I noticed that sometimes my 16MB Fuji Smartmedia card takes significantly longer to store pictures after I have filled the card up a bit. (I am using a Fuji 4700)

1) Will upgrading to a Lexar or Sandisk card remedy this?

I also noticed that Lexar makes no revolutionary speed claims about its Smartmedia cards like it does its compact flash cards.

2) Is it becaues they're all the same?

thanks in advance!

-- ted ching (aznm3speed@aol.com), May 01, 2000

Answers

The controller for Compact Flash is in the card. The controller for smartmedia is in the camera, so I don't think different cards are any faster!

-- Ralph (REObert@aol.com), May 01, 2000.

Ralph's right, there are no speed differences between SmartMedia. In your case, I wonder if it's an issue with the card being filled up, or if you're just shooting rapidly and have overrun the camera's buffer memory. Most digicams these days have a RAM "buffer" memory that can accept data quickly before it's written to the memory card. Once that's filled up, your cycle time (shot to shot time) increases dramatically. Waiting 30 seconds or so for the buffer to empty will restore the faster performance...

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), May 04, 2000.