If I was shooting weddings, I would use 512M cards, exclusively. Lots of 'em.
Fill 'em up, then burn a backup CD on location from each card. If you use a laptop, that would give you THREE storage locations. 1) the original CF card ; 2) the laptop ; and 3) the CD backup.
Yeah, i plan to have my laptop onsite with the usb2 card reader attached and ready to copy. It has a CD burner in it, so i will rip discs before theday is done. I would hate for a card failure to be my problem.
As other users have pointed out, microdrives have moving parts (they are in fact small hard drives). Additionally, they consume more power than CF.
All things considered, CFs might be preferable.
regards,
George
DON'T USE MICRODRIVES FOR WEDDINGS!!!!!!!!!. CF cards are far more reliable.
All it takes is one good drop and there is a good chance that the MD will be dead. I typically use 512mb and 1GB Lexar cards.
I have lost one CF cards, a generic 128MB card I had. I downloaded it to find only 77MB of data when it should have been full. I sent it off to Drive Savers and they replied "It seems that the controller chip has failed and about 13 files were not properly written to the card and cannot be recovered." I lost 13 shots
Anyone have problems with their SanDisk Ultra II locking up? Just got a 1GB card and for no apparent reason the access light on my D70 will stay on after I've been shooting for a while. Only way to stop it is to drop the battery. So far I haven't lost any shots at least. Doesn't seem to happen when using my other CF card or my microdrive.
I have 2 Sandisk Ultra II 256mb cards. One of those cards has worked ok. The other has given me problems twice now. It basically corrupts some of the images on it. I have now stopped using it. I purchased 2 512MB lexar 40x cards that work GREAT.
Just ordered a Lexar 1GB 40x card today. Hopefully we'll have better luck with it than the SanDisk Ultra II. And for $209 you can't hardly beat the price!
I am fortunate to use a Canon 1D with a FireWire hookup. I use both CF cards and MicroDrives. If you are in a situation where you will be "handling" the cards (inserting and removing) the media with any frequency, I would stick with CF cards. When I use the MicroDrives, I do it because of their capacity vs cost, but my own personal rule is to not eject them. I will either download from the camera on site or when I get back to the studio. Although I have heard horror stories about malfunctioning MicroDrives, I have yet to hear of one that was not caused by some sort of handling misfortune.
During a shoot using an AB800 ... shooting JPEG, the entire card took on a green cast. Every images had that geen cast! Never had it happen before. Massive amount of work to bring the colors back.
The only suggestion Leaxar could offer was to reformat the card. Now I tend to reformat before a shoot rather than just erase the images.
