Fuji F50 - SD card compatibility issues?

[micah_marty1]

I hesitate to say anything because I may have an anomalous situation, but...

 

My Fuji F50 won't read the three SD cards I've tried in it (the F50 is the

first camera in this series that takes SD cards in addition to the dead-end xD

card format). The camera works fine with my xD cards from earlier Fujis, and

the generic brand (Transcend) 4gb SD cards I've tried to no avail in the F50

work fine in various other cameras. So it doesn't seem to be a faulty camera

or faulty cards but rather a compatibility issue.

 

The F50 says "Card Error" both when it is turned on after the SD card is

inserted and after I try to format that SD card. Again, it works fine with xD

cards.

 

I'm posting this to check whether the F50 is picky about the brand of its SD

cards, because that could be a budget consideration for others looking at

buying this camera.

 

Has anyone else had positive or negative experience with SD cards in the F50?

If so, which brand of cards worked or didn't? To keep this post from becoming

too long, I'll post the owner's manual's take on the matter below.

[micah_marty1]

Here's what the Fuji F50 manual says about memory cards:

 

"You can use an xD Picture Card and [they mean "or," as there's only one card slot] an SD Memory Card.

 

"SD Memory Cards/SDHC Memory Cards - They are operation-checked at Fujifilm Corporation. Manufacturer: SanDisk

 

"Compatible models will be updated on our website: http:www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras.html "

 

[That link did not work for me; when I went to the Fujifilm products page and typed "SD card" in the search box, it brought up the promo pages for the F50 - including the note that it accepts SD and SDHC cards - but contained no technical info. A Support search on the Fuji site yielded nothing either.]

 

I have no idea why they say "Manufacturer: SanDisk," as that appears nowhere else in any literature or technical information that I can find...

[jeff_s]

For capacities 2 gigabytes and below, use SD, for 4 gigbytes and above, use SDHC. 4 gigabyte non-HC cards are a non-standard and were never officially part of the SD card spec, so compatibility is always going to be iffy with these.

[micah_marty1]

OK, Jeff, thanks for that; it's very helpful. Interestingly, the 4gb SD generics (presumably not "HC" since they're not labeled that way!) work fine - writing and formatting - in three Canon point-and-shoots, but in a 1DsII they'll write but not reformat; your post explains why this is probably true.

 

UPDATE: I found a 2gb SanDisk (non-HC) SD card by scrounging through sofa cushions etc. and it worked fine in the F50, both reading and reformatting.

 

I don't have any other SD cards to try in the F50 (to see whether the "Card Error" alert was a matter of card brands or a matter of 4gb non-HC). But unless other owners have problems with SD cards below 2gb or SDHC cards above 2gb, I'll assume it's a matter of card "type" (HC vs. plain above 2gb) instead of "brand," for the reason Jeff noted.

 

Good camera, by the way, but if you have an F30 or F31 and like to shoot in low-light, don't trade in for an F50; it looks to me to be about a stop noisier than those two cameras.

[jeff_s]

2G 150x Transcend cards work fine in my F50fd.

 

I'm buying nothing larger than 2 gigabytes right now because my Leica digital needs a firmware update before it'll take -HC cards, and I don't know if my Jobo Giga Vu can handle them either. And sooner or later, I need to stop and change batteries anyhow.

 

Does yours look noticeably soft in the corners, particularly when shooting in bright light, focused to infinity?

 

I had an F30 and loved it, but sold it prematurely to a buddy. The F50 so far has felt like a mixed bag.

[micah_marty1]

"Does your F50 look noticeably soft in the corners, particularly when shooting in bright light, focused to infinity?"

 

Yes, although not consistently so. I'm trying to figure out what it's doing, as sometimes it's one corner more than the others. (I shoot it mostly indoors, so I don't have a lot of infinity shots to scrutinize.)

 

I like the F50's feature set and interface fine (though I'm not sure I'm getting two stops of IS), but I wish Fuji had just put those features with the F30/31 sensor and processor; they really blew it in doubling the megapixels. With any enlargement at all the images look really smeary to me, at 6mp or 12mp; to my eye there is both more noise and uglier noise than with the F30/31 (and about the same amount of noise as the F10, but it's less attractive in the F50 because of over-processing).

 

I guess I'd say that the F50 is fine for a snapshot camera, so that's primarily how I'll use it. But I'm urging any friends who might be characterized as "advanced photographers" to avoid it and buy an F31 while they still can. (Could the F30/31 be a "cult camera" already? Who would have thought that so early in the digital era photographers would be buying discontinued cameras to get better IQ than the newest models have?). The F30 was probably the best; the processing was just starting to get a bit heavy-handed in the F31 -- as shown in the comparison crops in dpreview's review of the F31 -- but those two cameras are very close to each other at ISO 800, with the F50 far behind. (I bought the F50 after dropping my F31 to the pavement, resulting in a huge crack down the middle of every image. Interesting compositional challenge, that.)

 

It's too bad that manufacturers have to play the more-megapixels-is-better game. Advanced photographers' search for a high-quality low-light-capable pocket digital camera will continue, but probably without Fuji as a serious player from now on. That's a real shame, as Fuji was the industry leader in that category for a couple of years there....

[micah_marty1]

P.S. I suppose the most telling change is that with the F30/31 I often set the ISO on 800 (F30) and Auto800 (F31), while with the F50 I wince a little bit even putting it at Auto400.

[sam_thompson2]

You can sometimes use the 4gb cards on these cameras by partitioning the card to two 2gb partitions and formating it in fat16 mode. But its more trouble than its worth and cheaper to buy 2gb cards in the first place.

[jeff_s]

My F30 vs F50 impressions when viewing the images at 100%:

 

F30: Not bad, pretty consistent illumination, contrast and sharpness across the field, though the images don't hold up to further magnification.

 

F50: When the light allows, the 12 mp does seem to give added detail encouraging the eye to look closer--and it makes the uneven sharpness/contrast that much more annoying! Or could it be some kind of internal flare that I'm getting, what with the very bright conditions I've been shooting in lately.

 

To date, my feeling is that if I had gotten to try the F30 and F50 side by side before purchasing, I would have kept my F30! But I'll play with the F50 awhile longer to see what I can do with it, and if worst comes to worst, I'll order a Ricoh GX100 from Adorama. The F50 actually seems like a very nice camera; it just doesn't seem as outstanding as the F30 was in it's time, that's all. But even the F30 overdid the internal noise reduction.

[allan_crook]

<p>logically, and i think correctly, the sd card will have the widest ompatibility, particularly on older digicams. i am ising 2gb lexar 133x professional cards in 2 compacts, a minolta xt and contax tvs figital. these cards are still available on aazon uk, for the moment, anyway.<br /> lexar.com has a '2gb sd card compatibility chart' on its website. google the latter description to go straight to it. many cameras listed.</p>

<p>this lexar 133x card has the benefit of faster write and read times c. 20MB/SEC. it even helps speed up operation in these old compacts. i like it also as they as it will will be usable in sdhc and sdxc devices i get in the future. 2gb is a good size for most applications.</p>