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To: Steve 667 who wrote (1929)12/3/1997 6:52:00 PM
From: Bobby  Respond to of 60323
 
Steve W. - I am not Mike but here goes my 2 cents:

I am not contributing anything original but just a rehash of comments made by other posters when this question had come up before:

1. Most major Camera manufacturers have endorsed CF as a standard. They have products shipping with CF. Mike has pointed out that its not going to be easy for camera manufacturers to sell hundreds of these camera this x-mas and then suddenly do an about face and change the flash to the miniature card.

Ref : Jerome's excellent post
Message 2756715

2. Intel's Camera Kit is not a full featured Digital camera - its being pushed as a low cost barebones product and will not likely appeal to professionals and even to the average user who wants reasonable features from the camera. Only couple of minor league manufacturers have signed up for this format. I posed this question a while back and I was satisfied with the respones from posters some of whom were professional photographers.

Ref : My initial query
Message 2684774
James's excellent reply
Message 2690450



To: Steve 667 who wrote (1929)12/3/1997 9:22:00 PM
From: W. Frank  Respond to of 60323
 
Miniature Card vs CompactFlash

The Intel Miniature Card is currently available up to 8MB. 64MB is the maximum future capacity due to address limitations.

CompactFlash is currently available from SanDisk up to 24MB. Since CF uses an ATA interface its maximum addressable space is many GB just like a hard disk.

Cost per MB is not lower for Miniature Card. Miniature Card's market share is low and getting lower.

There was a recent article regarding the Intel camera kit. It's title was something like "Intel's Digital Camera Kit Gets Lukewarm Reception". The reasons for this are:

1) The kit requires that you have a PC available to see the picture that you have taken. No LCD screen is supported. If you have ever used a digital camera you know that one of its neatest features is to see the picture immediately and show it to other people or decide to delete it and take another shot because someone had a weird look on their face. The idea with the kit is to move data compression and creation of a file format that can be viewed to the PC. This is aimed at reducing the cost of the camera by using a lower power/cost processor in the camera. The problem is that it eliminates some of the major features desired in a digital camera.

2) Miniature Card is not finding any support.

Hope this is helpful.

W. Frank



To: Steve 667 who wrote (1929)12/4/1997 2:31:00 AM
From: Gary Spiers  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 60323
 
Steve et al.,

Given recent interest in competing technologies, the following (incomplete)
table lists digital cameras by the type of memory expansion that they use
together with the image size in pixels.

No Memory Expansion
Camera Image Size No. Photos
Agfa ePhoto 307 640x480 36
Casio QV-11 320x240 96
Casio QV-100 640x480 64
Casio QV-300 640x480 64
Epson PhotoPC 500 640x480 30
Kodak DC20 493x373 8
Nikon Coolpix 100 512x480 21
Nikon Coolpix 300 640x480 66
Olympus C-400L 640x480 20
Olympus C-410L 640x480 30
Polaroid PDC2000-40 1600x1200 40
Praktica PD-100 320x240 64
Ricoh RDC-300 640x480 ??
Sanyo VPC-G200E 640x480 60
Sharp VE-LC1 640x480 30
Sony DSC-F1 640x480 30
Toshiba PDR-2 640x480 12

Floppy Disc
Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 640x480
Sony Mavica MVC-FD7 Unknown

SmartMedia
Agfa ePhoto 1280 1280x960
Fuji DX-5 640x480
Fuji DS-7 640x480
Fuji DX-7 640x480
Minolta DimageV 640x480
Olympus D-320L 1024x768
Olympus C-420L 640x480
Olympus D-500L 1024x768
Olympus D-600L 1280x1024
Olympus C-820L 1024x768
Olympus C-1400L 1280x1024

CompactFlash
Canon Powershot 350 640x480
Casio QV-700 640x480
Kodak DC25 493x373
Kodak DC120 1280x960
Kodak DC210 1152x864
Konica Q-Mini 640x480
Panasonic CoolShot KXL-601A 640x480
Yashica KC600 640x480

TypeII
Canon Powershot 600 832x608
Fuji DS-300 1280x1000
Fuji DS-220A Unknown
Fuji DS-505 Unknown
Fuji DS515 Unknown
Kodak DC50 756x504
Kodak DCS410 1152x1012
Minolta RD-175 1528x1146
Ricoh RDC-2E 768x576
Ricoh RDC-2L 768x576
Sony DKC-ID1 768x576

TypeIII
Canon Powershot 600 832x608
Kodak DCS410 1152x1012
Minolta RD-175 1528x1146

Notes on the media types:

No Expansion
The camera contains internal flashram (except for the Polaroid which uses a
40MB internal hard drive) to store the pictures which are then transfered to a pc
by some means - usually by a cable - can be slow for large files. Notable
exceptions are the Nikon and Toshiba cameras which plug directly into a
pcmcia port enabling rapid data transfer from the camera to the computer. The
number of photos is the number of photographs at the highest resolution that
can be stored in the camera before they have to be transfered or deleted - this
is a manufacturer's estimate.

Floppy Disc is a standard 1.44MB disc.

SmartMedia (SSFDC) - currently available in 2MB and 4MB sizes with 8MB and
64MB cards eventually available. The cards can be either 3.3V or 5V - the
wrong voltage card will not work so need to know which voltage card for which
camera. The smartmedia memory can be converted to a standard pcmcia
Type II ATA flashram form via an adapter.

CompactFlash (CF) - Available in sizes up to 20MB now.

TypeII - This refers to a mechanical size but is usually synonymous with the
ATA interface (de facto standard) when used to describe pcmcia flash memory
- the camera vendors were not too specific with their descriptions. Sizes
available up to at least 85MB and rumoured availability of 100MB+ cards in
near future.

TypeIII - These are generally miniature rotating hardrives. The maximum drive
size is currently 340MB although a 510MB drive is rumoured. Power
consumption is an issue for portable devices.

Memory pricing: Of the flash technologies, for a given size SSFDC is cheaper
than CF which is marginally cheaper than TypeII ATA. The Type III hard drives
are much cheaper than the flashram.

Gary



To: Steve 667 who wrote (1929)12/4/1997 2:35:00 AM
From: Rex Dwyer  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 60323
 
Refresher for new people to the SNDK thread:

Hi Steve,

I really appreciate your question to the thread. You are probably correct to question the chatter of daily SNDK stock movements. The volume of talk has certainly increased. However, I must say that this is one of the most knowledgeable threads in the techstock universe. I am constantly impressed by the breadth of knowledge in this crowd.

Please read a report that Jerome and I did for the Internet Financial Connection which was a feature article on the front page of Silicon Investor.

techstocks.com

Be sure the read the links provided at the end of the report on the details of the technological differences of flash types.

Welcome to the thread.

Rex



To: Steve 667 who wrote (1929)12/4/1997 5:29:00 AM
From: Craig Freeman  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 60323
 
Steve, I don't see typical users associating a lot of value with cards bigger than 16MB. With most cameras that's more than 100 pictures. And, like using film, there's a sensation of comfort when you remove the roll from the camera (imagine losing every picture you took on your European vacation to a camera thief, etc.)

If the average Joe is like me, he'll buy the best camera that he can afford including 2-3 medium-sized cards ... as a one-time purchase. The initial cost of a camera is so high that it swamps the cost of the memory cards.

In addition, it's going to be VERY tough for Intel to develop a brand image on their flash products since what the user sees on his screen has almost nothing to do with the memory used.

Convenience is all that they have to sell and that's where SNDK has the edge. SNDK cards can be used with different brands of cameras, plug easily into PCs, and soon into printers. Meanwhile, Intel offers a commodity solution to compete with this established, premium product. For once the shoe is on the other foot.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Craig