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CF vs SD Anonymous
In the past I've gone with CF, but I've been told that SD will eventually replace CF as the format of choice for photographers. Your thoughts?
>> Anonymous
Of course it will. Smaller, cheaper, more secure, less power needed, more uses in other electronics.
>> Anonymous
>>34230
harder to break, easier to pop in...

most of the P&S cameras use SD and the DSLRs are starting to pick it up, too (Nikon D40, D50, D80... Pentax... eh, I'm getting too lazy to list *LOL*)
>> Anonymous
Isn't CF still usually ahead in the size race?
>> Anonymous
I think we do have 8GB SD card now.
>> Anonymous
SD cards have lower sizes than compact flash, but really, once you are in the realm of 4gig cards. You might as well just buy a portable hardrive which can copy your files instead of shelling out for cards which have more than 4gigs of space.
>> Anonymous
>>34254
Hitachi is planning on releasing a 20gb Microdrive this year.
Screw 4gb SD cards and an external HDD, I'd rather use a 20gb CF Microdrive.
Would be very, very handy to have an entire 20gb of crap - Given, you'd be hard pressed to fill all 20gb in one photo shoot, but it'd be nice if you use sublaptops or PDAs that have CF slots.
Hell, could probably keep Photoshop handy on it, or install a whole OS onto one and boot off it on any PC you might run into.
>> Anonymous
I use CF cards for two reasons:
1. Bigger so I won't lose them as easily.
2. I put a couple through the wash and they have come out fine. Can't say the same aboot sd.
>> Photon
But think about the power consumption. With a smaller card, less power to the card, longer the battery life per charge.
>> Anonymous
>>34257
I refuse to use portable storage with moving parts. Too many things can go wrong, too many chances for something small, fragile and expensive to break permanently. Flash is rugged, reliable, and big and cheap enough for anything I need to do on the road.
>> Anonymous
>>34257
Except Microdrives are all CF type 2, which pretty much no digital camera can fit.
>> Anonymous
>>34355
Just about every prosumer and professional camera I can think off off the top of my head uses CF Type 2 if it has a CF slot; the rest don't use CF at all.
>>34345
They're surprisingly durable, but I wouldn't send em through a washer and dryer. My 5gb Seagate Microdrive has survived dozens of falls, and general rough handling; they're next to indestructible when the platter inside isn't spinning; and it's only spinning when it's connected to something - As long as you don't shake your camera or drop it, it won't break unless you get unlucky with a dud.
They last about as long as flash memory when you treat them well, but the difference is that they croak suddenly, unlike flash memory where it degrades slowly, giving you plenty of time to back stuff up.
As far as power use goes - Microdrives are nasty about that, but it isn't terrible. You'll get 15 or 20 minutes less battery life, in exchange for massive amounts of space to take RAWs to your heart's delight. You ought to keep a spare battery or two around anyway, really, so it's only a problem for me when I'm stuck charger-less for more then two or three days.
Either way, it's cost effective. 5gb of Microdrive, back when I got mine, went for about the same as 1gb of Flash, and I can easily fill 1gb in a day. Another handy advantage is not needing to swap in a fresh, empty CF card when you fill it up (As you probably won't fill it if you move your pictures to your PC once a week), meaning unless you lose your whole camera, you're not going to lose your CF card any time soon.
Then again, I found a 2gb SD card for $20 on Black Friday; I nabbed two of them despite not needing them for anything. I'd rather have 5gb of Flash then a 20gb Microdrive, and with the prices of flash memory at where they are, I'm probably going to replace my microdrive as soon as it croaks or gets completely overshadowed by flash memory with a nice beefy flash card.
>> Anonymous
>>34254
I do what this man says. I have multiple small cards that I can pop in and out and transfer to my card-reader/picture dumper/HDD.

If one card decides to die on me, I'd rather lose 1GB of shit compared to 20GB of of it.
>> Anonymous
op here. how many more generations do you think we'll see CF for?
>> Anonymous
I'm expecting that Prosumer/Professional camera will be taking CF for atleast another 20 years, if CF isn't replaced by a new CF-equivalent format; CF will always be able to squeeze in more data, higher speeds, at lower prices over SD for the mere fact that it's larger (And is thusly able to fit more things into it and/or skimp on miniaturization), and in a large camera, that size difference is nearly insignificant.