Good buys and bad buys

The bad news; The two cheap Transcend 8GB cards I ordered before Christmas arrived today and, in a nutshell, they don't work with my GX-20. More often than not, especially in burst mode, the images appear in the camera's thumbnail view as question marks and I get the message "The camera cannot display this image". Sometimes it says "The image has not been recorded".

Oddly, all the files are fine when viewed on a computer. I'll keep these cards for music and other less-demanding tasks and stick to Sandisk Extreme IIIs for the camera.

The good news: Many members seem to be on the lookout for a cost-effective solution to scanning negatives and slides. The Kodak P461 Print Scanner (bought from QVC after a few drinks) does a remarkably good job for about £90.

The negative strips are drawn into the device and scanned automatically. It takes about 40 seconds for a strip of four. The images are stored on an SD card, or you can hook the machine up to a computer. The stated resolution of 1,200 dpi doesn't seem much but the files produce 5x7in prints that look to me as good as the original Boots prints, after extrapolation and a little PP in a decent image editor. There are adapters for negatives and mounted slides.

The separate print scanning function, at 300 or 600 dpi, is a handy bonus, but it won't take anything larger than 6x4in, so I'll stick to my flatbed for this. I'm serious surprised and impressed with its negative scanning capabilities.

Al

Sounds promising, is it this one?

It is indeed. Sadly the price had gone up. I bought mine for £88 as a Today's Special Value or whatever they call it. It seems well built. I'll post a couple of images on Flickr later tonight if I get a chance and post a link.

Cheers

Al

I've bought 3 of these over the year, and have all worked great

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400078482363

I recently bought two Transcend 8GB Class 10 SDHC which seem to work well in my K-5 link

I have used Transcend for some years and have had only one duff one. They claim to give a lifetime guarantee but I have never made a claim.

I wonder if Samsung cameras are overly picky about their cards. My Samsung NV5 (a vastly underrated compact) refused to work with a Kingston card that the retailer's "memory finder" insisted would be fine.

Meanwhile, as promised, here are a couple of rough scans from the Kodak P461. The prints are a lot more impressive.link

Al

PS Merry Christmas

Quite right, Smeggy. The colour balance seems to need a bit of a tweak. I've no experience of more sophisticated scanners, but I suspect you always have to manipulate the colour balance to some extent from negative scans. All in all, though, I think I can get the occasional print from this set-up with less effort than I could with a more expensive unit. The chateau photo (with a bit more PP) came out perfectly on paper, which is my main concern. Plus, I'll be damned if I can remember the real colour of the roof tiles.

Al

[quote:3496ace15f="cardiff_gareth"]I noticed in Tesco today they had 4gb TDK class 6 cards for a tenner, are they any good ?[/quote

i am using them in a k r no problems

Same here. I actually use several 16GB Class10 and never had a duff one. The Samsung GX-10 was fine with it as well.
It may be that you need to update the firmware on the Samsung as I know of a couple of people that used to have problems with their GX-10 but after updating to the latest firmware (1.3 as far as I remember, but I may be wrong with the number!) the problem was solved.
However there are a large amount of FAKE Transcend Cards about and that may give them the bad reputation.

Dunno about how good they are, but the price isn't okay but not great. You can get other 'lesser' brands for the similar money for higher capacity, e.g. 8GB Class 10 Duracells for £12, or 8GB Class 10 Transcends for £8: link

That was the message I got as well on a K20D with a Transcend Class 10 8GB.... Lost about 4 important shots through it. Later I made a directory on the card called "RAWS" moved the Raw files into it and it lost the lot.... important stuff as well.... still have the Jpgs. Not using the card anymore.

Ditto: scared me out of my metaphorical pants as I thought it was my K20D that was the problem before calming down and identifying the real cause.

Jon

It's worth remembering that not all SD cards are compatible with all devices.

I use these with no problems.