Got a lexar Firewire card reader......

[Bosman]

I just took 27 pics real quick at the highest res:

Lexar Firewire Card Reader one minute thirtysix seconds

camera via usb cable two minutes fortythree seconds

I expected faster, does this sound right?

loaded onto 867Mhz G4 Powerbook

Oh yeah, card is a Sandisk Ultra II 512MB

[Kostyanych]

Hmmmm...
Tell us what the camera. :)
And what is the total size of thhese pictures... :)

[Bosman]

Hmmmm...
Tell us what the camera. :)
And what is the total size of thhese pictures... :)

G6, highest resolution setting.

[Jon]

Sounds ballparkish. That's 7 MP right? So about 4 MB per shot. Something like 1 Mb/sec. Rob Galbraith (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-6133) notes that prior to OS X 10.3, Mac support for FAT-formatted media was really slow. And you'll have a lot of hitting on the directory with smaller files. He tested throughput with large RAW files.

[Jupiter19]

I just tested mine.
37 pictures took 35 seconds
I have the Rebel XT, and all the shots were RAW

This is the computer info:
AMD Athlon XP 1700
1.46 Ghz
512 MB RAM

[Jon]

Was that direct from the camera, or via a card reader? If a card reader, which one? the DRXT is USB 2.0; I believe the G6 is USB 1.1 (12 Mbps transfer rate, not 480 Mbps).

[cactusclay]

I'm not real up on this stuff, but is it fire wire 400 or 800 and would that make a difference on the card reader or would the card reader have to be capeable of both?

[Jupiter19]

Jon, I don't know if you were addressing me, but I am using the Lexar firewire compact flash reader thru the firewire port of my computer. It is obviously much slower when I connect the camera to my computer. I used a sandisk extreme III 1 gig card.

[Bosman]

The lexar reader is Firewire 400, I'm running OSX 10.3.9 on my powerbook. The Canon G6 is USB 1 camera to computer. Doesn't it make sense lexar would be much, much faster? Also, I'm inporting into iPhoto.

[Jon]

I don't think (and I Am Not A Mac Maven - IANAMM) either of the machines is new enough to be FireWire 800. The Lexar is the reader Rob Galbraith used also, and he found that it pulled files off an Extreme III 1 GB at 12 MB/sec or so to a Power Mac G5/Dual 2.0GHz with 1.5GB RAM running OS X 10.3.8 (using 225 MB of data and two successive runs). So I'm guessing that with a slower processor, less memory and maybe even a slower FireWire port, Jupiter19 was seeing about 7 MB/sec. The Ultra II 512 is about 15% slower in Rob's tests.

[Jupiter19]

I am importing using Zoombrowser, its the only thing I use it for. I haven't tried any other ways yet.