Fastest, most reliable Smartmedia

[mubs]

I've been asked to help someone buy a higher capacity Smartmedia card. I have no experience in this area and would appreciate your advice.

1) In general, will a 64MB be faster than a 128 MB? Some people seem to indicate that larger capacity media is slower.

2) Which brand/model would have the fastest write times? It needs to be reliable, of course.

I read the reviews on Amazon, but the S/N seems to be pretty bad, with most people focussing on capacity (duh).

Thanks!

 

[blakerwry]

For smart media i dont think there are really any gurantees. I would get the capacity you need...

If you can you could buy a couple cards and return the slower ones... It's going to be more expensive than just one card, but atleast you'll get what you want.

 

[sechs]

Slow? These things seems to work pretty instantaneously to me.

 

[NRG = mc²]

If you have a high res camera or save in uncompressed TIFF format, the resulting images can be several megabytes in size which means it will take a few seconds to save the image.

 

[mubs]

Thanks Blake.

NRG, a camera that uses SmartMedia's got to be a little old! It's a 4MP Olympus, the C-4000. The owner saves pics as JPGs, at the default resolution (doesn't even know what a TIFF is).

BTW, this camera can be had for ~$250 now, and I'm thinking of getting one myself (my first digital, and I'm on a very tight budget). The quality of the pics on this camera is atounding (compared to the others I've seen going for ~ $400-$550)

 

[blakerwry]

mubs, be sure to format the card using the camera.. I formatted a card with windows and started snapping pictures and it noticed the camera had terrible response time (write LED on camera took several seconds to write a pictue)... I reformatted the card using the camera and taking pictures improved greatly.

I'm sure I formatted as FAT, but I dont know if I did fat16 fat32.. or posibly fat12.

 

[sechs]

I have an older Olympus camera that uses SmartMedia cards, and it seems to spend most of its time processing the JPEGs.

When I stick the cards in my computer's reader, there's no perceptable delay in opening files.

 

[LunarMist]

I wish I could help but my experience with an old Oly has been that there is no difference in SM speeds. The uncompressed TIFF format is horribly inefficient and with 128MB max memory the low number of images per card is ridiculous.

 

[mubs]

Thanks again, everybody. The person that has the Oly got it as a gift. Having a couple of 128 MB cards kinda makes up for the poor capacity of Smartmedia cards. The main thing is the image quality, which is very good. For a person with little patience or for a neophyte, the default settings work incredibly well.

 

[Platform]

The quality of the pics on this camera is atounding (compared to the others I've seen going for ~ $400-$550)

I have an even-older Oly C-2500 SLR (2.5 M-Pixel), and I won't let it go for the same reasons. My C-2500 handles both SmartMedia and Compact Flash.

I've been using it lately with a 1 GB SanDisk Ultra-II CF and a 128 MB SimpleTech SmartMedia. I use the SmartMedia for alternate storage -- if I need to.

By the way, I like SimpleTech SmartMedia mainly because it can be had for a reasonably low price and it's made quite well. I had an off-brand 64 MB SmartMedia memory to go bad on me suddenly after about 18 months. It was something like $7 or $9 cheaper than a name brand equivalent at the time. Now it was money wasted. My 2 SimpleTech 64 MB SmartMedia memories still work perfectly.

 

[mubs]

Thank you for the comments, O King Of Antarctica!

I did get the Oly C-4000Z for $250 at Costco. The prior exposure (pun intended) to this camera, and the uniformly glowing reviews helped make the decision. It has some drawbakcs (media, mainly) but which camera doesn't? It excels in the things that matter most to me.

A 128MB Viking Smartmedia is on order with Amazon (~$22 after rebate) and I'll be buying a 128MB SanDisk at BestBuy today (~$33 after rebate). Pimpletech doesn't seem to make them anymore, and there seems to be none in the channel. 8 x NiMH 2200 mAh and the latest/greatest fast/cool charger are on order with batterysupply.com. All in all, spent a bundle I shouldn't have.

But I'm sure I'll enjoy this camera. It will revive long supressed passion for photography. My difficult circumstances of the last few years have given me something invaluable - a rekindling of my spirit and my love for what really matters to me.