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Eug · Jan 4, 2003, 12:57 AM

This is taken from a post in another unrelated thread. I thought you might be interested:

Canon G2 camera with Ridata 256 MB CF card. Total 243.9 MB, 127 pictures ranging in size from 92 KB (small JPG files) to 2.8 MB (4 Megapixel .RAW files).

USB (camera cable): 481 s = 0.51 MB/s
PCMCIA (Kingston CF adapter): 152 s = 1.6 MB/s
Firewire (Lexar media reader): 107 s = 2.3 MB/s

ie. 8 minutes with USB vs. 1 minute & 47 seconds with Firewire.
Thus, even with the inherently slow CompactFlash, Firewire is 4.5 times as fast as USB on my setup.

I do buy higher end CF cards though, which are faster than the cheap ones.

The other thing is that with the camera I have to deal with Image Capture. With Firewire or PCMCIA I just get a drive popping up on my OS X desktop. Ie. No download software - just the Finder.

The other minor consideration is that with Image Capture I lose all the .THM thumbnail files that are created by the camera for .RAW uncompressed image files. These thumbnail files are used in Canon's File Viewer Utility to speed up viewing.

MickS · Jan 4, 2003, 04:24 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
The other thing is that with the camera I have to deal with Image Capture. With Firewire or PCMCIA I just get a drive popping up on my OS X desktop. Ie. No download software - just the Finder.

You also have to remember to stop the camera going to sleep

I've got the same camera and use a PC Card adapter (Lexmark). I don't use anything else in the PC Card slot so can just leave the adapter in there. Save's me carrying anything else around.

Eug · Jan 4, 2003, 11:30 PM

Originally posted by MickS:
You also have to remember to stop the camera going to sleep

Yeah good point. If I don't remember to do that it will sleep half way thru the transfer. Very irritating.

G4ME · Jan 5, 2003, 12:13 AM

when i got my Canon S330 it wasn't supported in the finder or iphoto, so i bought that Lexar CF FW reader and used it to pull of my 2 MP pics, about a meg each. and i got great speed.

But now that Canon reased their Image Browser that supports my camer, it pulls the pics, and the thumb nails, and the app it self is 100 times better then iPhoto, dons't crash, and no lag what so ever. But the only thing with ImageBrowser is the fact that it won't reconize my CF FW reader, so i am back to using the USB cable and my camera, its no big deal, if i have to pull 200 some odd pics off my 256 MB kingston CF i will pop it into my CF FW reader, but that is very rarely so now it just sits there and i am 40 bucks poorer.

oh well who said you can never have to many peripherals?

Eug · Jan 5, 2003, 01:50 AM

Originally posted by G4ME:
when i got my Canon S330 it wasn't supported in the finder or iphoto, so i bought that Lexar CF FW reader and used it to pull of my 2 MP pics, about a meg each. and i got great speed.

But now that Canon reased their Image Browser that supports my camer, it pulls the pics, and the thumb nails, and the app it self is 100 times better then iPhoto, dons't crash, and no lag what so ever. But the only thing with ImageBrowser is the fact that it won't reconize my CF FW reader, so i am back to using the USB cable and my camera, its no big deal, if i have to pull 200 some odd pics off my 256 MB kingston CF i will pop it into my CF FW reader, but that is very rarely so now it just sits there and i am 40 bucks poorer.

oh well who said you can never have to many peripherals?

The Canon File Viewer Utility will read directories off the hard drive.

G4ME · Jan 5, 2003, 10:29 AM

will it still grab the thumbnails?

Socially Awkward Solo · Jan 5, 2003, 11:52 AM

Camera's can go to sleep while downloading the picts????

I have never had that happen. Do all brands do that?

spiky_dog · Jan 5, 2003, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by G4ME:
when i got my Canon S330 it wasn't supported in the finder or iphoto, so i bought that Lexar CF FW reader and used it to pull of my 2 MP pics, about a meg each. and i got great speed.

But now that Canon reased their Image Browser that supports my camer, it pulls the pics, and the thumb nails, and the app it self is 100 times better then iPhoto, dons't crash, and no lag what so ever. But the only thing with ImageBrowser is the fact that it won't reconize my CF FW reader, so i am back to using the USB cable and my camera, its no big deal, if i have to pull 200 some odd pics off my 256 MB kingston CF i will pop it into my CF FW reader, but that is very rarely so now it just sits there and i am 40 bucks poorer.

oh well who said you can never have to many peripherals?

wow, that's a lame move on canon's part. i too use a fw compactflash reader, but haven't tried it with the new file browser yet. given your story, what i plan to do is to set up image capture to download to a folder, then manually launch file browser (or, if image capture supports it, run an applescript that launches file browser) to convert. at least it's one step easier than before... oh wait, image capture doesn't do anything with .crw files, does it?

back to square one.

Eug · Jan 5, 2003, 05:42 PM

Originally posted by Socially Awkward Solo:
Camera's can go to sleep while downloading the picts????

I have never had that happen. Do all brands do that?

I dunno which brands do that. Canon does for sure, and I think my Kodak did too but I don't remember for sure. Also it depends on how much you're downloading. Usually the cameras don't shut off for several minutes, enough time to download a 64 MB card. (I have a 256 MB card which I sometimes will fill up.)

Originally posted by G4ME:
will it still grab the thumbnails?

I believe it does use the thumbnails. ie. Drag the CF card's folder to the hard drive and view the files from there with the File viewer utility.

wow, that's a lame move on canon's part. i too use a fw compactflash reader, but haven't tried it with the new file browser yet. given your story, what i plan to do is to set up image capture to download to a folder, then manually launch file browser (or, if image capture supports it, run an applescript that launches file browser) to convert. at least it's one step easier than before... oh wait, image capture doesn't do anything with .crw files, does it? back to square one.

Why is that lame? They wrote a full image browser for OS X which is quite fast and nice. And it's free.

neilw · Jan 6, 2003, 01:13 PM

MickS wrote:

I've got the same camera and use a PC Card adapter (Lexmark). I don't use anything else in the PC Card slot so can just leave the adapter in there. Save's me carrying anything else around.

Does this mean you can hot plug/unplug a CF card into the PC card adapter while the latter is plugged into a powered-up TiBook? Or does the adapter need to be out when swappin the flash card? I've never really used PC cards before (my TiBook's slot is sitting empty), and am unfamiliar with their hot-pluggability (or lack thereof.)

Also: is a USB CF reader faster than going straight from the camera? I've read that it is, though it obviously can't match either the given PC card or Firewire performance which is faster than USB's max speed.

Eug · Jan 6, 2003, 01:25 PM

You'd have to take the entire PC Card out. Once the PCMCIA card with CF card is installed, the entire combo is inside the TiBook. ie. You wouldn't be able to remove just the CF card even if you wanted to. You need to use the lever/button on the side of the port to push the entire PCMCIA card.

I didn't have a USB reader handy so I can't comment on the comparative speeds.