Friday Format Frustrations

Recently I purchased the Canon FS-100 camcorder as I’ve become interested in trying my hand at a little videography (nothing too fancy, just some home movies for sharing with family and friends, but I admit, the idea has been in my head that the option to record things for the blog might also be of tangential use as well.

When I got the camcorder, I also picked up a SD flash card (2GB) so I could play around with it and test both the recording quality as well as see how the video gets output.  All in all, it wasn’t too bad.  Canon gave some pretty basic software of course, which only output to mpg, but a purchase of Adobe Premiere Elements was in my sights as well too, so the software wasn’t too much of a deal breaker.  I did find that a mere 2 GB card did not give me nearly enough record time if I wanted to keep any kind of quality.  So, I went out and got a great deal on a 16 GB SDHC card from my favorite gear site, Newegg!

Well, I get the card delivered and recorded some video on it (I can record up to 22 hours worth of video now), but when I take the card out to transfer to the computer via my card reader – no dice!  What gives?  It turns out the SDHC card format is incompatible with 1st gen card readers.  Yup, that’s right, you need to replace your card readers with ones that are capable of reading these newer formats (which apparently are configured slightly differently than their earlier SD counterparts).

Here’s the kicker – because I shoot with Canon SLR’s, the flash media type I am most used to is the CF variety, so SD versus SDHC compatibility concerns weren’t high on my list when purchasing a card reader!  Looks like they should have been.  So, if I want to keep all my media accessible on a single card reader, the piper must be paid.  So, (insert special sardonic tone here), special thanks go out to Lexar and Sandisk and Kingston and all the media developers for advancing the media card technology for these higher capacities…they sure are helping you… er us with your… er our needs! (end sardonic tone here).  Oh well, lesson learned and now thusly shared with the reading/listening audience.

In a little bit of blog business, I’ve added a comment feed to the blog for anyone who would like to follow comments, you can see who’s been active (and even see your own name up in lights if you are into that sort of thing!).  A new poll should be coming up some time this morning too:  What’s your role in holiday photography?

To end things for the week on a high note, here’s another one of the weeks greatest clips from What the Duck (and for what it’s worth, this week as really tough to choose as I laughed heartily at all of them):

Happy shooting this weekend!  I hope all your shots are good ones, and we’ll see you back here again on Monday.

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