downloading images from D100

Hi Guys,

I am about to buy a powerbook G4 either 15 or 17" with the dvd burner.

I have in the past used a pcmcia adapter with my IBM microdrive to download my RAW files to my laptop and then burn them to CDR.

My question is, should I continue to use the pcmcia adapter with the G4 or should I use a direct cable connection from the camera to the G4 (will this be faster?) using the Nikon Capture software.

Thanks for any advice.

regards

ron

Ron,

PCMCIA transfer is a paralell transfer so it will always be faster than the USB transfer that you could do from the camera.

And also I think it would be a prephered method since you can get your CF card from the camera, set your camera down or somewhere safe and use the CF on your laptop.

Vlad

I use a CF card reader. Direct link from the camera consumes battery power, especially if you don't turn the camera off when it is done transferring.

Hello,

I use a card reader with my Powerbook G4 when downloading from a 100 gig microdrive. It's fairly fast and I don't have to run down the camera batteries. By the way, I just bought the G4 a month ago and I love it so far.

John

Check out the latest news on dpreview.com -- the latest in convenience is to use not a PCMCIA adapter, which is 16-bit, but a Cardbus adapter made by Delkin, which is 32-bit. Theoretical max transfer speed is 132MB/sec, but in practice dpreview timed it at about Firewire reader speed, and about 5x faster than a PCMCIA adapter.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0310/03102103...cardbustest.asp

I have ordered one myself. Not having to deal with the extra bits for a USB or Firewire reader is a plus, though I am not sure whether it will work will (drivers etc) with a Powerbook.

Yeang

I've used a PCMCIA adapter and a 1 gig microdrive in my G4 laptop (1 Ghz 15" titanium), and found it remarkably slow.

The Delkin cardbus adaptor mentioned above is currently nonfunctional with apple laptops (due to lack of driver software :angryfire:) so is not an option right now (it may be eventually).

I would suggest a firewire CF reader, like this one here for $37.60. This way you get good speed, save the camera's batteries, and maybe a bit more stability than with the PCMCIA cards.

(My laptop has only kernel panicked twice, and both times it was after insertion of a PCMCIA card with a microdrive in it).

I use a Lexar FW card reader with my 12" I book. It is very fast. People who watch it download a 1 GB MD are amazed at how fast it is.

I am also a fan of using a firewire ext reader with my battered powerbook - titanium really is a stupid material to make a laptop out of! My Sandisk one is very fast and light.

Fortunately, I have a PC so I can use the new Cardbus PC card reader. It is very fast.

I also carry a cheapie usb 2.0 cf card reader ($11.88 here) as a backup. You never know when something will break, and it's good to have two ways to suck images off of your card.

At home, I used to use a firewire reader. But now that I'm only using a notebook computer, and because of the depressing fact that every PC notebook I know of only has 4-pin firewire, I've had to switch to USB 2.0.

This was announced today:

http://www.digitalfilm.com/dynamic-framese..._10_30_03b.html

I'll get one for sure.

I ve got a D100 and shoot in Raw with 1 gig cards i down load to my G4 15 inch (wish i had gotten the 17 ) i use i fire wire card reader and it takes 7 min or so to down load the card!!

i thought it would be faster than that my self!!!

???? That's only ~1,000/420 = 2.4 megabytes per second. It should be faster than that, shouldn't it?

Cheers

James

titanium really is a stupid material to make a laptop out of!

Speaking as one very battered Tibook owner to another

The Tibook casing material is to titanium as a Ford Focus is to a GT-40...

I/We (the other half of the we being my surgeon wife) handle REAL titanium all the time, with bone plates, orthopedic implants, bone screws etc. It is much stronger, lighter and has a better elastic modulus than the stuff the Tibook is encased in, (which is a titanium alloy of some kind). It is also MUCH more expensive, and a different colour entirely.

Have you broken a monitor hinge yet? That's when the fun really starts. :angryfire:

I think the aluminium powerbooks are a much better idea, certainly the hinge looks a bit more robust.