nad_masters's Full Review: Lexar (CF256-231) 4x (256 MB) CF Card
At a little less than a half the capacity of a CD-R media, 256 MB is pretty spacious for a CF card. This is especially true for a card that is primarily used for digital photography, where a fine 3.2 megapixel camera (such as my Nikon CoolPix 995 used for this review) would produce a file of around 1 MB for each high res picture (2048x1360) taken with a "fine" settings for compression.
The math is simple. With this aggressive setting (as the majority of cameras now support), a 256 MB card would hold around 256 pictures. Of course, not everyone require pictures this big and detailed. 640x480 is too small for most users (though it is actually just right for web use), and not really practical. A more practical resolution that allows for small files, good detail, and the flexability to resize to something smaller would be 1280x960, which would cut the file down to half, even with a liberal compression rate (fine). This would double the ammount of pictures to 512.
Now with this much space, who would just dedicate the card to just pictures? I suggest buying an USB CF card reader - one hopefully that doesn't require drivers for use with Windows Me, 2000, or XP - and using it as a removeable portable key-fobbish alternative. Unfortunately, CF cards are becomming less and less popular with smaller, more compact cards such as SD, MMC, and XD. Newer, and smaller MP3 devices do not use CF media anymore. Same goes for smaller cameras. Even Palms do not use CF cards (though there were a few older ones that did).
However, CF cards are technically less prone to obsolecence and will be more compatible with different devices, are the controller is built into the card (as long as the format is supported via compatible devices). Other memory card technologies require the device to have the controller, which limits compatibilities with cards of different sizes. If your SD camera was made before 512 MB SD cards existed, there will be no doubt that it will not support 512 MB cards and beyond. CF is different this way.
But enough of why I like CF cards, and why it is different. Let's check out the numbers, shall we?
The Lexar 256 MB 4x CompacFlash is not much faster than a standard "1x" CF card. While the bundled 16 MB SanDisk that came with the CoolPix 995 wrote a 2048x1536 picture (around 1.1 MB each) at 7.5 seconds, the Lexar 4x wrote it in 6.2 seconds. Every millisecond counts when you are photographing, so this 4x media will help a bit. However, there are higher speed cards offered by Lexar as well, but it will cost you, as it should.
Reading the SanDisk card took 3 seconds flat, while the Lexar was done in 2.5 seconds. The camera, it seems, doesn't care what it is in the slot - it will communicate with whatever is there as fast as it can, and that is good to know.
Unfortunately, if using a USB 1.1 CF card reader, you are limited to 500 kb/sec reads and 300 kb/sec writes. This is significatnly slower than reading and writing info in the camera.
So while space is certainly a consideration for buying a CF card, speed is a definately something that is usually over looked. But how much is speed worth to you? Think about that, and buy accordingly.
Card features on-board USB circuitry, although this packaging does not include the JumpShot cable you may have obtained separately or with another Lex...More at Amazon Marketplace
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