SmartMedia troubles, looking for advice

[iceicemushie]

Hi there. A year and a half ago I was given as a gift an Olympus C-4000 and a 128 MB SmartMedia card. I understand SM is going extinct because o the new SD technology.

The main problem is that whenever I set my camera to take 4.0 mp pictures, the SmartMedia card is outrageously slow. As I toggle through pictures on my LCD when using the camera, it takes quite a while to move from picture to picture.

Are there any faster SmartMedia card brands? I have a 128mb SimpleTech sm card. I am not looking for more space, but for speed. Am I doomed to be stuck with this problem as long as I have this same camera? The slowness really inhibits my ability to take advantage of the C-4000's 4.0 capability.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Rhys]

It could just be a slow card. Try buying some of the other brands of 128mb card. They're cheap enough now to buy a couple of dozen.

[kgosden]

Faster brands SmartMedia? Short answer - no. I have about 12 different brands and they are all the same as far as I can tell in the 4 different Olympus cameras I have owned. To the best of my knowledge only two factories ever made SM cards and the technology was pretty restrictive in terms of the performance specs at the time. The controller circuits are in the camera, not in the card as in Compact Flash. This really limited the perfromance differences. The same is true of SD cards today EXCEPT that with larger capacities a variety of different addressing schemes have been developed.

One thing you do not say is what format you are using to store your images. I have no major complaints about the review speed of either my C-3030Z or C-5050Z, but they are not as fast as some other brands. I have always used the SHQ jpeg setting. I have never tried TIFF, but I bet that the review mode for TIFF is much slower. as the amount of data in the file is much greater per picture.

[iceicemushie]

i too store my pictures on the hq mode as well. ::sigh:: It just stinks because I was counting on this camera for the longterm (well at least a little longer than a year) but the smart media issue is really annoying. i wonder what an olympus c-4000 would go for these days. It is 4.0 mp and in great condition, but who wants a smart media camera?

[Rhys]

i too store my pictures on the hq mode as well. ::sigh:: It just stinks because I was counting on this camera for the longterm (well at least a little longer than a year) but the smart media issue is really annoying. i wonder what an olympus c-4000 would go for these days. It is 4.0 mp and in great condition, but who wants a smart media camera?

If you can put up with the slow recording speed you have a great little camera. Incidentally, how slow is it? I remember my Olympus C-820L took 8 seconds to save an image to smart media.

My Nikon 3100 seemed to take a second or so to save to Compact Flash. My Nikon 995 did it at about the same speed as far as I can remember. My Canon S1 IS does it in less time.

Unless you have a need to take pictures in rapid sucession, I think a couple of seconds shouldn't be that much of a problem. Besides, think how cheap Smart Media is at the moment.