Coin photography question.....

wam98

with digital cameras, can the CF Memory card be used forever by formatting them, or do they wear and lose quality after a lot of use ?

airplanenut

Should work forever, so far as I know... and I do recommend formatting after you're done using it each time (when the pics are on your computer)--it will run much more smoothly, and cleanly delete everything.

Jeremy

Russ

I've formatted the Smart Media card I use literally hundreds of times.

Russ, NCNE

Aethelred

My Nikon uses Compact Flash and I have formatted the cards hundreds if not thousands of times without the slightest problem. The same was true when I used a camera that worked with Smart Media.

tsacch

It should last a realy long time, nice answer.....how long, dont know.......keep away from magnets and electrical junk and you should have years of faithful service.

robertpr

I don't really think you need to keep reformatting the card. No, they don't last forever, so if you live to be 30,000 years old the card may start to wear out. Barring that, however, you should be able to use it without any degradation of quality for at least the duration of your lifetime.

nwcs

A CF card will not lose quality because it is using solid state memory. However, it is still succeptible to damage and poor handling.

CarlWohlforth

A couple years ago I worked with a tech start up building a product that used flash memory. There was a limited amount of times you could write to that memory so we made sure to use the memory evenly. I think you could write to it a few million times so that should be just about forever for cameras

mgoodm3

I just erase and move on. Works the same for me. Only formatted once.

cosmicdebris

Format? Why?

airplanenut

<< <i>Format? Why? >>

If nothing else, it's faster... I don't feel like looking up a way (if it's there) to delete lots of images at once, as opposed to singly... I can just format when my pics are on my computer and move on.

Jeremy

mgoodm3

The easiest way for me to delete images is through windows explorer. I hook the camera up to the USB port without any extra software and the computer sees the card as an extra disk drive. Easy to erase direct from the computer.

nwcs

<< <i>The easiest way for me to delete images is through windows explorer. I hook the camera up to the USB port without any extra software and the computer sees the card as an extra disk drive. Easy to erase direct from the computer. >>

Ditto, I always move off of the card using explorer rather than using the camera software.