Canon A95 and HUGE CompacFflash Card

I have a Canon A95, and I would like to get a one or two (marbe more?)
gigabtye memory card. First question; what speed should I get as a
minimum? Second, will this camera support cards bigger than a gig?
When I use the camera I'm out for long periods of time and I don't get
a chance to unload the pictures onto a PC.
Also, there's SanDisk, Lexar, Dane-Elec and Kingston. Fromw hat I
understand those brands are all good. Are there any brands I should
avoid?

You might want to just buy some smaller cards at 512MB. You know the story
about putting "all your eggs in one basket". If something happens during a
write to the card, you may lose all your photos. I have the SanDisk Ultra II
512 MB which cost me about $40 after a rebate. It seems to work just fine
with my A95

Dan

"Doofusbrain" wrote in message
ps.com...
I have a Canon A95, and I would like to get a one or two (marbe more?)
gigabtye memory card. First question; what speed should I get as a
minimum? Second, will this camera support cards bigger than a gig?
When I use the camera I'm out for long periods of time and I don't get
a chance to unload the pictures onto a PC.
Also, there's SanDisk, Lexar, Dane-Elec and Kingston. Fromw hat I
understand those brands are all good. Are there any brands I should
avoid?

On 3 Jul 2005 16:46:40 -0700, "Doofusbrain"
wrote:

I have a Canon A95, and I would like to get a one or two (marbe more?)
gigabtye memory card.

First question; what speed should I get as a minimum?

In general in the A95 you won't see much if any advantage in
write speed to the card. Faster cards are great if you have an
external USB 2.0 or Firewire CF card reader, thus faster transfers to
you PC.

Second, will this camera support cards bigger than a gig?

Yes it uses fat 32 so it can pass the 2GB limit, I have an A95
& have used a 2GB CF in it with not problems. As mentioned there is
always a risk to having so many eggs (pictures) in 1 basket (CF card)
& only you can decide the risk to benefit ratio that "you" are
comfortable with. At max. resolution & minimum compression you will
average between 750 to 1,000 pictures on a 2GB card, that's a lot of
eggs. For most people with a 5MP camera, 512MB or 1GB will be far
more than enough unless they go on extended vacations or love shooting
video clips which consume a lot of memory & the A95 is not a great
performer for video clips anyway.

When I use the camera I'm out for long periods of time and I don't get
a chance to unload the pictures onto a PC.

Was this a separate question or additional information related
to the last question?

Also, there's SanDisk, Lexar, Dane-Elec and Kingston. Fromw hat I
understand those brands are all good. Are there any brands I should
avoid?

This is very subjective, it's a lot like asking who makes the
best cars & the best 1 that meets your needs. As a general rule, if
the picture are very important to you like wedding or vacation
pictures I would only use a well know brand with a lifetime warrantee.
As for me, San disk Ultra II only costs a little more than others &
it's fast enough for me when used in my fire wire or USB 2.0 CF card
reader/writer.

As for companies to avoid, I would avoid the lesser known
brands & all cards that don't carry a lifetime warrantee. Other
people will tell you that a lifetime warrantee is no guarantee of
never having a card failure. This is certainly true, but 1 would
expect that the cards that carry a lifetime warrantee are likely built
to closer tolerances & therefore are a bit less likely to fail & even
if they do, you can get them replaced. Last note is that the 2
largest names in memory cards Lear & San disk both make cards with
less than a lifetime warrantee as well as most of their that carry a
lifetime warrantee (5 years I think, on their least expensive cards).

Hope this helps you.

Respectfully, DHB

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