Memory cards

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

I am in the market for a memory card for an HP camera I bought for a Christmas gift. Of course HP recommends an HP memory card for the camera. Is there a big difference in photo quality? I have done a bit of reading on memory cards this morning and had found out a bit about transfer rates etc, but didn't really find anything on quality of pictures.
There are a lot of different cards on sale right now (before Christmas) and I am looking for a 1 gig. Can you tell a difference in the photos between brands?

Do you have a brand you recommend? Or a brand you don't like?

Thanks in advance,
Sue

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

There should be no difference in photo quality - the image is a digital file - either
the bits are correct or they are not. As far as which card, it depends somewhat
on which form factor you are using (CF, SD etc). The write speed of the card
may or may not be important depending on how fast the camera can take pictures,
the size of the image file you are creating and a couple of other things. If you
are into taking multiple frames per second (sports type stuff) and the camera
can handle it then a fast card can help. For the general snapshot type application,
a regular card should be just fine.

I have a couple of personal perferances and comments that you can take for
what they are worth I use CF cards in my Nikon D70s and like the Lexar
"Pro" series of cards (the pro series has a lifetime warranty on them although I
have not had to use it - they are also quite fast). I would stay with brand name
cards, not the best no-name on sale you find. I also tend to stay with a 1 or 2
gig card (I shoot lots at the kids soccer games etc) instead of the biggest card
I can get - both from a cost standpoint as well as image "security" for lack of a
better term. I have seen a number of posts from people that had the biggest
card they could get in their camera, shot their entire vacation on one card and
had the card fail or get corrupted (and they couldn't recover the data). Sort of
like putting your whole vacation on a single roll of film - handy until it fails.

I would also suggest getting one of those handy dandy usb card readers for the
computer so you just pop the card out of the camera, into the reader and transfer
the pictures that way. Yes, I know most cameras come with a cable to allow you
to transfer directly from the camera. Sometimes they even provide some
handy software to install to support that (usually, I prefer not to install that stuff).
I prefer the 12-1 or whatever USB card reader that can read any format card and
they just look like another drive on your system.

That is just my $0.02 adjusted for inflation = $0.00
Others prefer to do it a bit differently.

mikey

[XaiLo]

I use Transcend 150x card... the chief concerns with SD or any memory card is reliability and speed most cameras do well with anything above 60x it's recording binary information and the image quality would not be effected as such unless the memory was faulty then you would view some sort of digital distortion to no image at all. It's the camera that determines the resolution and quality of the image.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Ditto to everything Mikey said, but you can add Sandisk card to his Lexar, which I also like. Definitely, buy brand name. There was a test done on cards in which they were taken completely apart. Huge differences were found, and this invites the question of exactly how the cheapness of cheaper cards is accomplished. I've had only one card totally fail on me, and it was a Simple Tech card. Needless to say, I've never bought another one.

Barbara

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

Thanks for the great responses and so quick!

Mikey, when you use a card reader, do you import them right into Adobe? Or another program?

XaiLo, So the higher the number, the faster the speed-right? This is useful for me because I take a lot of kids and sports, but the HP user I just bought a camera for (my mother in law) is a point and shoot from across her dark living room. (ugh) Her pictures are usually of us, eating, just as we open our mouth to stuff it full of turkey etc.. I think any speed isnt really going to make a difference there.

Barbara, Thanks, I have a couple of Sandisk now and I like them, but since I have never used anything else, I had nothing to compare them too.

Sue

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

"Mikey, when you use a card reader, do you import them right into Adobe? Or another program?"

Actually, I have a number of things I do when I bring them in -- first I copy them to
a "Transfer Only" folder (always copy, not move !!! - if it screws up, you lose on both
ends - copy then delete on the card side). After copying them to the transfer folder,
I use Irfanview (FREE) to quickly sort through an delete any obvious ones I don't want.
After that, I use a utility called "SetNameToTime" (very handy, inexpensive utility) to
rename all the pictures to a name that consists basically of the date/time stamp and
whose camera it was based on the EXIF timestamp (DC_071202_1330_23__Mikey.jpg for
example was taken 2007, December 2, 1:30 PM and 23 seconds on my camera (my wife's
pix as well as both kids cameras get handled the same way so it is easy to sort). Those
pictures then get moved over to the main photo directory that is organized with a folder
for each year and under that a folder for each month "01_Jan" ... "12_Dec". I have a
utility called IMatch that I use to build a database of the pictures and catagorize them.
The directories are backed up on a regular basis to a 1) different drive in my machine
(not just a different partition) nightly and 2) a removable hard drive periodically when
it seems like I have a good point to back up stuff. Currently have about 50 gigs
of pictures on the hard drives.

When I am going to use pictures in a show or some other thing, I create a folder in
the specific show folder, copy the images I want to that folder then do whatever I want
to them there. I never change the originals. So far, it has worked pretty good - I do
need to spend more time going through and adding the images to the cagagories in
the IMatch utility though.

You did ask ...

mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

To my way of thinking, Mikey is being way too compulsive about dates! It's all there in the EXIF information for retrieval at any time.

My simple method is, via the card reader, I copy the images to a folder that's been pre-named according to my file system (Disk 1, Disk 2...Disk 193, etc.), which has been developed to match the CD's that the photos end up being stored on. From there, I go directly to Adobe Bridge to sort and cull.

Ultimately, how you do it and where you do it depends on the image software you use and on a categorizing system that works for you. Unlike Mikey, I don't care when a photo was taken so much as I care what the subject or idea of the photo is, so all my categorization is based on that. For instance, everyone takes pictures of flowers, so I have a broad category of flowers, but because I've been taking photos for so many years, I've had to create sub-categories under flowers--morning glory, sunflower, rose, etc.

Think it through first, if you can. What kind of file system agrees with your digestion?

Barbara

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

Thanks Mikey, I never thought of putting a file just for the pics I want to use in a show. Great idea! I have the hardest time in Proshow finding the pictures I want since some come from a scanner into Adobe, then into Proshow, some from a CD, Some from my camera, they never show up in the same file in Proshow.


Barb, I agree about the dates. Heck, I can't remember what I did yesterday let alone last year in June! Right now I just import them into Adobe and Tag them into catagories like Lake Shasta, Cheer, Wallowa Lake, Nature, flowers, etc... That seems to be working ok for now.


Thanks again!
Sue

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I gave up trying to organize things by folders and use IMatch (a cool utility) for
putting stuff in catagories. It was things like a picture of my daughter running
the dogs on the beach - does that go under Michelle, dogs, ocean or ???
With IMatch, I can assign as many different catagories as I want to each picture
and later do a query to find all pictures of dogs and beach or whatever. The other
handy part of naming them by their time/date stamp is if I have someone ask
about pictures around a specific date or looking for pictures near when one
they are looking at were taken, it is easy to find them. I gave up a long time
ago trying to come up with meaningful names for pictures in general. That
includes organizing them by folders (other than by date) since there are so
many possible folders you could put many of the pictures into. That is what
the IMatch (or others) organizational software is all about.

The bottom line though is you need to look at what others use, and pick what
works best for you (and it is different if you only shoot on vacation and take
250 pictures) than it is if you shoot like I do - I got my D70s about 16 months
ago - I have shot almost 10,000 pictures although I have discarded a lot from
the soccer games and swim meets.

It is a lot easier to decide fairly early on with a system that is expandable and
makes sense than it is to 2 or 3 years down the road decide to try and re-arrange
everything into a different system.

mikey

[iknowwhereitis123 Profile Private message]

Mikey,
Ten Th...th...thousand in 16 months? Wow. I may take 50 a month and keep maybe 20 of those.
Do you send them somewhere for printing? I was wondering what is the best way to go. I have just been getting mine printed at Costco. I know there are a ton of sites to upload to, but I haven't tried any of them yet.

Off to shop, I will check in later.

Thanks,
Sue

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Sue, Mikey mentioned album software, and I immediately nodded my head in agreement. I couldn't get along without my Adobe Album, which does the sort of thing his IMatch does along with keeping track of picture dates. You may think his volume of photos is huge, but you never know when it'll happen to you. Be prepared!

I used an online service quite a long time ago for snapshots, and they did a great job. It was Ofoto, which I believe was swallowed up by Kodak. My son has used Wal-Mart, and they seem to do a good job too, particularly since you can fiddle with the settings to get a picture the way you want it.

I'm sitting with two truly excellent Epson printers, but it's such a pain getting the print to look as lovely as what I see on the screen. If I ever take a picture that knocks my own socks off, I think I'll take it to a lab and have it professionally done. Or maybe I'll ask for a digital frame for Christmas.

Barbara

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Actually Sue, for those that I do want prints of, I generally use Costco. You
can upload to them and pick them up on the way out after shopping (I usually
stop there at least every week with two teenagers in the house). In general,
they do a pretty good job and uploading makes it easy (although they are
fast enough at ours that I can bring them in on a USB drive, and after
shopping, on the way out pick them up (if I remember ... )
I shot 72 yesterday of the snow and the humming birds etc just having fun.

mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hummingbirds plus snow?! Ours all flew south in September.

Barbara

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Hummingbirds plus snow?! Ours all flew south in September.

Barbara

From yesterday -- first without flash, second with a flash after brushing snow off feeder (about
20 feet away) ...





mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Those aren't the same kind of hummingbirds we have here. Ours are rubythroats, and obviously quite the pantywaists compared to yours. How the devil does a bird like this survive without folks like you to feed them? Or aren't your winters like ours where absolutely all birds who rely on insects, flowers, and berries have to leave?

Barbara