36 out of 37 people found this review helpful.
Photo Packing Power
Date of Review: Jan 22, 2001
The Bottom Line: Small card for all your digital photo capturing and storage.
With my Kodak DC3200 digital camera I received a 4 MB Compact Flash Card. It is sufficient for everyday photos that I intend to upload to the computer, or print to save.
However, for a day's worth of photo taking on holidays or vacations, the 4 MB wouldn't come close to doing the job. I was able to store 12 highest quality photos before I had to delete some.
I purchased a 20 MB Compact Flash Card from the Kodak.com website at a holiday sale price of $39.99. It will hold up 120 photos depending on the quality you take them at. At highest quality I can get 60 photos on the card. That will be enough for any special holiday photo spree.
The photo cards are tiny, about the size of a very flat matchbox. They fit into the camera slot only one way, with the "pins" slipping into the proper receptacles in the camera. As for storage, the cards are so small they fit in your pocket, in a camera case, and in special "albums" made for them.
Cards are available in increments of 4, 8, 16, 20, 32, 48, 64, 96, 128, and increasing amounts. 20 MB cards are not available very many places, I just happen to find this one.
There are different manufacturers of the cards. My two cards, the 4 and the 20, are both Kodak. Sandisk and Lexar make the cards also. They are easily found at any store that carries digital cameras. My thought is it won't be long before they will be easily found anywhere film can be purchased.
Some printers will directly print from the Compact Flash Cards. My printer will. It is a Kodak Picture Maker.(I have written an Epinion about it.) The card just inserts into a slot on top of the printer and you can print your photos without having to upload to computer. You can actually be printing just a few minutes from actually taking your photo.
I purchased a Picture Launch from Kodak.com. This is a USB device to transfer digital photos from a Compact Flash Card to the computer. You can find many different types of the transfer devices. I had bought another one that I returned because it was a serial port transfer. I wanted to use an USB port. I am very happy with transferring the photos using this device. They transfer extremely fast.
I am very glad I purchased a camera that utilizes the Compact Flash Cards for photo taking and storage. With such small cards that are capable of nearly unlimited capacity depending on the megabytes, how could a person go wrong? Hopefully, as they become more widely used, the price will go down.
