What's the maximum size of CF Nikon D100 can work with?

What's the maximum compact flash Nikon D100 can work with?

I think about buying Seagate 8 GB Compact Flash and wonder whether it

will work?

If your D100 has the FAT32 upgrade it will work with the Hitachi 4gb drives. I see no reason the Seagate 8gb, also FAT32, would not work as well. Its not on the list, but it is a fairly old model at this point.

Bigger is not better. Do you really want that many images on one card? What if you lose it, break it, or even corrump it. On a 1 gig card you can already get 103 images. Thats a lot in spot already.

On 8 Gigs, you'll get around 800 uncompressed RAW pix, many more jpegs... Think of whether you might be better off with four 2 gig cards, instead. It takes but a split second to switch CF cards, and do you wan't all your eggs in one basket?

I agree with the guys above Michal. I'm on a D2H shooting RAW and

FineJPG and I actually prefer my 1GB cards over my 2 GB card. Too much

stuff... (well over 200 shots for me on the 2). If I'm on a job the 2 GB is fine, but

for daily use I'm finding it a bit overwhelming to keep track of a large variety of

shots. So I'm trying to download the days take more often than not, and with

the big card on board... well, I'm just not that industrious.

FWIW, if you backup your images on CDs, it makes sense to buy the 512MB cards. If burning on to DVD-R, the 4GB cards are preferable.

 

I try to match card capacity to my storage media capacity because I do my initial screening in-camera -- so I burn all images in the card.

Michael, just make sure your D100 has firmware 2.0. That includes the FAT 32 upgrade which lets the D100 use larger than 2 gb cards.

Thank's for all advices. I'll consider all of them. I thought about bigger card as I think about wondering out of road without having possibility to save it on disk.

I also considered 8GB because it is much cheaper then 4x2GB or 2x4GB.

But I see that I should think it out again

I just put a 4G Sandisk Extreme III CF card into my D100, with original firmware version 1.1, and it is showing 410 raw capacity.

 

I am comfortable using 4G CF cards. However, I wouldn't use microdrives with such high capacity.

Michal - I don't go near microdrives. I'd rather have flash cards (they don't disintegrate if you drop them). The prices on 4 gig SanDisk Ultra II are too low these days to resist.

 

Mani - "It takes but a split second to switch CF cards, and do you wan't all your eggs in one basket?"

 

Like many people, you've confused the eggs and the basket.

 

The primary failure modes of CF cards are getting a clogged socket on the card that bends a pin in your camera or CF reader (which disables the camera or reader), and electrostatic discharge through card into camera or reader (which could disable card, camera, or reader). The way to reduce the risk of either of these events is to swap cards less often, and the way you do that is buying larger cards.

Joseph, truly enlightening, many thanks:-) Folks, what Joseph says...

Developing the habit of quickly glancing at the sockets on the card before insertion into

the camera is a good idea also...

4 GB appears to be the maximum CF for the Nikon D100. I tried a SanDisk Extreme III 16 GB (couldn't resist the temptation—all the good advice above for a couple of smaller cards notwithstanding) and it wouldn't let me take more than 348 RAW shots. To be sure, firmware is 2.0, CF card reports some 16.3 billion bytes in my computer, with FAT32 file system and 32 kB allocation units.<BR>

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I suspect some calculation in the firmware exceeds 32 bit integers at some intermediate stage. When you do the math, treating the CF card capacity modulo 2<SUP>32</SUP> and divide the remainder by roughly 9,700 kB for a RAW shot, you'll end up with 348 shots or thereabouts. Joseph writes in <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00D6yC" >this</a> thread that it was not until the D70 that a firmware update changed the way the remaining raw files are computed. Given how source code bases are handled these days for reasons of security and economy, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this bug has not been discovered in the D100 time-frame.<BR>

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(Thanks for all I've ever learned on this forum, BTW, and please forgive my belated contribution)

I tried a 4gb card on my D100 and it didn't handle it well.

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My camera doesn't have the upgrade needed. :(

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Now my camera stops working about at about 2/3 of the card's capacity.

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If I continue on using the card the camera makes this awful sound that you NEVER want to hear your camera make. <shudder>

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I have 2 cards that this is happening with. I thought I'd try buying a new compact flash card, but 1 gb cards are hard to find and I'm wondering if a 2gb card will work with this D100 since the 4gb card didn't work out.

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Thanks!

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<a href="http://chicagocubsphotos.blogspot.com/2005/09/ryne-sandberg-day-newslinks-photos.html">Ryne Sandberg Day photos</a><P>

I would expect a 2 GB card to be the maximum to work on a pre-FAT32 upgraded D100 (I remotely remember 2 GB to be an intrinsic limitation of FAT16, see also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table">Wikipedia</A> for details). Could you try it out in a brick-and-mortar store? You should get a little over 200 RAW shots on a 2 GB card. At the time, I got to return my 16 GB CF card to Amazon for a refund, including shipping, and went back to using 2 GB cards.

Is there such things as a pre-FAT 32 D100?

 

I bought mine in August 2002, about a month since it first became available, and it has always been FAT 32 compatible. Its firmware has never been upgraded since I bought it.

So does mine (summer 2003), but according to <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D100">this Wikipedia page</A> there were early models that didn't.

This page seems to offer more details than I've seen before on this topic. Scroll down towards the bottom of the page to find it.

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Look for:<P>

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(9) This camera's built-in formatter will reformat cards over 2GB as FAT32 with a 4K cluster size, if the formatting is already FAT32 with a 4K cluster size. If the card is already formatted FAT32 with a 32K cluster size, the D100 appears to retain the 32K cluster size when reformatting. A 4K cluster size means less efficient camera-to-card transfers than FAT32 formatting with a 32K cluster size, so we've tested FAT32-formatted cards both ways in this camera. The only way with this camera to format a card FAT32 with a 32K cluster size initially is on the computer: we used the Format function in Disk Management in Windows XP.

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CompactFlash Write Speed - Nikon D100 (Firmware Version 2.00)<P>

<a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7700-6020">http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7700-6020</a><P>