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D1h and microdrive....

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Brent E

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A couple of questions regarding the D1h and 1GB MD's. How is the performance? Is battery life decreased. Is there a card with better bang for your buck? Any help is very appreciated!

Thanks!

Brent
 
Brent E said:
A couple of questions regarding the D1h and 1GB MD's. How is the
performance? Is battery life decreased. Is there a card with
better bang for your buck? Any help is very appreciated!
Thanks!
Brent
Click to expand...
All I use with my D100 are 2 Microdrives. A 1 gig IBM that I bought for $224 last October 2002 and an Iomega 340mb that I bought originally for my pocket pc. Cost on the Iomega was about $112 I think.

Performance is not a problem for me but I'm not sure if compact flash cards are faster or not. The images are stored in the cameras buffer and then written to the drive or flash card.

I went MD because they were cheaper at the time than an equivelant 1 gig CF card.

I'll be buying Microdrives in the future. I like them and have had no problems up to this point.

Tony B.
 
I would much rather prefer solid state compact flash cards than spinning disk micro drives. You can get the Lexar 1GB card for 299.99 now

http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op=details&sid=105927650214947781&sku=ILXCF321G

For the extra money I am much happier with the performance and reliability. I have had the micro drives in the past and have broken them before. Squeeze them a little too hard and the platters will crush together. Seen it, done it.

I don’t link the aspect of having a spinning disk in the camera that I am moving around all the time.

You can also check out Rob Galbraith’s site and see the speed of each card and how they perform on your specific camera.

Here is a link for the D1H.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6018

Doug
Brent E said:
A couple of questions regarding the D1h and 1GB MD's. How is the
performance? Is battery life decreased. Is there a card with
better bang for your buck? Any help is very appreciated!

Thanks!

Brent
Click to expand...
 
Hi,

I've been using 1GB Microdrives and Transcend's 30x 512MB CF. I have previously encountered writing error with the Transcend's CF couple of times. I have asked the company about it and they admitted that the same sort of trouble has been reported from a coupole of users. They exchanged the card with a new one, but today it happned again. (I always format the card in-camera before I use since I share my cards with D100)

I've no way of kowing whether this is due to my D1H or because of the CF, but I won't use it any more on my D1H. I haven't had any problems with the two Microdrives I use.

As for the battery life, I was getting typically around 300 shots with CF, and I view the LCD all the time. I don't think Microdrives made that much difference.

Regards,
Naoki
Brent E said:
A couple of questions regarding the D1h and 1GB MD's. How is the
performance? Is battery life decreased. Is there a card with
better bang for your buck? Any help is very appreciated!

Thanks!

Brent
Click to expand...
--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/
 
I use microdrive with my d1h. I'm sure performance on a 40x card would be better, but it's largely irrelevant because of the enormous buffer available.

The only time I'd imagine you'd see an improvement of a fast CF card against the 1gb MD in the D1h is if you really go nuts with shooting and fill the buffer up (then waiting for images to be written to the card) or if you are reviewing images - and theres nothing wrong with the speed of the MD for that anyway.

As for battery use, I don't have a CF card to compare to but I get approx 900 shots from a single battery.
Brent E said:
A couple of questions regarding the D1h and 1GB MD's. How is the
performance? Is battery life decreased. Is there a card with
better bang for your buck? Any help is very appreciated!

Thanks!

Brent
Click to expand...
 
you all have very valid points and i thank you for your imput!! I worry about the durability of a MD, though. I have heard that they are not abusable (and have heard it again here) and that is not what i want to hear - I'm not hard on stuff but can be clumbsy on occasion.

I was thinking about the Transcend cards because i heard they were affordable, but i am now turned away from those! lol
Maybe a couple Lexar 512's is the way to go

Thank you all for your replies

Brent
 
steer away from value if you can afford to. also notice the speed differance between the 40x and 30x and 24x lexar. its hardly anything. the 24x is actually faster than the 30x. save your money by passing on the 40x card. anyway you go it will be 2x faster than a microdrive.

z
Brent E said:
you all have very valid points and i thank you for your imput!! I
worry about the durability of a MD, though. I have heard that they
are not abusable (and have heard it again here) and that is not
what i want to hear - I'm not hard on stuff but can be clumbsy on
occasion.
I was thinking about the Transcend cards because i heard they were
affordable, but i am now turned away from those! lol
Maybe a couple Lexar 512's is the way to go

Thank you all for your replies

Brent
Click to expand...
 
I don't doubt the CF is more reliable, but that said I've got about 13,000 shots so far on my 1gb MD and still going strong, they are great.
Brent E said:
you all have very valid points and i thank you for your imput!! I
worry about the durability of a MD, though. I have heard that they
are not abusable (and have heard it again here) and that is not
what i want to hear - I'm not hard on stuff but can be clumbsy on
occasion.
I was thinking about the Transcend cards because i heard they were
affordable, but i am now turned away from those! lol
Maybe a couple Lexar 512's is the way to go

Thank you all for your replies

Brent
Click to expand...
 
Brent,

My personal eperience: they work fine.

Speed is no issue. Difficult to get a better price. 2 loaded batteries can take you a long way.

Keeping the lcd off as much as possible saves power.

I use the microdrive as bak to my flash cards.

Regards
Raul
 
Sure, I'll jump in here :-). For the long version, do a search for my old posts on this issue, if you have insomnia and need a surefire way to get to sleep :-).

The short version, they work just fine and dandy. Do a full format every now and again on your PC to ensure that any creeping bad sectors are mapped and all will be well. I've used my in freezing weather, no problem, as well as 90+ degree heat. They are not the fastest thing on the block. I sold my last one last year to who a friend who is still using it. The only reason I sold it is that I prefer a bunch of 256mb cards so that a) all my eggs are not in one basket and b) I can have someone downloading while I am still shooting. I should note that I shoot a D1h, which yields 177 jpg fine on a 256mb CF card.
Brent E said:
Brent E said:
Raul said:
Brent,

My personal eperience: they work fine.

Speed is no issue. Difficult to get a better price. 2 loaded
batteries can take you a long way.

Keeping the lcd off as much as possible saves power.

I use the microdrive as bak to my flash cards.

Regards
Raul
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Bill Dewey
http://www.deweydrive.com
 
the short version is perfect and all i need to hear! I was thinking a couple 256's would do it for me, too! So some lexar 24X it will be!

Thanks for the imput!

Brent
 
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