D100 compact flash cards

[simon_sobo]

I am new to digital photography. J&R is offering a good deal on a

type 1 512mb compact flash card made by PNY (PNY PCF 512 RF) ($99

after rebate) I called Nikon and an inexperienced sounding tech

person told me that only sandisk or pixar compact flash cards with a

limit of 160mb can be used. The only way to get a lot of mb is with

the IBM microdisc. Is this true? The compact flash cards come with

a lifetime warranty. The IBM with a 1 year (since it is an actual

hard drive) There is also an issue of Windows XP which will only

work in FAT 32 and larger mb flash cards don't use FAT 32. I don't

really know what half of this means so I would appreciate a post

from someone who is familiar with D100's memory requirements

explaining what all of this means and their thoughts on PNY very

economical possibility

Thanks,

Simon Sobo

[keith_ambrose]

I don't know either but I am using a Scandisk Ultra 512mB card in my D100 and it works fine.

 

Keith

[ray]

Nikon only certifies a small set of media for use. You can pretty safely use just about anything else (compactflash at least). The PNY card shoulod be fine on your camera.

[lwg]

I had an older and cheap 256MB "Mr. Flash" brand card that worked fine in my old Canon S40 that refused to work in the D100. So not all cards work.

[flatlander]

I use Sandisk Ultra 512 cards in my D100, D1, Canon S40, etc. Also use the IBM 1 GB microdrive.

 

I would guess that the PNY 512 would work fine.

 

You can get the Sandisk Ultra 512 for $150 or less if you shop around.

 

The Sandisk Ultra might be a bit faster but that may not make much difference to you for casual shooting and downloading. When you shoot action sports and transfer the data frequently then speed does matter.

 

Charlie

[ShunCheung]

I use a Viking 512MB card on my D100. I would imagine that most CF card manufacturers would test their cards against popular models from Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, etc. It is unlikely that you'll have any problems.

[simon_sobo]

Thanks everyone for your answers. I will go with the sandisk since it has already been used by one of you. I was able to get the sandisk 512mb at Dell for $103. For those of you looking for one this is 15% discounted ending today. The ultra is $124 also 15% discounted

 

Has anyone had a problem with windows XP and the FAT 32 issue or does everyone here use apple.

[ShunCheung]

I use Windows XP and don't have any problems. One thing to keep in mind is that Sandisks are well known to be slow in terms of read/write times. I have a Sandisk 256MB and it is the slowest among my 3 cards, e.g. it takes 8 instead of 6 seconds to write a RAW file. If you shoot any type of action, this may become an issue because when you fill up the buffer, you'll have to wait for the very slow memory write to complete before you can shoot again, and you can lose shots. If you don't shoot a lot of frames in succession, these may be a complete non issue. <A HREF="http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare">Digital Photography Review</A> has a very good comparison among a number of CF cards. However, that review was done in late 2001, so the information is somewhat out of date by now. For example, the digital cameras they used are not all current any more and very few 1GB cards were included in the review. Today, 1GB is pretty common.

[astcell]

My 1GB Viking cards work fine.