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Is the xD format hindering Fuji?

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nnowak said:
Even if Fuji's low light capabilities were enough to compel someone
to ignore the downsides of xD, what is the benefit of any of the
current Oly compacts? The are about as generic as you can get,
plus they have the handicap of xD.

--
Nick
Click to expand...
Well on Olympus, when they decided not to bother a whole lot with 35mm SLR's in the 90's they made a series of decent and strong selling bridge cameras, and invested heavily into the compact scene. In fact I would suggest that Oly were the no.1 for 35mm compacts. Contrast this to their somewhat lacklustre range now, and its hard to have much respect for them, esp with XD slapped on too. I think the word ordinary is about right for their stuff.

With Fuji they have done more good work in this area, though seem intent on ignoring IS though..and of course XD...which is a bad selling point...

I know so many who will never buy one just on XD alone..time to wake up fuji and Oly..dump this unpopular format now....least include dual slots for SD..

Greed in cash for the XD format impresses nobody.
 
AmanitaM said:
Yes! The S7000 supports THREE:
xD
CF
Microdrive
Click to expand...
Not really as the microdrive is really CF type II. Not all cameras support it, but no cameras support type II and not type I. It's not really a separate format...
 
Linuxworks: I don't like the proprietary feature either, but the F10 was and F30 is one of the best compact cameras around.

If Canon, Nikon, or whoever makes a better camera in 1 or 2 years, I'll be happy to ditch the $60 xD card I bought in 2005. Noquestion.

Nick:

Do you consider having far and away the best battery life, best noise levels / sensitivity, best non-dSLR image quality, great AF performance, and a high resolution LCD as being "generic" features??

And how exactly is xD a handicap? you buy the card, stick it in the camera, and forget about it.

Only the super stingy worry about a memory format in a camera you buy today for the camera you buy in 2-3 years. Completely silly.
nnowak said:
linuxworks said:
schmoppa said:
Too bad! Fuji makes some great cameras.

Why won't you buy a proprietary memory-format camera if the camera
itself is a winner?
Click to expand...
for one, it sends a stronger message to the company if I boycott
their poor engineering decisions. or marketing ones. so I have no
need to give 'a vote of confidence' in a company I believe is doing
the Wrong Thing(tm).

for another, I do NOT want yet another throw-away mem format. I
have many gigs of sd card and sd is the right choice (it fits into
cf adapters easily; I have one of those, too). so I'll ONLY buy
sd-card as memory and that lets me plug into cf devices and sd
devices. there is no compelling argument to invest in a third mem
format. none. I don't care if its iso 9000 (heh) or iso 800.

there are enough other choices out there that I'm not forced to buy
xd based cams, either.
nnowak said:
linuxworks said:
I won't buy an xd-only camera. no way. same with mem-schtick only
cams.

too bad as the low light fuji looks good; but I won't buy xd!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Bryan (pics only: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works )
(pics and more: http://www.netstuff.org ) ~
Click to expand...
Even if Fuji's low light capabilities were enough to compel someone
to ignore the downsides of xD, what is the benefit of any of the
current Oly compacts? The are about as generic as you can get,
plus they have the handicap of xD.

--
Nick
Click to expand...
 
The very introduction of the xD card was just another tired old attempt to con the poor ignorant consumer. They were until recently priced higher than SD and CF and for absolutely no good reason other than to rip off the hapless owners of Fuji and Oly cameras.

I will never support such behaviour. Less proprietary formats is what we need, not more.

--

'Silence! What is all this insolence? You will find yourself in gladiator school vewy quickly with wotten behaviour like that.'
 
It probably would help if people stop hoarding so much memory that they feel "invested" in it. I can understand ignoring a camera because it lacks a viewfinder or hotshoe or some shooting operation that's important to you, but I don't understand boycotting a camera you would otherwise buy, because of the flash memory.

Although most of us are watching our pennies, it's kind of silly for people willing to "invest" in expensive bags, tripods, add on lenses, flashes, spare batteries, mega sets of rechargeables, miscellaneous filters and what not, to complain about the extra cost of xd and memory stick.

I picked up a Fuji f10 because I wanted a camera I could depend on to get the low light shots that were being massacred by my other cams. I would have preferred to avoid xd, but the camera was more important. I managed to get a 512mb card for $10 so I'm satisfied. Wish my current reader could read the card, but it will be sufficient for me to hook up the camera to my pc until I decide to replace my reader.
 
10past10 said:
...or they would have done something about it already. I fail to
see what the problem is about buying an Xd card or two.
Click to expand...
I see plenty of problems buying an 'xD card or two'. Not everyone has ooodles of cash. If I spend $100 on a memory card, it would be nice if I can still use it on my other cameras. $100 is $100... that's a big chunk of cash for a lot of people, including myself. Buying a camera once every few years is expensive enough, and I'm sure there's plenty of people who need to save money where possible. That means reusing the camera bag, batteries, chargers and memory cards.

I personally think the multitudes of memory card formats for digital cameras is ridiculous. We were able to standardize on cassettes and CDs for music, DVDs for movies and floppy disks for computers. All these are standardized storage formats. Why can't the digital camera industry standardize? Corporate pride? Corporate greed?
 
Just look at the development of memory cards, they keep putting in more memory and they went smaller and smaller. Now size stays constant (for a while) and memory increases.

By standardising a memory format now, you actually put a limit on the capabillities of the future cards with regard to size and speed.

The sad thing is that flash memory is still evolving and I think a new type of memory will have appeared long before the actual limits of flash technology have been reached and then the story starts all over again....welcome to the Information Technology Age :)
 
Sonyad said:
It probably would help if people stop hoarding so much memory that
they feel "invested" in it.
Click to expand...
I know memory is a throw-away technology. I used to swear by CF just 2 yrs ago. I insisted on all my cams being able to take CF. now, I'm all sd-card (and the cam that I have that still takes cf can take sd with an adapter, so still, I have need of only 1 flash type).

in 2 yrs, maybe sd-card will be a has-been. since they topped off at 32gig (I think it was) on the NEW format, I bet they'll exceed that limit and then have to re-invent things again.

but the point of standardizing on a mem card type - FOR RIGHT NOW - is that all my cams should be able to 'share' in the card supply that I currently have. its so much easier and also redundancy is built-in. if 1 or 2 of my 10 sd-cards fail, say, its not a huge problem - I can just take another from the pile and get on with the work. but if I had to maintain a bunch of sd, cf, xd and ms types - unless I'm going to have many of each I lose the 'shelf spare' factor and that's not something I'm willing to give up.

my main cam takes sd and my pocket backup cam takes it. I can bring a supply of sd cards and be fully covered. or just take 1 sd in each cam and have some redundancy that way.

its not the $25 or $50 I'd have to spend on one xd card. its the fact that I'd need a bunch of them, and maybe some adapters and maybe have to change some of my card readers - and for what real benefit? I just don't see any cams that fuji or oly or sony have (that are single-card typed) that are -so- compelling that I can give up all the rest of the down-sides and buy their cam and card.

(its also the same reason why I won't buy any 4gig sd cards until 'its time'. I dont really want any cards in my collection that are only for some cams and not others. compatibility matrices are not something I want to worry about or care about.)

--
Bryan (pics only: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works )
(pics and more: http://www.netstuff.org ) ~
 
For my Oly E500 I use mostly CF cards but I buy an 1/2 GB xD "just in case" that stays in the camera together with the CF. No bad!
--
Zeev
 
xD has Zero reason to exist. He is 100% correct. Oly keeps complaining about how bad the P&S camera business is today, well maybe they should look closer to see why Their business is bad.

I have no doubt that if Oly and Fuji joined the mainstream and used SD cards they would more than make up the little royalties they get off the cards in extra camera sales.

I agree with most others here, why would I want to pay an extra $50 for a memory card when I buy a camera when like the vast majority of the digi camera world I can reuse my SD & CF cards. Maybe $50 or more like $100 (since you should have a spare in case of problems) is not much to some people but I work for my money and see no reason to waste it on a proprietary memory format that has zero reason to exist.
--
Ed
http://www.cbrycelea.com/photos/
 
People want to be able to use their memory cards across different cameras and even different brands. Like you said, people change cameras all the time. If you like to keep using your xD cards, then your future camera choices are very limited. Also you will limit yourself from devices like MP3 players, cell phones etc that use SD.

By the way, $50 can buy me double the memory capacity in CF or SD format compared to xD. That's double the photos I can take compared to you.

-Will
Framer said:
People spend a small fortune on buying and selling cameras but yet
complain about having to spend $50 for 1GB xD H card.

Boohoo.

--
Have a look at my work: http://neilvan.zenfolio.com/
Click to expand...
 
Absolutely. The only reason I'm not buying Fuji is their stupid xd cards. I have cameras which take CF and SD, and these are standard card types. I'm not going to spend a small fortune on 2-3 xd cards just for the fuji. I have 3-4 SD's which I'd rather use instead. One card may only cost $60-70 but they add up. No, I'll pass.
 
I've got six point and shoots requiring five different types of flash memory, including smart media. Four of the cameras were bought used from KEH in excellent condition. I use a $40.00 Lexar multi-card reader for all transfers and have never had any problems or headaches. If I see a camera I want, I know I already have what it requires for memory or storage. I've even bought flash memory for nickles and dimes at yard sales and flea markets. As I said, I simply don't see what the fuss is about...And believe me, y'all got more money than I got.
 
I can't believe people are moaning and griping about something so insignificant, when they're prepared to spend god knows how much on lenses and other accessories.

Can you use your Canon lenses on a Nikon camera? Of course not. And yet how much do you spend on them. It's the same when you buy into any sort of 'system'.

Look at is this way - make a one-time purchase, and then forget about it. Buy yourself a $50 XD card and the gateway opens for good, allowing you access to all sorts of great cameras - F10, F11, F30, S9500, etc.

I used XD-only cameras for years before I bought my Nikon D50 - and I was equally annoyed that I had to splash out money on a new SD card that I couldn't use in my existing cameras.

I had to suck it up and fork out the cash like everyone else. A one-time purchase then forget about it - it's just a memory format folks, that's all it is!

Nick
 
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