MS Pro slot nonsense

[Javelin]

This is not the point. The real rub is MS hurts sony in the long run. I have many SD cards, for many devices, including a few compacts etc. I won't be buying a sony compact, any time soo, not because they are not decent (IMO they are improved of late, and some are pretty good), but when I have loads of SD cards lying about, why would I bother with "yet another memory card format" ??? I am not the only one who feels this, instantly sony are cashed out of it, on that basis alone. Not clever.

The same argument works in sony's favour if you already have memory sticks I guess you could decide not to by a Canon becuase you already have a few MS ... or maybe all your cases say Sony on them. oh and don't forget your strap might already have sony written on it. better not shop Canon .. doesn't matter how good the canon is. How did you ever buy your KM with all those SD cards you have?


Nobody, even Javelin, can dispute the plain and simple fact, that only 2 formats have widespread acceptance from makers. CF, and SD.

Except it's not a fact. For 2007 131 million Digitals were sold. 7.5 million of them were DSLRs (that take CF). Sony sold 20 Million units that take MS... the rest take SD for the most part .. so lets break it out of the numbers roughly


104M units SD/MMC/XD ect
20M unit take MS
7.5M units take CF

You call that a mistake? Sony gets paid on every MS sold. the camera makers don't get a dime from CF/SD and the rest. and this is just cameras. it's the same story on all other devices except CF has no showing outside of DSLR's so Sorry but CF usage is not nearly wide spread. across all consumer electronics is't barely a blip on a graph. Somebodies convinced you that MS is bad for consumers. can't you see that your investment in CF could very well be money down the drain in the near future?


And it is unfortunate that sony have this horrible history with proprietary formats..and they are unable to see the wood for the trees. It's a consumer turn off, putting it mildly.

Sure it is if it's sold as a negative but theres even stronger argument that it's a positive for consumers. And what horrible history would you be refering to? Your not going to trot out Betamax are you ?


Look at the ATRAC format, it was doomed to failure..MP3 is universal, hell even WMA has strong support (though not as good as MP3)
Sometimes you have to call it as it is, corporate madness at it's worst. And don't even start me off on the lithium battery situation Woo I really like the Infolitium argument! We can include all the horrible accidents from litium batteries. maimed limbs and 3rd degree burns add even more passion to the argument!

[Javelin]

The next one will have 2 MS slots.. and maybe with that huge CF slot gone therell be room for another battery! <----thats a joke Barry...

Maybe someone could shed light on the "dumb slot" concept. I doubt it's patent based.
That kinda kills the appeal even more.

I have a great idea, how about 2 CF slots? Ooops, there I am using logic again
You could say for the A700 that the MS slot is better than nothing, but A900, top dog flaghsip..not so easy. Never mind Nikon, they wanted to not hurt the D3 so much, this is sony's pro beast.

[Ian C]

Just thought I would add.... I take pictures as a hobby at the moment (I'm definitely no PRO!) and use the Memory Stick Duos in a Compact Flash adapter that came with my a100 and have found it to be fine for me... it does the job.... I have a PSP and a PS3.... the PS3 has CF, SD and MS slots built in so you can view HD slideshows from just about any digital camera. All of my friends have some form of MS be it Pro or the smaller Duo type, none of them have CF cards. It seems to me that sony is clearly trying to appeal to a wider market... and why not? I think the MS format compares well price wise to CF and they take up less space. At the end of the day.... if it has BOTH..... then thats a bonus.

Every time I read DPreview Opinions/Reviews I find myself getting frustrated because their attitude to Sony seems unfair and biased in their reviews with un-necessary put-downs... but if its Canon...... EVERYTHINGS a plus! Not sure if its just me!

The a900 review seemed fair enough..... but its those kinda diggs that David pointed out that really frustrates me.

Besides, I strongly believe that a bad workman always blames his tools. The a900 seems to me like an entirely different class of camera that (in the right hands) is capable of far far better results that what DPreview forced.

I think of it like a movie review at the end of the day, each to their own

[Javelin]

Theres lots of devices that take memory stick Barry and like minded people don't like the fact that they happen to be all Sony devices. Barrys points are mostly all correct from a certain point of view except that CF cards don't factor at all outside of the DSLR business and I think because of the shortcommings of CF there will be very soon better options for DSLR manufacturers. we've already seen CF get chased out of every other place they were used (my dead ones used to record programming for the PLCs we used in our machinery.. it's a dirty business and CF's don't hold up well in the field. previously they were recorded on cassette tapes!!! now everything is done from PC's). It's only a matter of time. it would be great for us if manufacturers picked up MS but I don't expect this to happen unless the other formats become a liability in some way. Which is fine, MS will still be worth having around just because of the volume of products that use it and the fact that the devices that read them are a lot more wide spread than for CF. I just put my new 8g card in the camera and put my 4g's in the holder on the strap I got from David (thats pretty slick) and with the 8G card I can get 15 shots at 5fps in a row before the buffer runs out. thats more than I need so I don't have to risk getting a CF card even for the extra speed it offers... by the time the first 5 frames are gone the bird/racecar/ dog/ running kid are already gone. I have a 2g CF card in the CF slot to keep dust and critters out.

For whatever reason DPR started showing bias when the SLR type cameras came out. .. maybe not bias but a clear preferance probably just because they are all very experienced Photogs and favour their usuall gear so it shows in their reviews.. that doesn't however explain the outright dripping hate that shows in some of the more recent reviews from the newer reviewers which shows as these silly cheap shots. before the SLR types came out Sony was often the darling of the reviews on DPR. in fact I posted once before thaty Sony is the only camera to get 2 HR's in the same review. Every time Canon came out with a few HR cameras in a cycle Sony was right there with 1 or 2 that trumped them which of course drove the Canon zealots to drooling *insult warning* explosions in the forums. So no it's not just you.. Canon recently got an HR on a camera where the whole review complained of bad focusing. metering modes that didn't work at all. the obligatory bad whitebalance in tungsten ect which are all pretty fundamental poroblems but were not reflected in the final score. My feeling is the reviews are good but the final conclusion is written to placate whoever they need to, under their new bosses. Sort of playing both sides of the fence.

Just thought I would add.... I take pictures as a hobby at the moment (I'm definitely no PRO!) and use the Memory Stick Duos in a Compact Flash adapter that came with my a100 and have found it to be fine for me... it does the job.... I have a PSP and a PS3.... the PS3 has CF, SD and MS slots built in so you can view HD slideshows from just about any digital camera. All of my friends have some form of MS be it Pro or the smaller Duo type, none of them have CF cards. It seems to me that sony is clearly trying to appeal to a wider market... and why not? I think the MS format compares well price wise to CF and they take up less space. At the end of the day.... if it has BOTH..... then thats a bonus.

Every time I read DPreview Opinions/Reviews I find myself getting frustrated because their attitude to Sony seems unfair and biased in their reviews with un-necessary put-downs... but if its Canon...... EVERYTHINGS a plus! Not sure if its just me!

The a900 review seemed fair enough..... but its those kinda diggs that David pointed out that really frustrates me.

Besides, I strongly believe that a bad workman always blames his tools. The a900 seems to me like an entirely different class of camera that (in the right hands) is capable of far far better results that what DPreview forced.

I think of it like a movie review at the end of the day, each to their own

[KevinBarrett]

Having studied psychology, and having taken 23 semester hours of statistics and research-based courses, I always figured the "Recommended," "Highly Recommended," and "No rating" scores were purely subjective, based on variables like, "Does the final judgment injure Canikon?" "Is it believable?" and finally, "Is it merited?"

[Cogito]

I commented in DPR that two slots are better than one but...
My cameras are old, and they all take CF cards, except the Leica which takes SD cards.
Much as I would love an A700 I feel a bit of resistance because I'd have to buy a MS to be safe... It just grates. The PROBABILITY is that I'd never buy another camera that accepts MS so ...
I just wish that MS would go the same way as Betamax.

[Javelin]

Sorry but that doesn't make sense. didn't you have to buy and SD card for the Leica ?

I commented in DPR that two slots are better than one but...
My cameras are old, and they all take CF cards, except the Leica which takes SD cards.
Much as I would love an A700 I feel a bit of resistance because I'd have to buy a MS to be safe... It just grates. The PROBABILITY is that I'd never buy another camera that accepts MS so ...
I just wish that MS would go the same way as Betamax.

[Cogito]

Sorry but that doesn't make sense. didn't you have to buy and SD card for the Leica ?

Of course I did!! And I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense to you!
I don't want to buy yet another type of card that I'll probably NEVER ever use again. Does that make sense? Or are you going to say that "it's only £50 odd"? Which as a retiree, I don't need to spend since it's a totally unnecessary expense when I can buy a different make of camera and use any or my memory cards........

[David Kilpatrick]

MS - the original format - is not needed. It's huge and offers few benefits. MS Duo, the slot used in the Alphas, is a later design than SD and rather neater - it happens to be exactly the same chip factor that was used for the Minolta Creative Expansion cards, which means the vintage card wallets and even the strap with card wallet will accept the cards perfectly. MS Duo now has £3.99 adaptors for Micro SD, meaning you can use Micro SD in your Alpha and then put it in your phone to send images - if they are not too big to handle.

Anyway, let's say Sony had sold you a camera with 4GB built-in memory plus a CF slot, for £40 more than the 900/700 costs. That would be unique. No DSLR has any built-in memory!

That's how I use my MS Duo slot. To add a permanent, built-in memory. I could not care less what type of card it happens to be. And Sony, having developed this card format with SanDisk, would be really stupid not to use it but to prefer SD. The entire emotive argument 'I wish MS did not exist' is valid for Multiple Sclerosis, but not for Memory Stick. You might as well say 'I wish Ford Mondeos had never been designed'; the only possible retort is 'so what?'.

David

[bfitzgerald]

Cars have little to do with cameras!
I think we have enough formats as is I know hell will freeze over before a sony format card is in my bag

[David Kilpatrick]

Cars have little to do with cameras!
I think we have enough formats as is I know hell will freeze over before a sony format card is in my bag

Whole point Barry. No Sony format card is in my bag - any I have are permanently installed in cameras! So far I have never used the 4GB installed in my 900. It is there for the day I run out of CF cards (and, for the record, my SanDisk Ducati 4GB threw up a corrupted file on the 900 two weeks ago - only one, but one to many).

Just like those horrible SD cards - I don't like them at all, so many readers even allow you to shove them in the wrong way up. My 8GB SD lives permamently in my ASUS EeePC and my 4GB is in a Kodak Zi6 video HD 720p handheld recorder which I've been using for interviews and news reports. And, my 4GB SanDisk SD came with a USB reader - because no existing readers would read it. They had to give them away free, because they changed the standards to allow 4GB. So I have several multicard readers and two printers which won't actually read my 4GB and 8GB SD cards at all.

David

[Cogito]

The entire emotive argument 'I wish MS did not exist' is valid for Multiple Sclerosis, but not for Memory Stick. You might as well say 'I wish Ford Mondeos had never been designed'; the only possible retort is 'so what?'.
David

I don't have Mulpitple Sclerosis but am quite capable of stating that I don't NEED yet another type of memory card. I can, of course, accept a comment from you of "so what?" with reference to types of memory. So please don't be too condesending with references to my memory (brain activity or camera).

Cars have little to do with cameras!
I think we have enough formats as is I know hell will freeze over before a sony format card is in my bag

Hear, hear!

[Javelin]

Your right there are too many formats. and it sure looks like CF is going to be the first casualty.. or second behind Xd .. then what are you going to do? only buy cameras based on SD cards ?

How does it make sense to you? I assume you own some lenses beyond the kit lens.. are you saying you would switch to another brand and forgo all your gear just because of a memory card that you were/are going to have to buy anyway?

Of course I did!! And I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense to you!
I don't want to buy yet another type of card that I'll probably NEVER ever use again. Does that make sense? Or are you going to say that "it's only £50 odd"? Which as a retiree, I don't need to spend since it's a totally unnecessary expense when I can buy a different make of camera and use any or my memory cards........

[Cogito]

Your right there are too many formats. and it sure looks like CF is going to be the first casualty.. or second behind Xd .. then what are you going to do? only buy cameras based on SD cards ?

I'd probably buy a Nikon.

How does it make sense to you? I assume you own some lenses beyond the kit lens.. are you saying you would switch to another brand and forgo all your gear just because of a memory card that you were/are going to have to buy anyway?

Guess what? I don't have any kit lenses. All my MC/MD lenses - ranging from 16mm to 600mm focal length work perfectly well with my 7D. So maybe there'll be some more Minolta gear available on Eb*y! No sweat, it was all written off many years ago!

[Javelin]

So you never bought anything beyond the 7d body so you could use your Minolta glass.. so why is the memory even on your radar at all? the 7d is all your ever going to need for your MD glass until you go to Nikon.. no sweat.. then why do you even care if MS exists or not? you've never invested even in Konica stuff when they owned Minolta beyond the 7d body only that is.. i'm sure they appreciated it. Sounds lke your not going to be happy no matter what Sony does is that right?. I beginning to think Barry is the same. is your beef with Sony? then what is the beef ? Actually Minolta lost most of it's users when the AF mount came out and they've been playing catch up ever since are you one of those that holds a grudge against Minolta for changing the mount back then too?