Can Panasonic Lumix FZ5 use 2-gig SD card?

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

According to folks in the Panasonic Forum at www.dpreview.com, 2-gig cards
work just fine in the FZ5.

--
Bob Murphy
Marietta, GA


"Walter Dnes (delete the 'z' to get my real address)"
<wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote in message
news:42cea33d$0$42560$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
> I just got my camera couple of weeks ago. I see in the manual a table
> of how many pics, at what resolution, an SD card can hold, depending on
> its size. The table goes up to 1 gigabyte. Is that a hard limit of the
> FZ5, or is it a matter of there weren't any 2-gig SD cards being made
> when the camera was introduced, and the manual was printed? I prefer to
> use the full 5 mega-pixels in TIFF format, and crop or jpeg the image
> after the fact (Gimp under linux). Is anybody successfully using a
> 2-gig SD card on this camera?
>
> I don't have any other electronic gizmos that need an SD card, so I'd
> be wasting money if it won't work. Cameras seem to have proprietary
> quirks with their pseudo-file-systems. Just because FAT16 partitions up
> to 2 gigs work on hard drives, doesn't necessarily imply that they work
> on cameras.
>
> --
> Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org
> Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow
> the instructions at the end of the 550 message.

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 22:38:59 -0700, Mark², <mjmorgan@cox> wrote:

> CF, SD, MMC, and other more recent cards all have the controller
> on-card, which means the device doesn't have to be anything
> special...unless you get over 4GB, which means it has to have a
> firmware that can handle large "disks/cards." FAT32.

I seem to remember the FAT16 maximum being 2 gigs. That should
handle 122 tiff-quality shots at 2560x1920. If you want to do any
editing (other than rotations in exact multiples of 90 degrees), you
will suffer degradation if you start from a jpeg. Better to have an
original "archive copy" tiff, and work with copies of that.

Storing more images would require extra work by Panasonic. I know
that Microsoft's patent on all FAT filesystems has been revoked. But
they might have an argument for a FAT32 patent. Other options are...

- multiple FAT16 partitions of up to 2 gigs each. Not a bad idea.

- file compression. zip is half decent. bzip2 (http://www.bzip.org)
is even better. Here's a comparison with half a dozen tifs, and
zip (max compression, not default) and bzip2 compression results...

[m450][waltdnes][~/camera] ll *.tif *.zip *.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:45 p1000032.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 7840984 Jul 8 13:45 p1000032.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 10581208 Jul 9 21:15 p1000032.tif.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:50 p1000033.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 8429324 Jul 8 13:50 p1000033.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 11166267 Jul 9 21:15 p1000033.tif.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:52 p1000034.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 8071247 Jul 8 13:52 p1000034.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 11255898 Jul 9 21:15 p1000034.tif.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:53 p1000035.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 7405305 Jul 8 13:53 p1000035.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 10536870 Jul 9 21:15 p1000035.tif.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:54 p1000036.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 8015679 Jul 8 13:54 p1000036.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 10958210 Jul 9 21:16 p1000036.tif.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 14761984 Jul 8 13:56 p1000037.tif
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 6353108 Jul 8 13:56 p1000037.tif.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 waltdnes users 9121470 Jul 9 21:16 p1000037.tif.zip

compression programs might be too much of a load on a camera. You'd
need a cpu, a simple operating system, and ram. Probably go through
batteries like crazy, even if it could be done.

--
Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzaltdnes@waltdnes.org
Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow
the instructions at the end of the 550 message.