Digital Cameras

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duane Attaway
> 
> 
> On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Brian Densmore wrote:
> 
> > to look in the stores for xD memory sticks made by vendors
> > other than Fuji or Olympus...
> 
>...
> 
> The xD-Picture Card is a flash memory card format jointly 
> developed and
> owned by Fujifilm, Olympus and Toshiba, and was introduced in 
> the fourth
> quarter of 2002.
> 
Okay did some research on this. Toshiba is the only manufacturer
for this card. Olympus and Fuji designed this memory specification.
I couldn't find any power usage figures on any of the formats.
On speed the fastest compact flash cards can write about 1.5MB/s
and read about 9MB/s (this can vary quite widely depending on
who made the card and which version it is) as opposed to 3MB/s
for write and 5MB/sec for read for the xD. Of course, I doubt
anyone can take pictures fast enough to have the write aspect to
the disk be a factor. The major limiting factors is the recording
to CCD and fast RAM, and the compressing. Writing to disk is only
one of the steps. So the proprietary format of xD looks to be
twice as fast and supposedly less battery intensive than
Compactflash. It also costs more and has only one manufacturer.
So personally I would look for a camera I liked the features of
and give more preference to a Compactflash card over any other
format. Just my views. But then Olympus makes great cameras.
Then again so do other companies. I'd love to see a Leica digital
camera, but then that would probably be out of my price range. ;)

Brian