Microdrives vs. Compact Flash: reliable enough for weddings?

[adam_nance]

A 2GB Hitachi Microdrive is $139 at memorysuppliers.com

 

A 2GB Scandisk Ultra II CF card is $299 at memorysuppliers.com

 

My wife and I use two D70's when shooting weddings, and we both like to shoot a lot

of frames. We've been renting cards from our local shop for our past couple

weddings since buying the (new) digital cameras. To comfortably cover a wedding in

FINE JPEGs I would want at least 4GB on each of us (roughly 1,200 shots a piece). To

comfortably cover a wedding in RAW would take something like four times that.

 

At this sort of volume, these price differences really start to add up--especially when

you start to consider backups! Ugh!

 

In your opinion, are microdrives are reliable enough to use for wedding work or do

we need to use compact flash? We'll go ahead and make the investment in CF cards if

it's necessary, but it sure would be nice to be able to rely on the microdrives.

 

For those of you who shoot in RAW, how much memory do you carry? For those of

you who have been digital for years, I can't imagine how you afforded it way back in

the day!

 

Also, does anyone know a cheaper but still reliable place to pick up memory cards?

 

Thanks and best wishes!

Adam

[anton frid photography]

Adam...

 

I bought a CF Ultra II 2gig card about a week ago for $168 from ERWINCOMP.COM.

 

I used to use microdrive cards, but one seemed to fail when i used to upload. That meant that i had to upload manually (drag and drop) to my local hard drive. I stopped using it, and only use it for family occasions. Having bad microdrive that stalls on me during download meant i head to buy something else. That something else was Sandisk 1gig Ultra II and now i bought 2gigs. So in total i carry with me 4 gigs to a wedding. Some will advice you to not using a big memory card for weddings Gig or higher.(all eggs in one basket)

 

I dont know, but i works for me. I shoot normal res, sometimes switch to High res. I never head a problem printing 8x10 shooting even under 1600 ISO with my res. Camera i use is Fuji S2Pro, so normal res is 3200x2200 sometimes i will go to 4200x3000. I know people who shoot raw, so u better have about 6 gigs worth of cars for about 400 or so RAW shots. I would say leave RAW to Studio portraiture and use high res for weddings.

 

my best

 

Anton Frid

 

ps. arent you glad you asked this questions :)

 

I know that buy.com was selling Ultra 2gig for $150 about 2 weeks ago. I used to rent cards, but now they are so cheap that its better to buy then to rent.

[Ed_Ingold]

I carry 8G of CF cards at present, and will probably up that to 10G in case I have more than one assignment back-to-back. I get 127 RAW images per 1G with my D1x.

 

I don't have any microdrives and, judging from the horror stories, have no plans to buy any in the future. It was a nice idea when 32M cards cost $140, but the reliability just isn't there. I've had two cards go through the laundry. Microdrives have been known to fail in a 2 foot drop.

 

There's nothing wrong with JPEG, quality-wise, if you get everything right the first time: white balance, exposure, composition. With RAW images, you have more room for corrections.

 

2400 images per wedding! That's some shooting style, up by a factor of 6 or 8 in my experience. Ever shoot film?

[steve-walton]

Adam,

 

Having converted totally to digital for wedding photography over 4 years ago,

we have used both microdrive and cf cards in that time. The best advice,

based on our experience, is that I would not touch a microdrive with a

bargepole. They fail, unpredictably, totally and potentially catastrophically.

Far safer with solid state cf cards. The price differential is insignificant when

pitched against the cost of image retrieval from a dead/broken microdrive. We

tend to use Lexar 1gb and 512mgb cf cards and shoot RAW, apart from the pj

stuff. Two of us carry 5 cards each and use a 40gb Flashtrax for back-up on

the hoof. I've no doubt that there will be replies to the contrary, but

microdrives are the enemy, imo!!! Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

[anton frid photography]

BTW you can see a smaple of my latest wedding

<a href="http://antonfridphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/213944"> here </a>

<p>

This was all done with normal res.

<br>

Use 1234 as a password

 

My entire work on my page is digital, and yes, its all normal res.

 

anton

[Spearhead]

I've been using a 1 gigabyte microdrive since the day they were available (four years ago?) without any operational problems.

 

Now that doesn't mean they're reliable, in the same way the reports above don't mean they're unreliable. Statistical data is the most important thing to go on, and a survey would have to be large enough to make it useful. People who have had issues (or just like to complain) are far more likely to dominate on these kinds of questions.

 

Would I buy another one? Not if CF is cheaper, which it is at the 1 gig level, and maybe larger.

[steve-walton]

Interesting informal documentary style, Anton........Wish all brides had a smile

like that. Shot no.8 on page 2 is out of focus, though!

[adam_nance]

Wow! What great responses! And so quickly!

 

Let's see...

 

Anton- Thanks for the advice on the good deals on CF cards. High resolution on my

D70 is 3,000x2,000. So I stick with that and so far have had no problems up to an

8x12. I haven't tried to go bigger than that yet. And I LOVE your wedding work.

Excellent job.

 

Edward- LOL! We shot 8 or 9 weddings in film before deciding to try a career at it

and to take the plunge into the digital world. 2,400 film shots per wedding led to

some very expensive lab bills! (just kidding) 2,400 is the capacity I'd be comfortable

with, not the number I'd expect to shoot. When we shot film, we brought plenty of

extra just in case, and now we do the same with memory cards. It's not uncommon

for each of us to grab 600 or so digital images for a combined coverage of 1,200

digital images and another 360 or so (10 rolls) of film. We're new at this and we love

to click away. Maybe we'll slow down once we're seasoned pros, but for now, our

motto is: If yer not sure, and the moment is there, CLICK!

 

Steve- What did the 40GB flashtrax run you? About $500? Right now we back up on

a painfully old laptop. A flashtrax might save us the cost of upgrading the laptop

since we don't use it for much else at present.

 

Jeff- Great point about negative comments likely outweighing positive comments.

And since I can get 1gig cards as cheap as $150, I think you're right, and I'll stick with

CF cards.

 

Thanks to all!

Adam

[anton frid photography]

Steve..its a bit out of focus. That was a shot that i had to fight videophotographer and a RR driver for as video guy was standing and shooting her and dad at the same place i was. Nobody said it was easy. It actually prints nicely 5x7. Cant even tell its out of focus. Although its out of focus, i think the mome speaks for itself, and thus i am happy to have captured it. Daddy brought RR all the way from Texas. Dont ask me why....i think i seen few that he could have rented in NYC :)

 

Anything for his little girl :)

 

 

AF

[steve-walton]

Adam,

 

The Fashtrax cost about GB ?350 (around $580-600 I would think). It's really

useful & versatile. Given the volume of material that you shoot (1200 images)

at weddings, I would recommend it.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

[Spearhead]

<i>1gig cards as cheap as $150</i><p>

 

What country are you in? I bought a 1 gig (Sandisk) card for $80 a few weeks ago, but see that the same retailer has dropped it down to $70.

[cooper8168]

Yeah, I just bought a Lexar Pro 2GB 80X WA-enabled CF card on Amazon for $159 after

Lexar's $40 rebate.

[adam_nance]

Jeff- Type-o. I meant 2gig. I'm in the United States. :P

 

;)

[wedding-photography-denver]

As has been said, shop around a bit and they cost very close to the same price now.

 

I have about 14 gigs of flash and 10 gigs of MD's. They both do well and I have suffered no faliures on either to date.

[lucas_jarvis]

I've used the 4GB microdrive from Hitachi and I would definatly not use it for weddings. It's way too slow to write to. If you're shooting over a 1000 frames, I'm assuming you're shooting fast. If you want to check out your histogram and settings, it's way too slow to get info back. Plus, from experience, they have given me currupted files too often. Corrupted unusable files for that one special moment could be disastrous. Use CF all the way. You can drop them unlike a microdrive too. I'll keep my 4GIG though for vacations.

[brandonhamilton]

Is there a difference between the sandisk CF and the lexar CF?

[fotografz]

Micro-drives are just that... tiny hard drives with moving parts. CFs are solid state. I don't

need a poll to figure out which is more likely to fail. I have to use Microdrives in my older

MF back because back then they were a lot cheaper, and the newer speedy CFs won't work.

But that's mostly controlled conditions so it's just a minor inconvenience if a Microdrive

fails ... which I have had happen.

 

Separate hard drives for storage are now under a dollar a gig. So how's 40 gig costing

$500? I paid under $500. for a Lacie 500 gig drive months ago. They're even cheaper

now. I caution anyone to back up any stand alone drive with a redundant drive or burning

DVDs. It isn't a matter of IF a drive will fail, but WHEN... including a Microdrive.

[brian_ristuccia1]

I have a Nikon D70, and I've used both a variety of flash and disk based CF cards including the original 1GB IBM microdrive. My best experience so far has been with the 1GB Sandisk Ultra II, which was inexpensive and fast enough to shoot continuously at 3fps in the D70. The battery also lasts a good amount longer with a flash based CF card versus the microdrive.

 

Although I've had no reliability problems with the 1GB microdrive, I'm also quite a bit more careful with that card than my flash memory based cards. The microdrive, for example, is unlikely to survive a trip through the clothes washer and dryer. Nor would it last long if subjected to repeated drops onto concrete like a few of my solid state CF cards have. Another risk of using very large cards is that the entire job might fit on a single card. In that case, losing or breaking the card would be quite a disaster.

 

Buy.com has 1GB Sandisk Ultra II cards for $95.99. For the cost of a 2GB ultraII, you can get three 1GB cards from buy.com. I'd say that's a good compromise solution between the uberexpensive high capacity flash based CF cards and the cheaper (but slower, more power hungry, and more fragile) disk based CF cards.

[fotografz]

The larger CFs are becoming more popular because the camera meg rate is climbing. 16,

22, and soon 24 meg for the high end units. Both the 1DMKII and just announced 16 meg

1DsMKII have dual card slots. I now simultaneously shoot to both a CF and SD 1 gig cards

in the 1DMKII for the must have shots. You can turn the dual shooting on and off at will.

For most other shots I'm using a 2 gig CF. 2 gig cards are priced like 512meg were just

awhile ago. Amazing.

[brandonhamilton]

What is a "disk based CF cards"??

[wedding-photography-denver]

disk based CF's are just MD's. :)

 

The whole issue is a matter of debate MD's vs. Cf's, however, now that the Cf's are about the same $$ as MD's I will only buy CF's in the future. Even though none of my MD's have had a faliure, I expect they will one day.

 

My thoughts are to mark the date of first use on all cards and retire them after a certain amount of use, say 4 years?

 

Any other ideas on this?

[fotografz]

Has anyone seen any accelerated tests on CF cards to project longevity? I know MDs have a

finite life span due to moving parts. But what about CFs?

[ShunCheung]

Back in March, I bought a 40x Lexar CF card for $280, before a $40 rebate. This morning, I bought another one that is 80x for $130, before a $30 rebate. Other people are getting high-end SanDisk 1Gs around $80+.

 

I think pretty soon longevity of memory cards won't be a concern. Just replace them every couple of years.