Why "Shoot W/O Card"

What would the purpose be for this setting on my XT? I fully understand what it does but WHY would I want to do that? There must be something I am missing because I just cant see a value in this???

Demo mode, as in stores, or when you're just playing with it to get the hang of things. I've never bothered to take mine off that setting. It yells at me soon enough with no card anyhow.

For familiarising yourself with all the bells and whistles without taking images, then erasing them, then taking them, then erasing them... As soon as you are familiar with them, switch it off...

I haven't tried this with an XT, but can't you capture to a computer directly using the cable?

why yes you can!

Good point - you don't need a card in place for that.

When you can capture to the computer it does not go to the card anyhow, it goes to your hard drive where you tell it to when you start the program. GREAT learning tool by the way!!!

Last I looked, you had the option of saving to computer or both. Still, even if you're planning to write to computer, does the camera know this and function if you've set it to disable picture taking when there's no card installed?

The other day I deleted the directory of pictures off my CF with a card reader on my PC. I left the root "DCIM" but deleted the directories "??? CANON...". I did this to clear the card "I know there is a better way now" but because I had the shoot without card function on the next time I took a bunch of pictures none of them got saved to the card. Near as I can tell the camera won’t create directories in that case and does not save the shoots to the root so they never get saved in reality. If you have that setting turned off the camera creates a "???CANON" directory to save into if one doesn’t exist. Cost me about 50 shoots. Also I can recreate this issue so I guess it's a little bug that you only fall into if you do exactly as I did. Never had any problems with the camera of CF "Kingston Elite 1GB" before or after.

Yea there is probably an option to do both, never researched that angle.

I don't think that particular option would have saved you in any case, as there was a card. It just didn't have the correct folder structure. I will say that early in my DSLR career I picked up an Aiptek multi-function (webcam, digital still & digital video cam), put a card I'd used in my D60 in for a few shots. Photos went into folder \DCIM\104CAMERA, as previous shots had been 103CANON. When I reinsertrd the card into the D60 it started folder \DCIM\105CANON without any hesitation.

Yes I can see my obvious error but when I turned the "Shoot W/O card option off the camera saw that there was no valid directory structure and created one just like it was a newly formatted card. I would hate to have any one else fall into this trap as I did.

Very Interesting.