tien_pham

<p>The maximum speed that your camera writes to this uSD ("u" stands for the Greek "mu." Mu-SD is micro-SD,) is the speed of the SD adapter.</p> <p>If you burst often, this speed will definitely be a limit. No matter how fast the uSD. The only way to improve the writing operation is to boost the speed of the adapter. Higher speed of uSD just helps (very little) bit, because the faster an uSD is being written, the faster a SD adapter will refresh itself. But don't expect a tremendous boost in speed.</p> <p>I have used both Class 10 SDs and the ("Pro") Extreme series SDs. Class 10 SDs are no match with the high speed Extreme ("Pro") series SDs.</p> <p>Always remember: You got what you paid for.</p> <p>Good products ain't cheap! The sellers ain't stupid!</p> <p> </p>

<p>You may want to rent the gear BEFORE you come to SA. This would allow you to test, debug, and familiarize yourself with the gears.</p> <p>The 400mm sounds right. When I was in East Africa, I used my FF body + a Canon 400mm + a 1.4X TC. I rarely used the 100-400mm. But that was me. Your situations could be different. Really depends on the guide who drives the safari truck. He/she determines the shooting range.</p> <p>The 100-400mm lens has small maximum aperture. That will limit you to shoot wildlife in the morning or late afternoon, when wildlife are most active and abundant.</p> <p> </p>

<p>IRS scam. From Pindrop.<br> As a reminder, US IRS *does not* make a phone *call*. They will *definitely* send you a letter, so that they'd have a concrete evidence in court.<br> I know this is out of the photo.net's scope, but I think the article is significant, as it will bring awareness to people. Make sure you listen to the recorded audio.</p> <p>https://www.pindrop.com/irs-phone-scam-live-call_analysis/</p>

<p>Yes, Igor. You are stepping the same path that I took.</p> <p>I've also use 8GB cards for the same reason as yours. Besides, I want to make sure that my cards are compatible with my portable storages. Mine are 500GB UDMA Colorspace (storage) drives. Well, this type of storage is nice, e.g., upgradable feature, using replaceable hard-drives, etc. But because it uses hard-drive to store, it is vulnerable to shock and stresses, much as PC hard drives are. (However, I hadn't gotten any problem with them when they were transported on a non-paved dirt road.) Its firmware sucks! Typical firmware from Taiwan! Comparable drives/storages are more expensive though.</p> <p>In the past, I already saw a guy using a Kingston 64GB card (and he had been shooting under the JPEG format too,) and could not back up his pix to his drive. Basically, he trusted his gears too much. All the gears (yes, all of them,) need to be tested before any trip, and always bring along back-ups (I was saved 3 times with this.) The testing is not just testing the gears, but it allows you to get familiar with your gears before going out to the field. Fiddling your gears while in the field is a very expensive experience to get to know them!</p> <p>Basically, I bought bunch of 8GB cards (8GB x 8/day x 12 days, worst case scenario,) All are 8GB Sandisks (>30MB/s) and 8GB Lexars. Initially, Sandisks were made-in-USA. Now, they are al made-in-China. Same deal with Lexars. So shitty, I guess!</p> <p>Anyway, these brands worked with my UDMA Colospace drives before. I think Kingstons and Maxells also work, although Maxell stopped giving out their cards lately. Kingstons are too slow for me though. I shoot only in the RAW format. It takes the full resolution of a DSLR. Therefore camera buffer and high write-speed cards are very crucial for me.</p> <p>Don't shoot in JPEG. The standard of JPEGs is of 8 bits. That means, you are voluntarily throwing away > 5 bits (in the old days, a DSLR camera can only have 13 bits. Nowadays, it is 14 bits.) Shooting in the RAW format, not only preserving the IQ, it allows you to re-develop it later, once your post improves. This is a huge advantage of DSLRs comparing to film-based SLR.</p> <p>Someone suggested you should bring your 5D. This is a very good suggestion, since DSLR have larger sensor than that of P&S. That means, the noise generated by a DSLR is much less than that of a P&S.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I did the calculation.</p> <p>For me, it's maximally about 8 8GB cards/day, with the RAW format and burst shooting. Burst shooting is for wildlife. When I went to Africa, I stored all pix in those 8GB CFs and SDs (SDHCs) for those shooting 9 days. It was a 10-day trip. Remember, you lose about 2 days: Europe is ahead the US 1 day, 1 day for logistics (boarding, orientation, etc.,) and you may lose another day at the end of trip. Landscape shots take less memory card than wildlife shots.</p> <p>Another alternative is to get a portable storage, but this kind of solution has problem of its own. If you get a storage, it tends to be used for the trips in the future. Depending where you will go and how to get to destination, the storage can shake and may ask you to format it. For example, if you have to get to a destination by a non-paved, dirt road, etc. </p> <p>I figured out that memory card storage is relatively safer. Other words, if the memory cards are new, they rarely fail. Old cards tend to fail ("leaking," the solid state circuits cannot hold the correct logic state anymore.) And the high speed (>30MB/s, about 1.5 of 21MB, the full resolution of the 1Ds3.) CFs aren't cheap. In landscape shooting, the camera rarely fills up, thus does not need high speed cards. (Well, it did in my case. My camera is a FF 1Ds3, and I "configure" the shots around the morning light.)</p> <p>CFs are definitely more expensive than the SDs. And the CFs have been stopped on new development. I don't know what the "dramatic" decisions are, beside the fact that Nikon "steals" the CF-SD (slot 1 - slot 2) configuration, thus "steals" Canon's customers, starting at the Canon 1DX time frame.) If this has been the only reason, then I think it is a stupid reason.</p>