bit of shooting (6000 or so)
with all of them. I am shooting raw and so write speed is of concern.
For all of this, I have been shooting baseball games (as league action
photographer) and only shooting raw. Full buffers are of some issue
to me. In testing all the cards, I have found that there is no write
speed difference in the *istD when writing out raw to card with full
buffer between the Lexar 40x cards and the microdrive. Battery life
seems a bit shorter, but not by that much - certainly not enough to
bother me. The two slow cards are almost unusable for me as the shot
to shot time on a full buffer is about 5-6 seconds slower than the 40x
cards and microdrive.
All that being said, I am seeing the price of the microdrives being
about 2 times cheaper. It is still a viable alternative, but not
quite as compelling as in the past.
I still need CF cards as my CompactDrive won't allow me to download a
microdrive to it. So once it is full, I am done with that card until
I can dump it on a computer. With the regular compactflash cards, I
can dump them to the CompactDrive and start shooting again.
--
Best regards,
Bruce
