We were in Wal-Mart today, stocking up for our Alaska trip. While Jeanne was stocking up on baby supplies (she babysits our granddaughter) I roamed the electronics section. Whoa-------have prices dropped! Hope this happens between Canon and Nikon too!
[rant]The difference between 8 and 10 megapixels is pretty negligible. Maybe 300 extra pixels on either side, since it is distributed throughout the sides of the image. The issue isn't really with number of megapixels, but the quality of the lens you're using and a number of other factors, such as focusing, exposure time, aperture, ISO. A primitive 6mp DLSR with a Canon 'L' lens could easily outperform a 16 megapixel one with a cheapo kit lens.[/rant]
Ditto!!!!!!!! It looks like I'm going to be up in the wilds of Alaska when the countdown hits zero. Oh well. I doubt anything Nikon announces will be available before December in any quantity--and maybe later.
MK; AFAIK my D50 only formats in FAT16 - http://www.nikonians.org/cgi-bin/dc...=16080&forum=DCForumID201&viewmode=threaded#1 Pete; Did you format your 4GB in your D70 on the MAC?
A new member of the family: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond80/ But why did they go SD????!!!!!
It's been a year since I was in the business, but I will hazard a guess. When digital storage was first introduced, you had two options, CompactFlash or SecureMedia. At that time, SM cards were faster processors and had larger storage capacity than CF cards. In time, about 6 years ago, CF cards began to overtake SM cards in processing time and stoarge capacity. Once the size got beyond 248MB (I know...how quaint!) CF cards took over the photo market. SM cards could not be upsized and eventually went away, sort of. About 4 years ago the first SD/MMC cards began to appear, along with the Sony MemoryStick. The industry was still looking for a, "universal" type of storage card and these were new offerings from large conglomerations and companies looking to grab a part of the storage market. SD cards were initially offered in the 32MB range, while at the same time CF cards were getting up to the 1-2GB range, so serious shooters still used the CF card, while the SD card was used in small, point and shoot cameras, and other small devices like cell phones and MP3 players. Now that SD cards are getting into the 2-6GB range, there is more impetus to go the SD route. There are other reasons. One of the BIG problems with CF cards is the pin slot connection. I used to handle CS calls for an electronics distributor and 3/4 of the service calls we had involved customers inserting their CF cards improperly, bending the receiving pins and ruining their camera or storage device. Of course, this was NEVER their fault, just bad design. CF cards are about 2x the size of an SD card, so you have to allow for a larger slot and circuitboard. SD cards have that nifty locking feature, that allows the user to fail-safe a card against accidental erasure. Power wise, in my years of testing, I never noticed a significant difference in power usage between the two different cards. One final thing, though I mentioned it briefly before, the market for Ipods, MP3 players, cell phones and other deivces that use ONLY the SD card has skyrocketed in just the past 3 years. The same has not happened with CF devices. I can easily see the CF card going the way of the SM card in the next 5 years. My two bytes -Mark
Mark- Where does the XD type card fit into this picture? Is it a format that is popular enough to be around a while? Boxcab E50
It's still around but not as popular despite the fact that a 2GB card was just announced. This format is mainly used by Olympus and Fuji cameras.
You're not getting my point. Almost all DSLRs use compact flash other than the fairly new D50. All the pro DSLRs use CF and not SD. If they are going after D70 owners to upgrade to the D80, they should have kept the CF format. Then again, there's the D200 that uses CF.
From the wilds of Alaska: Geez, I just bought two 4 Gbyte CF cards for this trip. Let's see what this D80 announcement does to the street price of a D200.
Not much Pete. The two cameras are aimed at two different markets. The price difference in itself is a tell tale sign. Also, SD vs. CF, plastic vs. alloy body, non-weather sealed vs. weather sealed, etc.
I haven't had much Internet access the past 18 days. I will say this: the old D100 is much better in the rain than the D70! I was out in the pouring rain today photographing moose, caribou, etc. The D70 became nearly unusable when moisture fogged the pentaprism. Also got under the glass of the top control display. No problem with the D100. I think the D200 will be more appropriate for me. I had to put the D70 in the car to dry it out.
And did I ever need weather seals for this trip! 18 days of rain out of 21. Will absolutely buy the D200. Water, water everywhere! While I took some precautions, water got into the zooms that extend. Actually not a totally bad thing, as the water seemed to wash out the silt/dust that was accumulating from treks along glacial streams. I learned not to put cameras or camera bags down on the shores of these streams--instant grit problem with the lenses, as dry (or wet) glacial silt is superfine and gets into everything! Ruined one 77mm haze filter--oh well . . .
