Compact flash card worth it

[Mitten Diver]

I see that computer geeks has a 2.2GB compact flash card for $190 and Newegg has a refurbished 2.2GB Transcend card for $140 are these cards any good? Is there a memory card manufacturer that comes recommended by the board? Would like to acquire a card for my 5050 to capture photos with.

In performing my research it seems highly recommended to shoot in a RAW format. So it makes sense to have the biggest card possible for a weekend or so of diving on one unit. Is this the preferred method of storage or would I be better getting a couple of 1GB cards or some other combination.

I would like to budget for the media first. Then I wil start looking at strobes.

Mitten Diver

 

[gfisher4792]

I don't have any experience as far as purchasing/rating any card higher than 1 gig, however, when I was doing research before I bought my dig cam, cost-wise it was cheaper to purchase four 256MB cards rather than a single 1 gig card (I don't know if that's true for larger cards). I would also rather have multiple cards, to cover the possibility of loss, card corruption, etc. I agree that larger cards would work better with RAW format (how much memory does a RAW file normally take up anyway?), and switching cards at depth isn't really an option (no kidding). So perhaps balance between how many shots you will take and card size.

Anyway, I like Viking brand of cards, and I'm not familiar with the brands you listed. I don't like the refurbished tag, as it has been stated in digicam sites that even media cards have a limited life, though that life is rated to be in the thousand times of use before loss of quality.

 

[Bob3]

On the high ticket items, you can save some big bucks by waiting for a combination of sale/rebate.
Last month there was a 1GB Viking that was going for $150 after sale & rebates. That's pretty much the going rate for a card half that size.
I think the 256MB Viking is still on sale/rebate for only $35 (got one of those sitting here staring at me). http://www.scubaboard.com/t45712.html
The Geeks' deal is for a "microdrive" CF card, a little tiny hard drive. They're generally a lot slower than a normal flash memory, so that's something to take into consideration.
Whenever I spot a super deal like that I'll post it, (but usually wait a day 'till my order's processed.)

 

[ssra30]

I have not looked at CF card price in a few months but I wonder about 2.2 GB CF card for under $200. There are 2 different kinds of CF card, type I and type II. Type I is the preferred card but type II (which is micro drive, or did I get it the wrong way around) is generally cheaper (per GB) and many people have used them with no problem but it consumes a lot more power than type I card and has spinning parts in it so theoretically it may not last as long. Big card is always good so you won't have to open the camera housing so often to change card or download pictures. However if you choose a card that consumes a lot more power, you will still need to open the housing to change the batteries more often which kind of defeat the purpose of having larger capacity card. However if this 2.2 GB card is not a microdrive type then it is a good deal. Another thing to be careful about, if you shoot in RAW, depending on CF card speed, it will take anywhere from 4-8 seconds to write (this is for Oly C5050, other cameras may be different). It does not sound like much but when a whale shark comes by, it will be the longest and most agonizing 8 seconds in your dive experience so bigger card is good but faster card is also very helpful!

 

[sapphire]

In performing my research it seems highly recommended to shoot in a RAW format.

In the Oly digital photography class I took on Saturday, I learned the difference between RAW and TIFF and JPEG. If you shoot in RAW, you get an unprocessed, uncompressed image. In TIFF, you get an uncompressed, but processed image. In JPEG you get an image both processed and compressed. (BOY I hope I got that right!).

Anyway, it seemed to me that you would need to be quite the expert in Photoshop to shoot in RAW, because you have to manually process your images. I would be afraid I would not be able to do as good as the camera, LOL!

I am interested in experimenting in shooting in TIFF, though. Just to see if I can get better results than in the "SHQ" mode...

 

[ssra30]

Anyway, it seemed to me that you would need to be quite the expert in Photoshop to shoot in RAW, because you have to manually process your images. I would be afraid I would not be able to do as good as the camera, LOL!

I am interested in experimenting in shooting in TIFF, though. Just to see if I can get better results than in the "SHQ" mode...

Actually that is not quite true. In photoshop 7, if you use the RAW plugin from Olympus, when you import the picture, you will have 3 choices, picture with no adjustment whatsoever, with white balance adjustment or with all automatic adjustments. With no adjustment whatsoever, you will have to be pretty good with photoshop as picture tended to be dark and yellow (at least most of my pictures seemed to be like that) but I like the second option with a bit more photoshop adjustment over importing the pictures with full automatic adjustment.
TIFF file is way too big, I think. It is about 14 mb rather than 8 mb in RAW so with a 1 GB CF card, you can fit 130+ pics in raw but half that in tiff and it will take quite a bit longer to write each file as well. Just my personal preference....

 

[sapphire]

Actually that is not quite true. In photoshop 7, if you use the RAW plugin from Olympus, when you import the picture, you will have 3 choices, picture with no adjustment whatsoever, with white balance adjustment or with all automatic adjustments. With no adjustment whatsoever, you will have to be pretty good with photoshop as picture tended to be dark and yellow (at least most of my pictures seemed to be like that) but I like the second option with a bit more photoshop adjustment over importing the pictures with full automatic adjustment.
TIFF file is way too big, I think. It is about 14 mb rather than 8 mb in RAW so with a 1 GB CF card, you can fit 130+ pics in raw but half that in tiff and it will take quite a bit longer to write each file as well. Just my personal preference....

Thanks, ssra30, for the info. I only have Photoshop Elements. In the class, they only got into Photoshop a little bit. They spent a little more time discussing and showing what the images looked like, both processed and unprocessed. If you have the option of automatic adjustments, then RAW sounds good. You would get the benefits of the TIFF but save space on the card, is that correct? How long does a RAW file take to write to the card? Do you save RAW and TIFF for macro shots and things that don't move??

 

[ssra30]

sapphire, I assume the freebie Olympus plugin should work for photoshop elements as well. I shoot all my u/w pictures in RAW mode. With Transcend 45X, it takes about 4s.Quite a bit longer for TIFF. The picture is captured at the shutterspeed into a buffer before writing to the card so eventhough it takes 4s to write a file, you can shoot anything you like whether it is moving or not.
Personally I don't like the full auto import very much as Oly auto setting seemed to brighten up everything too much especially for picture with black background. Import with white balance adjustment only seems to be a good compromise, not as much work as no adjustment whatsoever but still has plenty of room to play around with in photoshop.

 

[Scubatooth]

ssra30

if you have that much of a yellow cast in your images you need to check your monitor because it sounds like one of the guns in the tube is off or on the fritz.

personally of the raw images i have i always keep the orginal image seperate and then have seperate mast folders for how the image is processed(etc) it takes alot of storage but its worth it(only problem is backing it up i have to have a solid day to do a full back up to DAT tapes or DVDs

Tooth