Compact Flash or XD memory Card?

[Dominiek]

For our new Olympus C5050 digital camera we want to buy an extra memory card of about 256 MB. We already have a Compact Flash memory card of 128 MB.

Should we buy a XD memory picture card or a Compact Flash card?

Are there any differences?

Hope some of you have experience with these cards (especially the XD card because that one is new to us).

 

[Ruu]

My own personal feeling is "whichever is cheaper". Most people are limited to which one they buy based upon hardware - if you can do either go for whichever gives you more storage for your pound / dollar / yen / stone ring. I don't believe either one is dramatically faster / less prone to failure etc. The XD card will be marginally smaller.

Dave

 

[Finesse]

Where to begin ???

I Have the xD, CF and smart media (sm) cards.....

To the average person I dont think you cant tell the differences between the cards.....xD and CF

BUT

I would definitely get (at a minimum ) a card to go in each slot (an xD or sm for one and a CF for the other {you can get a micro drive also}) That is one of the benefits of this camera ....so please dont get "hung up" on using only one type of media.

The other thing is I have seen a few of your posts regarding RAW formats. That is going to use up a lot of space on your cards ..... so if you need or want to shot raw your going to need bigger media cards like a 256 xD card in one slot and at least a 512 CF in the other... This will give you the space to sufficiently store those large files. This is like the 32 mb card that comes with the camera ...its a joke as you can only store around 8-10 images in SHQ yet in the 2-3 mp cameras 32 mb would be a fair amount of memory...

As far as the cards go (I'll need to find this spreadsheet for you ) I saw a comparison done of all the cards in that camera. The write speeds for these cards stood out and I was surprised to see that the xD card (promoted as a very fast writing card ) was slower than some CF cards. Again shooting in RAW takes longer to record/write the image than say in SHQ.

If it were me and I was only buying one card (in this case since you have a CF card ) I would get the largest xD I could. Ideally you write to one card and store to the other therefore avoiding having to replace the media after a dive (battery life will control how frequently in a dive day you need to open the housing).

Well thats it for now....let me try to find that chart

 

[Finesse]

That comparison chart

Hope this helps

 

[TedJ]

Finesse is right on the money with the comments.
One other thing to consider is that you can only use the panorama feature of the Oly cameras with Fuji/Olympus xD cards (unless you know how to hack a CF or SM card, which most people don't).
TedJ

 

[ReyeR]

Currently the largest xD card available is 512MB but it's still fairly expensive (about $216). For just a little bit more ($234) you can get a 1GB CF card and it's heaps faster. I have a Transcend 512MB 30x CF in one slot and a Olympus 128 xD in the other and the Transcend kicks ass. They've also released the 1GB 45x. The only reason I bought the xD was because I was (falsely) under the impression that it was the fastest media around. I guess I can do my panos on it and it's a backup should my CF fail UW.

Here's another link for CF comparisons (it's a little outdated): http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare

On a 512MB card you'll get about 140 SHQ or 68 RAW images.