[OT] Digital camera formats

[Mr Kot]

Ok, it's my turn to pick your brains now...

As behind the times as i am, i'm about to purchase my first digital camera. Now i know my shit as far as cameras in general are concerned. Indeed, i even have my eye on a particular model, but right now i'm in a quandry as to which storage media format is going to be the best to use.

Now here's what i mean by "best": Back in the days when videotape was newly available to joe public, everyone had to make the choice between VHS, Betamax, V2000 etc. and although each format had its pros and cons, VHS won the trade war in the end because JVC had the foresight to lease its patent to all and sundry. Sony's Betamax - which was technically superior - fell victim to Sony's stubbornness in keeping the format to itself, other than Sanyo.

A few years later, camcorder enthusiasts faced a similar decision about the portable cassette formats too, then when recordable DVD came about more recently, the DVD-R, DVD+R debate continued.

So in short, my definition of "best" here doesn't necessarily mean the most technologically superior - all storage media will only be holding MB of data anyway - but the format that will become the most widespread in the future, and not go obsolete within a few years of me buying the camera, therefore leaving me in the lurch when i need to buy more media or integrate the media into future systems.

I can say no already to Sony's memory stick; i just see that as another Betamax flop as i haven't known any brand other than Sony using it. So between SD, xD, Compact flash and any others i haven't looked into yet, what would anyone out there advise? Anyone have any inside industry info? Anyone experience problems / data loss / corruption with any particular format? Any info appreciated :)

[aKe`cj]

Compared to the price of the main equipment, the storage-media will not cost that much. I certainly would NOT take the storage-media in consideration as a main factor when looking at a new cam - unless you already have a lot of equipment (I personally use Canon D-SLR and switching to a different brand would render my old lenses etc useless - but as far as I understood you dont have that worry)

What are you looking at anyway? Consumer, Prosumer, DSLR ?
What are your expectations? Good snapshots (quality) or persuing photography as a hobby (taking the picture rather than having it)?

dont focus on the storage-media ... buy a cam that serves your needs and unless it brakes down it wont make much of a difference to you what media is gonna make it to future models. Atm the market is scattered with a large viarity of media anyway.. been like that for many years.. and since each brand has its own fable, I dont think it'll change anywhere soon.

[Conduit]

Well I don't know what the 'best' is, but I've gone for SD when I've bought my last couple of cameras. They seem to be a little more popular than other formats, & it seems more things are SD compatable by default (i can plug the card into my media player for e.g.), and they're also a bit cheaper to buy per meg than other formats.
It's good advice to find a camera that you like & that suits your needs best though, rather than look at what storage you want to use.

[Mighty Max]

I think SD (and it's subform microSD) is the most stable allrounder of these. Alltho due to its buswidth (1 or 4 bits) it is pretty low on speed. Up to 2GB are common atm. _Some_ SD cards are very picky on sio-command abortion and can loose their internal sectortable on hot unplugging.

The compactflash takes advantage of it's bigger size. The available space is normally a bit more then on SD's. They access medias through a 16bit ATA bus which allows higher throughput. Downside: it's size and powerconsumption. A microdrive (HDD in CF format) is hungry.


On semi/professional equipment i'd recomment to look for CF devices if you have the choice (ake'cj has a valid point there) and take a microdrive. They have a much longer life espacially if you create and delete many pictures.

This is a general problem with nor-flash devices (both real cf/sd as chip solution) they don't take too many rewrites of sectors (10-100k cycles), and the fat/directory sectors are very frequently overwritten. It'd be bad if the one foto too much destroys your previous work.

[aKe`cj]

Personally, although my canon supports microdrives, I prefer CF cards as they are less sensitive and are faster than microdrives. Size doesnt really matter imo. CF's, being the largest of all available formats, are just about large enough for me not to loose em. therefor I'd say size doesnt really matter.
SD and CF will both be supported by yet to come bodies - it really depends on what system suits you best... the storage format is really one of the last things to consider. Buy a camera that you'll be able to use for 4'ish years and accept whatever storage media comes with it.

[Mr Kot]

Nice post, Mighty Max. Well detailed :) The rewrite repetition failure factor hadn't even crossed my mind. I will avoid hot unplugging at all costs; i'm very particular about looking after equipment anyway. Power consumption will have to be factored in too, as i do faff about a lot when setting up shots etc.


What are you looking at anyway? Consumer, Prosumer, DSLR ?
What are your expectations? Good snapshots (quality) or persuing photography as a hobbyProsumer ideally. As much as i would like a DSLR, the use i'm gonna put it to wouldn't justify the cost. Although the camera's first use will be for my forthcoming holiday snaps, i will be using it as a serious hobby camera after that. My last film camera was an SLR, but if the digicam im gonna buy has a reasonable optical zoom, there won't be any need to change lenses. I don't tend to use (or abuse) longer focal lengths much anyway.

The camera i have my eye on is a Canon powershot A700. The optical zoom it has will be sufficient for my needs. It takes an SD card (hence my original question - thanks to Conduit and Mighty Max for your info on this) Budget isn't a priority where choice of media is concerned, only for the camera itself.

What attracted me the most to this camera is the manual override on pretty much everything (an absolute must for me) and the good old Canon lens. The definition is going to be pretty good anyway at 6 Megapixels.

All advice so far points to the SD format then, which matched my original choice pretty well.

[aKe`cj]

Did you consider a DSC-H2 or S5500 ?
Those are excellent prosumers (being able to overide all settings and being able to do so manually rather than pushing buttons for minutes, is a huge difference - downside: size of the cam) and somewhat close in terms of the cost.

/e: when talking bout prosumers, I'd always go for teh fuji's ...not quite a DSLR, but in some regards even better. If you're looking for a compact camera tho, I can recommend the powershot G series from canon .. cant give much advice about other consumers tho, as I havent had that many in me own hands yet.

[Mr Kot]

DSC-H2 = Sony. Not too keen on Sony products tbh, i'm probably biased because of previous sony technology and something puts me off the memory stick.

S5500.. Nice size cam (i don't mind 'em being chunky, in fact i love em that way ;) ) although the screen is a tad small. Great lens (shame it's a Fuji) but only 4 Mp - not when i can have 6 ;)

[aKe`cj]

S5500.. Nice size cam (i don't mind 'em being chunky, in fact i love em that way ;) ) although the screen is a tad small. Great lens (shame it's a Fuji) but only 4 Mp - not when i can have 6 ;)


go for the s9500 then - would've been my pick, but it's a tad more expensive than then the A700 you mentioned.
It's a real beauty - and dont worry bout the lense, the image quality is outstanding.

[MuggleMind]

One possible factor to consider is that currently the SD has a 2Gb limitation. This may not bother you too much, as the media is cheap, and some people even prefer to store their pictures on several cards ("Oh darn it! I lost my card. Still, at least I didn't lose the pictures of Aunt Bessie wading in the sea on my other card!").

With regard to CF and microdrives, as has already been stated, CF has a speed advantage. If you take action shots, have a continuous shot mode, and use RAW format, this can be an essential reason to use them in preference.

Another thing to possibly consider is the picture format used by the camera. Most low end cameras will only offer JPEG format. More expensive cameras will have RAW, JPEG, and possibly TIFF formats. How much image manipulation will you do? JPEG is very lossy. If you have to make too many edits to make Aunt Gertrude look pretty, the quality will suffer noticeably (unless, possibly, you make all the changes at once). With RAW, you can make many edits, and still not see a difference in quality.

As a Canon user (I swear by - not "at" - my EOS 30D), I commend you on the powershot. However, as aKe`cj suggests, if your budget can stretch to it to a look at the s9500. It is probably the best fixed lens digital camera I have seen.

[SizZLeR]

Another thing to possibly consider is the picture format used by the camera. Most low end cameras will only offer JPEG format. More expensive cameras will have RAW, JPEG, and possibly TIFF formats. How much image manipulation will you do? JPEG is very lossy. If you have to make too many edits to make Aunt Gertrude look pretty, the quality will suffer noticeably (unless, possibly, you make all the changes at once). With RAW, you can make many edits, and still not see a difference in quality.
Jpeg is lossy: correct, however it depends on how much compression the cam is forcing by default and whther u can deactivate the compression, jpeg will always do some compression even if u choose 0% compression.

But if u grab a pic with a camera that saves the pic in jpeg format, the quality loss will only appear once, and thats when the amera compresses it to jpeg format, if u go edit the picture 100 times after that, it doesnt lose anymore quality due to any compression as u can simply choose to save the picture as a tiff or raw filer when u edit it and then save a copy in jpeg compressed 70% (mostly for web) or 40% to use for sending via email to the family etc...

Regarding the storage media type, SD seems to me also to be the best choise, its the cheapest, its handy and it comes can be used in a lot of devises.

But depending on the data size of the pictures the camera takes, id choose a SD card of appropriate speed, the fastest i believe 133x, they can transfer around 20 MB/sec R/W.

Id guess that a 3mpix cam using tiff format would be using around 3-4 megs when it saves the picture and therefore a 133x SD is more than adequate and ofcourse, the faster the SD card, the more expensive it gets.

I would go for micro sd as it may become more widely used in the near future due to its smaller size, like my HP Ipaq 6515 has two SD slots, a normal and one for micro SD, prolly because we're in the middle of turning more towards the use of micro SD, it could be a sign of where we are heading. :)

Regarding the camera itself, keep in mind that an analog cam is was better than a digital one, digitalizing images is like digitalizing audio, the input gets chopped into small bits which means theres a loss in quality.