Tong Family

OMG, just got a notice from J&R that the camera is on its way! Means I had better get my act in gear and get accessories:

• UDMA Compact Flash card. The new cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II, EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS 50D, Nikon D3, D300 and D700 and Sony Alpha DSLR-A900. Waht does it mean. Well, UDMA means faster. non-UDMA cards can go up to 133X (the X refers to the original speed of these flash cards, so it is 133 times faster than that). UDMA cards can go up to 300x or 2.5 times faster than that or in the real world 40MBps. 16GB cards are pretty standard. My Canon EOS-350D takes about 13MB per shot when shooting JPEG and RAW and I get 315 shots on a 4GB card. But the new 5D Mark II takes 32MB at least so a 16GB card should yield on the order of 300 shots plus 10 minutes of HD video. The Canon is strange in that you can only shoot a maximum of 4GB of video or 10 minutes per card. So you need lots of cards at 16GB or so for maximum flexibility. PPMag has a good review of the Lexar card. A 16GB card sets you back $350, so it is expensive, but fast. Pricegrabber shows Lexar makes most of these. Transcend has a card for $150 and A-Data has one for $145 at 350X