Help in Canon Digital Camera Powershot A95, IXUS40 or IXUS500

[scramblur11]

Tink for ixus 40/30 to shoot full VGA will need a high speed card...saw it on their brohure leh....den tat time check wif canon, they say a high speed card is the 60x speed one....so guess currently onli the sandisk ultra or extreme SD rite?

no lah tink they dun wan the dealers to gif the free gifts directly to customer is becoz they scared some dealers not honest lor....wat if they dun gif..or they gif cheaper stuff??... alot of shops sure like tat one lor....

 

[jc777]

well, the free gift is given by canon and they want people to go down there to redeem, what can we do? vote with our money and buy other brands?

yah, free card so cant expect much. but i just want to confirm that it is due to the slow speed of the free kingston SD card and not the camera. malcolm, did you buy your ixus 40 recently? did you get the free 128MB SD also? any problem with recording at 640, 30fps like mine?

 

[nathelynn]

Hi, Can anyone tell me which shop is selling IXUS 40 at the best price in the market?

Cheers...

 

[Malcolmneo]

Sorry I got mine in japan. So not eligible for the feebies. So better ask other members who got it here.

But sure no need 60x speed. My 45x transcend can work already. Even regular sandisk also can.

Because I work in electronic line and just happen to have contact with P******** ppl in japan, there are actually only 3 official speed for SD cards now. For 128M and below, it is only 2MBps. For 256MB and above, it is 10MBps. Then there is the latest standard at 20MBps which applies to 512MB and above. This is the industry standard now.

Previously all at 2MBps only. That is why there are still regular speed cards from sandisk and other makers at 1GB also. There is nothing to stop them from making it though the understanding is it should be 10MBps. There is no 'policeman' so to speak. Where there is demand, there will be supply.

But some manufacturer like Transcend and others introduce 30x, 45x, 60x etc. The standard 1x speed is 150KBps, same as CD speed. They think that current eqpt no need 10MBps cards so can offer at lower price. But even for regular speed card, some manufacturers are rumoured to use high-speed chips from time to time where situation deems fit, like when there is large order for high-speed card and small order for regular-speed card thus cheaper to order high-speed chips for all.

And then not all regular speed cards are born equal. Sandisk cards hve been proven to be faster than other regular speed cards, like Kingston for eg.

This is all very confusing. I write also got blur.

Do you also realised XD card do not have different speed rating? That is because the intial version already can go to about 5MBps, which can suppport VGA full-rate movie, etc. That is why it is comparatively more expensive than regular SD cards. Partly also because used by Fujifilm and Olympus only lah.

The speed for VGA movie in IXUS40 should be only about 2 to 3 MBps, that is why regular sandisk can support while other regular cards fail. But if you do a test to transfer files using card readers, regular sandisk cards will perform slower than high-speed brothers like ultra 2 and 3. It is only coincidence and lucky that it could be used for IXUS40.

Anyway, hope this is not too chim for all of you. Hope you have better idea on the SD cards.

 

[sin77]

well, the free gift is given by canon and they want people to go down there to redeem, what can we do? vote with our money and buy other brands?

yah, free card so cant expect much. but i just want to confirm that it is due to the slow speed of the free kingston SD card and not the camera. malcolm, did you buy your ixus 40 recently? did you get the free 128MB SD also? any problem with recording at 640, 30fps like mine?

I am using the IXUS 30. The canon centre at harbourfront gave me the standard freebies which included the 128MB SD card. The brand is Lexar and it can record 640@30fps for 40+secs. My Kingston 512MB card can only record for 20 secs like u said much earlier.

So we can conclude that we need a higher speed card and which Kingston card isnt.
But I'm also peculiar why they gave u a Kingston while mine is a Lexar.
Anyway, most of the time i would set it at 320@30fps for longer shoot.
Btw it consumes alot of memory for video recording, thus i seldom use this function.
For me I have 1x 512MB and 2x 128MB.
Thus total is 768MB

If u dont mind, I think its better for both of us to keep in contact so that we can exchange pointers for our IXUS camera. You can pm me to exchange MSN messenger contact.
Btw, our new IXUS are so damn small that it becomes very unstable on hands during shoot. I applied alot of techniques to get it stable.

 

[jc777]

hi malcolm, great piece of information you have for us digicam users who wanna take VGA videos with our camera (esp ixus). we will know what to look out when sourcing out for SD cards. i am currently looking at kingmax platinum 512MB SD card, any user of kingmax platinum card can verify the speed of the card?

what??? canon give lexar to you, but kingston to me? dunno what are they doing here. but it is freebies, what more can i ask for? hope to get a faster speed card that can take the write speed of the video recording.

 

[scramblur11]

hi malcolm, great piece of information you have for us digicam users who wanna take VGA videos with our camera (esp ixus). we will know what to look out when sourcing out for SD cards. i am currently looking at kingmax platinum 512MB SD card, any user of kingmax platinum card can verify the speed of the card?

what??? canon give lexar to you, but kingston to me? dunno what are they doing here. but it is freebies, what more can i ask for? hope to get a faster speed card that can take the write speed of the video recording.[/QUOTE

tink the brand of card they gif to u depend on stock availability....tat time I collect the memory card for my A95 is Sandisk...but later my frenz go there after 1 wk to collect is kingston....so my frenz check with the staff there they say depend on stocks

so nw we know lexar card slightly faster than kingston?...price diff nt much rite?..

 

[Venom81]

I got a Lexar 128mb for my A85 a few weeks ago.

 

[Malcolmneo]

If you are interested in shooting video with IXUS40, I would suggest you download the trial version of Divx software from www.divx.com which will last for 30days(?). What is good is the divx engine from the download. It will allow you to compress the video to about 1/9 the original size.

First you install the Divx software, but you will not need to use the Doctor Divx software. The Canon bundled Arcsoft VideoImpression2 is a much much better and user-friendly tool, because you can do photo and video editing.

You can combine photos and short video clips into the software, with simple titles and various effects between the items. When you want to combine all the items to produce a single animated vacation album or event album, go to the 'Produce' segment. Under the 'Video type', select the 'Microsoft AVI file'. Then select the 'setting' which will take some time. Then click on the 'Compression' icon to access the 'Divx 5.2.1 Codec'. Then select 'Frame Size' at whatever setting you have for the video clips. If you have not installed the Divx codec, the original microsoft compression codec will be used and your final file size will be a few times bigger than the original one!

The VideoImpression2 is a very fun tool to use and can work for any video source. Some more free one.

It will be good to use the camera during the coming festive occasion and produce your very own animated album.

I highlight this because it was already paid for. Not use very sayang.

 

[sin77]

If you are interested in shooting video with IXUS40, I would suggest you download the trial version of Divx software from www.divx.com which will last for 30days(?). What is good is the divx engine from the download. It will allow you to compress the video to about 1/9 the original size.

First you install the Divx software, but you will not need to use the Doctor Divx software. The Canon bundled Arcsoft VideoImpression2 is a much much better and user-friendly tool, because you can do photo and video editing.

You can combine photos and short video clips into the software, with simple titles and various effects between the items. When you want to combine all the items to produce a single animated vacation album or event album, go to the 'Produce' segment. Under the 'Video type', select the 'Microsoft AVI file'. Then select the 'setting' which will take some time. Then click on the 'Compression' icon to access the 'Divx 5.2.1 Codec'. Then select 'Frame Size' at whatever setting you have for the video clips. If you have not installed the Divx codec, the original microsoft compression codec will be used and your final file size will be a few times bigger than the original one!

The VideoImpression2 is a very fun tool to use and can work for any video source. Some more free one.

It will be good to use the camera during the coming festive occasion and produce your very own animated album.

I highlight this because it was already paid for. Not use very sayang.

agree with u that it will go to waste if dont use the software.
I tried it out yesterday...very user friendly.
I converted the video into vcd.
I didnt know can use divx codec...thanks.
But if want to watch on vcd player cannot liao

 

[Malcolmneo]

The Divx conversion is very good if you intend to share your video over the internet as it greatly reduce the file size.

But if intention is to view it using VCD player, then VCD format is the natrual choice.

The downside in using Divx is slight deterioration in video quality; but still acceptable lah.

Divx is very hot nowadays. Good to try for fun.

 

[Malcolmneo]

Very often we are faced with this question of how often we should re-format our media cards (CD, CF, XD, etc). Or what is the consequence if we choose to re-format as opposed to 'Erase ALL' operation, if any. Re-format generally takes only a few seconds while 'Erase ALL' take much longer, depending on what you have in the cards. Some experienced ppl will also try to educate you on how you should deal with the cards, most of the time dishing out wrong info.

As I happen to know a bit about this, I will try to dispel the myth relating to this. Try to finish this article as it will help you understand what you are doing with the media cards.

Firstly, all of the memory media cards (SD, CF, XD, etc) essentially consists of a memory controller and memory arrays. The memory arrays are mainly blocks of NAND Flash memory chips. Each memory chip will consists of many memory cells. There are 3 main NAND Flash memory chip makers nowadays, 2 of them being Samsung and Toshiba, that supply most of the NAND chips for whole world.

One of the important parameters for NAND Flash is its lifespan - 100K typical (also called write cycle). This means each of the cells can be re-written for 100K times theoretically. The number of cells corresponds to the total capacity of the card.

When we take a picture, it is stored into the memory cells. Meaning its write cycle for the cells containing the picture are reduced by one.

Re-formatting will just change the header info on the FAT system which decides the data allocation on the card (much like hard-disk), without physically touching the memory array. The device is just fooled into believing there is no data on the card, while the data is actually still there. Subsequent pictures will just be written into the first memoryl ocation. That is why it is much faster than erasing.

'Erasing ALL' involves writting a default value into all the locations affected, which takes longer time and reduce their lifespan by one. A new picture will subsequently be written into the beginning block of the memory array.

So it will be good practice to not reformat constantly, but rather let the memory content be filled up to spread the write cycle to all the memory cells in the cards. Especially for a high-capacity card. Reformatting will definitely do more damage than erasing all, although it is of one less write cycle than the erase all operation. It will stress out all the cells in the starting blocks. It will be of better practice to just erase the undesired picture if you are very concern about lifespan of your cards.

But this should not be a major concern though. If you do operations that affect the same memory cell 20 times a day (reformat and take picture), your card will theoretically still be ok for 100K/20/365, 13.7 years that is. You don't expect it to last that long, right?

And most of the camera firmware are/should be intelligent enough to spread the write destinations to various segments in the cards to prolong its lifespan. But nobody can be sure of this, isn't it? This is just a logical thing for designers.

CONCLUSIONS:

1. Better not re-format too often except when it is a new card, or it has not been used for long time.


2. Better to erase unwanted pictures and let the memory fill-up to prevent shortening of lifespan to the first blocks of memory in any memory cards. To spread the damage to the whole card, so to speak.

3. Worst is to erase all. All the memory cells that store the unwanted pictures will have their lifespan reduced by one, plus the starting memory blocks will get another chance of their lifespan to be reduced again.

4. If you write to the same memory cell 20 times day, the card will last you for 13.7 years theoretically.

Hope this article does not give you a phobia when you next re-format your cards.

And you can handle your cards with confidence!

 

[Malcolmneo]

Good day...This probably one of the last long article I will put here.

There was a debate on the lifespan on other forum and the following was a direct reply:

technicsplayer wrote:
> you underestimate specs, san disk is 41 years for 20 formats a day
> - for ultra 2 it would be 274 years. These are MINIMUM specs.
> most users will be dead before their cards wear out through write
> cycles

The figures does not stand because the test condition is not stated, most important being the card size used.

I have put up the following reply as my initial posting did not cover in sufficient detail. So sit back and enjoy...

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ALL the flash card (SD, CF, XD, etc) makers could have their own propietary memory controllers. But they get their memory core, the NAND flash memory, almost from one of the 3 large NAND memeory makers I mentioned previously. They can monopolise because they could do it economically and superior technology. The card makers could even be using memory controllers from them, thus relegating themselves to OEM of sorts. But they will not tell you. Unless you are generous enough to buy cards and cut open them to satisfy your curiosity.

I personally have been using Toshiba and Samasung NAND flash memory chips and it is clear from their technical documents its write-cycle is 100K typical.

The lifespan calculation I put for 20 times a day is as follow:
100000/365/20 = 13.7years. Operation = re-format and take afew pictures, then repeat the cycle.

This is valid because of re-formating which cause the initial part of the memory arrary to be re-written 20 times a day. The memory cell there will fail after 13.7 years. This is regardless of card capacity.

But if you do not re-format, your card could last much longer. Assume you have a 1GB card. If you continue to fill the cards with pictures, each picture about 2MB size, to fill up each card =500 times without sequential shooting. After that you reformat to 'flush' the content since it is easier than 'Erase ALL' and less harmful. This means shooting 500 times will reduce the 100K write cycle by 1 only since only then the same memory cell will be accessed.
In that case, your 1GB card can be used for 13.7years x500= almost infinity.
By the same token, your card will last shorter if you use sequential shooting because each card will take less than 500 times to fill up, with same condition.

With regard to Sandisk Ultra 2, or 3 for that matter, lasting 6 times longer than regular Sandisk, it is utterly un-believable. Sandisk regular or Ultra 2 both uses NAND flash chips only with different speed rating but their technology is the same. Only that Ultra 2 has better environmental protection for it to have more dynamic climatic and rough usage. Speed has nothing to do with lifespan.

My explnation is solely based on technical understnding and not hearsay or rumour. Of course I will be more than happy if somebody could prove me wrong by furbishing some technical documents from some reliable source other than aunty advices from some sites.

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[Nika]

Hi...

I am considering the A95 too.. but i need to know if the effects underwater..
And does anyone knows how much cheaper can the underwater housing go??

My budget is 900 plue u/w housing leh...