From: "John Hartog" <>
>
> Lang,
> I have been using a PMD 670 for a little more than a year and I
> like it pretty well, but one thing worth considering is the price of
> compact flash memory. Even with prices dropping, If you plan on
> being away from your home without a computer for very long then
> the memory costs can pile up - figure about $60 a GB at todays
> prices.
> For me I spent about $700 for the Pmd 670 and then spent
> about $400 more on CF cards over the last year.
> I went on a week long trip last fall and I ran short of memory after
> only three days. For the rest of the trip I ran it in rec. pause and
> line out to a consumer minidisc recorder.
> And I still need more memory, so for all this money I could have
> bought a Portadisc with quieter pres and more gain.
I hate to say I told you so, but that was one of the first negatives I
pointed out for CF recorders. I was told that the cards would be dirt
cheap. Pretty expensive dirt.
I've had to get into buying CF cards, though not as someone bet me for
audio. My new digital uses them. Since it can shoot a whole cardfull of
shots only primarily limited by card speed/buffer size as to how
frequently, I've been buying the top level high speed cards. A gig is
about $100, even off ebay. I've three cards now, may get a 4th one
before the trip.
As for audio, on top of using a disk that costs less than $2, when I
fill it up my first leg of my permanent archive of the recordings is
already complete, the MD is the archive. With CF you have to get it into
your computer and then record it onto something archival.
A added cost for a long trip is a method of archiving on the fly from
the CF cards. That's going to add several hundred dollars to the cost in
the case of my camera. That's for a HD catchall to act as intermediary
and image viewer for stuff no longer on the cards. So I can limit how
often I have to fire up the laptop. I'll also have along my usual
optical disk drive so I can record to archival media periodically. None
of this is new, my previous digital had to be backed up on long trips.
But with the new one it's more than 5 times the disk space needed. And
the media for the camera has changed.
Walt
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