Fujifilm E550 and xD card questions

Hi all.

The urge has been building to buy a new camera and
I'm starting to fall for the Fuji E550. Light weight,
better than average zoom for a pocket camera,
lots of pixels, standard AA batteries, 640x480
30fps movie mode, and low price are all calling
out to me.

The downer for me is the xD picture card. They look
expensive, non-standard, and my existing card readers
won't read them.

I'm wondering, first of all, do I need a card reader?
I presume I can connect the USB cable directly from
camera to computer to download images. If I do,
do I have to install software on all my computers to
use it? I hate doing that because it means I can
probably only use it under Windows (not Linux),
and who knows what will happen when the next
version of Windows, or the next service pack comes
out. I also find that when you install software you
often get more than you bargained for - like some
kind of spy program that wants to talk back to a
Fuji server or worse, some Fuji subcontractor.
Has anyone noticed such problems?

Even with a card reader, do I need software?
CompactFlash has a standard interface that allows
any computer to read it with a standard CF driver.
I can read my CF cards on Windows XP and on
Linux with no custom drivers.

Is that true with xD?

Finally, any general comments on the E550 would
be appreciated.

Thanks.

Alan

 

I just got a Fuji A330. It too uses xD cards. My card reader won't read
those either. I plugged the camera into the USB port and Windows 2000
detected it as another drive without any drivers needed (like a USB flash
drive).

I think xD is the newest format.and it has been adopted by some
manufactures. Not sure why they can't use the small MMC/SD card. There are
too many types of cards as it is. xD is downright tiny. Perhaps too small.
It will probably last because it allows memory slot to be very small thus
allowing for the smallest device design.
John

 

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:05:48 -0400, "Alan Meyer" <>
wrote:

The xd format is the newest and proportedly one of the fastest storage
media cards. I have a 256 xd in my S5000 and have not had any problem
with connecting via USB. You can pick up a usb xd card reader for
~$15 at various places, if you want to go that route.

 

The urge has been building to buy a new camera and

I picked up a Fuji E510 while in Hawaii a few weeks ago and was introduced
to the xD cards for the first time. Yes, they're a pain, but you can
probably work with it if you really like the camera.

Cost? Yes, they're expensive! Not enough people making & buying them yet
for competition to set in. However, keep your eyes open. In Hawaii, I had
to spend $60 for a 128meg card, the smallest that would render the camera
usable (the 16 meg card it comes with is a joke). But last week I
discovered Fry's had an unadvertised (not in the newspaper) sale of
Olympus-brand 512 meg xD cards for $89. Still a lot more than you'd pay for
a CF equivalent, but relatively affordable.

Someone else mentioned that you can get a CF to xD card reader adapter; if
so, that ought to work fine in your system (although I don't have enough
experience with non-Windoze op systems to know for sure, I suspect that, if
you can read a CF card, you can probably "see" the xD card if in a CF
adapter).

Transfer rates from camera to computer (via the cable) aren't too bad, but I
wouldn't want to have to depend only upon that. I'll be buying an xD card
reader shortly, but it's definitely annoying that, with all the card readers
I already own, none work with xD!

As for the camera itself, I would have considered the E550 except that I
really wanted the 28mm lens (I was in Hawaii, remember?). Supposedly the
E550 starts up even faster than the 510, and the 510 is no slouch. However,
there are some software glitches in the 510 firmware that hopefully aren't
in the 550. Specifically, the so-called "sports" mode isn't working
properly (the manual says it sets the ISO to 200 when in use, but in reality
is uses whatever the prior ISO setting for other modes was), and adjacent
exposures can be radically different when shot under the same conditions.
Something really screwy is showing up; I'll have about the same shot at the
same ISO and maybe one stop different aperture, but the shutter speed will
be 1/320 on one and 1/80 on the next (way more than a one-stop difference).
The readout of the exif file points to something called a "brightness"
setting, which shows a very different number for the two shots. Weird, and
has definitely wrecked a number of photos.

The size is nice, and I particularly like the rectangular shape (seems to
help me hold the camera better, as well as aids in taking it out of the
pocket, ready to go for a quick shot, since you know its orientation).
Battery life is so-so, mainly because you depend upon the LCD (the optical
viewfinder is so small it's nearly useless).

Hope this helps-

--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
IMBA, BikesBelong, NBDA member

 

This may be of interest:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0410/04101303fujif810review.asp