Travel Technology - Is "XD" digital camera memory worth paying more for? Interchangeable? Price deals?

Thanks for the great input on a more general thread nearby about digital cameras, that sure cleared up as lot of stuff for novice me, and hopefully helped out others who will ask similar newbie questions in future.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=366246

OK, now being an instant genius about these things, I have gravitated to a little camera - an absolutely tiny Fuji F440, yet with 3.4 zoom (about 130 in old terminology) for around $229 plus free shipping. :

http://www.digitalfotoclub.com/sc/product-features.asp?id=964594278

That seems to fit my needs perfectly.

It does have the downside of a 'Fuji only' type battery, but that is multi rechargeable, is small, is the most powerful (they say!) being Lithium Ion and cost is now down to about $20 each so that is not too bad to have 1 or 2 spares around.

http://www.camcorder-battery.org/FUJIFILM/NP-30.HTM#

The other feature of this seems to be that it uses "XD" memory chips, which as far as I can gather are faster and more compact and newer than what has been around before??? I saw one in a store and it is literally about the exterior size of a regular postage stamp. ^

Seems like it is a fairly new thing used now by just Fuji and Olympus? :

http://www.xpcgear.com/xcard256.html

However, even assuming this is so - that it is faster etc, they are far more expensive to buy than conventional memory. 512 MB is running about $US100:

http://www1.shopping.com/xGS-xd_memory

My question is - buying the "Olympus" brand 256 or 512 seems less expensive than the "Fuji" brand. Would these likely be completely interchangeable? I need to order in a day or so, and do not want to get stuck with a lemon of a chip that will not go in my camera! They SEEM similar based on this:

http://www1.shopping.com/xSBS-Flash_Memory~PG-1~NCP-2~PRDLT-20811459-21271307

But what do I know. And is "San Disc" a brand, or a new type of Memory?

And if anyone knows a place to get a decent price on a couple of these chips, I'd appreciate hearing - the alleged $34 price on this comparison, turns out to be more like $50. :mad:

I guess these XD things will be half this price in a year or so if it is fairly "new tech" right now?

XD cards are standard. You can use anybody's card and it will work. SanDisk is one of the better known brands. The camera seems to be a 4.1 megapixel model, so at its highest resolution Fuji says you should be able to get 129 pictures on a 256mb card. For good prices, try putting "256mb XD card" into froogle.google.com.

Oh -- and to respond to your question a bit better, no I wouldn't pay more to get an XD camera. XD cards aren't as ubiquitous as CF ones, at least not yet.

Thanks xyzzy. Sorry I might not have been clear. :)

Buying this at $220 shipped is not paying more for XD AFAIK, as with a 3.4 zoom it is better than most in that regard.

I was just asking if folks here thought having an XD chip in 18 months time will be like having 8-track music cartridges or Betamax etc.... i.e. not exactly the leading edge. ;)

Had never used (or even seen) froogle-google and that was interesting - doing that on this camera bought in prices about 20% higher than using Google!

(For all younger readers .. well there is always Google to ask about 8-Tracks) :p

www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/8/8_/8_track_cartridge.html

XD cards are standard, however, one thing to watch out for is if any of the camera features are programmed onto the card. For example. on Olympus Cameras, the panarama feature if only available if you are using an Olympus card (or another card that has burned the feature onto it). Not sure if Fuji does the same or not.

I've been using XD for over a year and I love them. I've never had a picture go bad on them, and I can't say that for the other cards. I've even washed one in my shirt pocket, and it still worked fine.

I get almost mine over at ecost. They don't have them all the time, but they are sometimes in their clearance section. They currently have one (256) for $47, but at times they have had it for $29.

I'm lucky, my camera accepts both XD and SM cards, so as XD prices have slowly risen in the past 6 months or so I've been able to pick up some SM onex for very little money, but much prefer using XD cards.

Ebay has deals sometimes, but again, as they become more popular, many more people are bidding.

I was just asking if folks here thought having an XD chip in 18 months time will be like having 8-track music cartridges or Betamax etc.... i.e. not exactly the leading edge. ;)I don't think you'll have to worry about that. It's a newer format but it is taking hold.

I'd avoid any camera with xD. I owned one, and always felt sore about paying extra for everything from card readers to the card itself (2-3x the price of equivalent compactflash). You'll never be able to take the card to your local drug store and print photos right off the card.

With one gigabyte of compactflash going for less than $75, I don't see any logic in paying $50 for 256m of xD, and then paying extra for a reader.

Also, don't forget when you move on to a new camera you are going to feel ridiculous buying a non-xD camera and losing your "investment" in proprietary media.

As for claims around speed and capacity, ignore them. I'm not aware of any 1 gigabyte xd-picturecards on the market. The 512m is even relatively new, and took ages to come out after the 256m cards.

xD has been out for at least 2 years now so do not assume it'll be cheaper or more prevalent in a year or two. Picture xD camera manufacturers as SkyTeam, and CF/SD manufacturers as Star Allicance, and you'll get the picture.
:)

You'll never be able to take the card to your local drug store and print photos right off the card.



Never thought of that aspect. Good point to raise - thanks.

Is that likely to change? Surely if Canon or someone start making XD chips there will be the need to have those printable at drug stores?

Surely which type of memory card input is no big issue to a large photo processor in the big picture of things?? Especially if the use of these gets larger than now?

I can solve that problem for $9.99: http://www.xpcgear.com/bytxdsmadapt.html

All things being equal, right now I'd opt for SD card memory in lieu of xD-Picture cards. The latter is still a little too specialized to ensure wide acceptance by the market.

Hi Glen,

I have the Olympus D580. It uses the "XD" format. This is a fantastic camera. 4.0 megapixel more than meets my needs. It has never failed me. Currently it is only $199 at Costco. I paid $279 for mine! :(

It uses 2 AA batteries. I bought a simple recharger (about $20). If the batteries run low, it takes only a second to pop in the replacements. Whichever camera you choose, make sure you get one in your hands before choosing. I handled a few, Some were just too small for my hands. The D580 just fits well.

Good Luck on whichever you end up with.


-RKG

I'd avoid any camera with xD. I owned one, and always felt sore about paying extra for everything from card readers to the card itself (2-3x the price of equivalent compactflash). You'll never be able to take the card to your local drug store and print photos right off the card.


I don't feel that's a correct statement. Lots of kiosks take them, including the Kodak machines used at CVS and so many other stores.

As to prices, my XD reader/writer cost under $9.

I can solve that problem for $9.99:

http://www.xpcgear.com/bytxdsmadapt.html



Nice find .. thank you pdhenry! I ordered 2 of these today, as for $10 how can we lose? (We both bought the same camera!)

I have never used one of these, but I *assume* these will come with some kind of lead that I can plug right into the USB of my tower right from the unit? Does not say so on the web link or show a lead in their photo. Sorry for the dumb question, but all these gadgets are totally new to me. :D

http://www.xpcgear.com/bytxdsmadapt.html

So this little gadget means our camera battery is not being drained on download and transfer .. just the power supply from tower etc is doing the transferring?

Hey ozstamps. I've been using a Fuji XD camera for almost 2 years now. Got one of the first S304's to hit Australia. The price of XD cards is certainly more than SD and CF. I bought my 256MB on a trip to KL earlier this year.

You can take XD cards into the major photo processing shops in Australia, including Rabbit and Camera House. They will happily take any type of card including XD.

I use both Fuji and Olympus cards (128MB and 256MB) and swap between them regularly. I bought a cheap XD USB card reader off EBay (about A$12 delivered).

I also have a DV video camera (Panasonic NV-GS400) that has SD card for stills. I would prefer the two cameras to use the same memory cards, but that was not to be and in the end has not caused me too much angst. But I do want to purchase a larger SD card - pay almost A$3000 for a camera and it does not come with an SD card standard, so the dealer did me a "deal" on a 128MB SD card, and not a very good deal at that :td: .

My recommendation is to choose the camera that you like the most, and account for the cost of the memory card in the total purchase price. If you are happy with that total price, then go for it.

And with the battery, certainly purchase at least one additional/spare. Even with Li-Ion batts you will still need to carry a spare. My camera uses 4 x AA, and a decent set of 2500mAH NiMH cells costs about $20 anyway.

I have never used one of these, but I *assume* these will come with some kind of lead that I can plug right into the USB of my tower right from the unit? Does not say so on the web link or show a lead in their photo. Sorry for the dumb question, but all these gadgets are totally new to me. :DThe thing I pointed to converts an xD-Picture card so it can be read in a SmartMedia reader slot, but you still will need a device to read SmartMedia devices on your PC- e.g., what you bought is the color part on the right not the reader that actually connects to your PC (I was responding to someone who mentioned that you sometimes can't find an xD-Picture card slot on the drugstore photo printers).

Here is a$5 (after rebate) USB reader for most types of flash cards (including SmartMedia but maybe not xD-picture cards, so you'd still need the SmartMedia adapter you've ordered): http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?DPNo=493524

There are probably less bulky solutions if all you want is to read xD-Picture cards on your PC, but so far we're only in for $15, so not much to complain about...

With one gigabyte of compactflash going for less than $75, I don't see any logic in paying $50 for 256m of xD, and then paying extra for a reader.


oz, this is an extremely important point as you can purchase much more memory for much less than what you are getting on xd. Don't get hung up on one type of card.

There are plenty of inexpensive USB XD card readers available in Australia (where ozstamps lives). From 9-in-1 readers that do the lot (http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=18872&item=3849726581&rd=1), down to XD readers like this one (http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=43477&item=3849906670&rd=1).

In Australia, there is a huge variation in prices for all types of memory between retailers. But when comparing different memory types from the same supplier, I generally find XD memory is still about double the price of SD, and sometimes more than double. This has been the case for the two years that I have been using XD memory. I was hoping the difference would have reduced by now, but it remains constant. The price of both XD and SD has dropped significantly over that time, but the difference remains about 2 to 1.

But a $40 difference in the price of a 256MB card is not likely to be deciding factor in the camera I would purchase. The other features of the camera are likely to play a more significant roll in the decision process.

Personally I would not be buying a 1GB memory card for a 4MP still camera. I would not want to store that many photos on a single card - just in case. I have one 256MB card and two 128MB cards and purge them to my PC and then burn to CD on a regular basis. That is a lot of photos, even at 4MP. I understand some people may have a need for that much, but I don't and I doubt the average holiday snapper does.

The really large cards (like 1GB) are great for storing motion video or lots of really high resolution snaps (like 8MP).

In case someone is still looking, Dell has a 512MB for $78

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0366410

Then again, I got a 1GB CF for less than that ;)

For me XD falls in the same camp as Sony memory stick. Unnecessary. I don't see why we needed yet another format that offers no real advantage and lower memory sizes for a higher price.

I would have to say go with either SD or CF. Those are the two formats that have the widest acceptance. I use my 2GB CF card between my camera, laptop, desktop, printer and PDA. None of the other formats are supported to this degree.

For me XD falls in the same camp as Sony memory stick. Unnecessary. I don't see why we needed yet another format that offers no real advantage and lower memory sizes for a higher price.

I would have to say go with either SD or CF. Those are the two formats that have the widest acceptance. I use my 2GB CF card between my camera, laptop, desktop, printer and PDA. None of the other formats are supported to this degree.

Don't really agree here, I have a camera that takes XD, I can get XD cards everywhere, and they are pretty cheap. Memorystick media is only found from a few brands and was strictly a Sony-only product for the longest time.

XD is fast, and there is thankfully only one XD standard (unlike memorystick with regular, magicgate, duo, duo magicgate, pro etc...).

XD's are available from several brands are are used in quite a few camera brands too.

I was pretty sceptical at first, but CD has certainly won me over, especially with it's awesome speeds (I can shoot 12MP photos and write them away one every 2 or 3 seconds, try that with SD! )

I was pretty sceptical at first, but CD has certainly won me over, especially with it's awesome speeds (I can shoot 12MP photos and write them away one every 2 or 3 seconds, try that with SD! )
I have certainly noticed that my Fuji S304 writes a 3.2MP image to XD significantly faster than my Panasonic NV-GS400 writes a 4MP still to SD memory. I was not sure if this was the memory speed difference or other differences in the camera - for example the NV-GS400 may not be opimized for writing stills since it is a DV camcorder. But there is a noticable delay with writing to the SD card.

I have certainly noticed that my Fuji S304 writes a 3.2MP image to XD significantly faster than my Panasonic NV-GS400 writes a 4MP still to SD memory. I was not sure if this was the memory speed difference or other differences in the camera - for example the NV-GS400 may not be opimized for writing stills since it is a DV camcorder. But there is a noticable delay with writing to the SD card.

From what I understand, the XD has more data lines, and is optimized for USB2.0

XD is just Smartmedia in a small form factor (I heard)...

Now there is rs-mmc (http://atlantis.nocdirect.com/~memoryx/store/catalog/ATP-RSMMC-Reduced-Size-MMC-MultiMedia-Card.html) to add to the mix. How many more form sizes do we need? :confused: :rolleyes:

Now there is rs-mmc (http://atlantis.nocdirect.com/~memoryx/store/catalog/ATP-RSMMC-Reduced-Size-MMC-MultiMedia-Card.html) to add to the mix. How many more form sizes do we need? :confused: :rolleyes:

Lots lots more... There is also Mini-SD, Transflash etc...

Lots lots more... There is also Mini-SD, Transflash etc...
And don't forget the previous standards for flexible photographic storeage media, of which there many, including Kodachrome and FujiColor :p . At least in the end, one standard format prevailed - 135 canisters.