Once you have realized how much fun it is to take digital images, you will soon realize that one memory card is never enough. Olympus SmartMedia cards are compatible with any product that uses SmartMedia (3.3V).Olympus SmartMedia memory cards also make panorama pictures a snap by taking advantage of the panorama function in Olympus digital cameras.
Stop juggling multiple SmartMedia cards, and replace them all with a high-capacity 128 MB SmartMedia memory card. Olympus SmartMedia cards are compatible with any product that uses SmartMedia (3.3V). Olympus SmartMedia memory cards also make panorama pictures a snap by taking advantage of the panorama function in Olympus digital cameras.
1 Smartmedia Card Error
I had also card error, with a 16 and a 128M cards, and solve this problem, only by reformating the card using the SMFORMAT.EXE file found at this address:
http://www.marshost.com/~rashmun/
HBidaud
2 Smart media card errors.
You stick the card in your camera, and get the message "Card Error" Buying a new card is almost inevitable. I lost an 8mb, and had a 64mb card at the edge of the old round file.
What has happens, is that "Windows" formating has corrupted the smart media format on the card. This happens when you edit or delete files on the card thru a card reader attached to your computer. It is always a good idea to delete files, and format your card only in the camera. Otherwise you risk the "Card Error" message the next time you try to use the card in your camera.
The cards can be recovered, but only by recovering the original formatting. (...)
I had no clue what was being said here, but the breadth of what I read sent my 8mb smart media card to the trash.
When I lost my 64mb card to a similar error. I felt it was worth trying to restore the formatting. But the above web site had some OS restrictions and didn't seem to work without significant hardware, software, and knowledge. Seeing all the people with similar errors led me to believe that someone had to have a simple way to recover the card to it's original state. This is when I discoved WinHex. (...)
WinHex used a simple copy and paste editor GUI, and some conveneintly supplied DAT files to fix the "Card Error".
It is possible that other "hex" editors can do the same thing as long as you have the proper DAT file to replace the damaged file system.
Buying a new card is always an option though... : )
3 replacing after format lost
I am replacing a 128MB card after one of two I owned lost its format. I had the card in an Olympus P440 photo printer (using a PCMCIA adapter). While printing, I lost power to the printer. When I powered everything up again, some of the image data was lost and errors were diaplyed on the printer. When I reinserted the card into my Olympus 3040 camera, it diplayed a card error and refused to reformat with the tool icon. So I threw the card away. This is the only problem I have had in 2+ years, but it seems like a serious design flaw for a card that should have only been open for a read function.
4 some problems
I bought two of these cards a little less than a year ago
and they worked great until recently. I had 160 images on
one card and when I tried to upload them to my Dell (which
I have done with success many times) I got
"Disk is not formatted." I tried uploading to an IBM PC
and got the same message. When I put the card into an HP
printer (that I have had success with in the past) I got
"Error on card." I was pretty depressed by this since the
images were taken over several weeks for a documentation
project. As a last effort, I tried uploading the images to
an HP computer, and that worked fine - so they were saved.
I tossed the defective card. I had in no way mistreated it.
This experience has taught me to upload my pictures more
frequently - you could lose a lot of valuable images.
5 Go Ahead and Spend the Extra Money
While it is true that the Olympus media cards are used mostly for being able to utilize the panoramic picture option, I have just experienced a problem with a generic brand Smart Media card after owning my Camedia 2040 for two years. I purchased the card this summer, and it worked fine for a while, but now suddenly and unexpectedly for some unknown reason (I had removed the card to view the pictures on the computer with a reader), the camera says the card is not formatted. The 100+ pictures are still on the card, and it is not full, but I can no longer use it for taking pictures or viewing pictures in the camera viewer.
I put my old full Olympus cards in and the camera recognizes them right away and displays the pictures in the camera viewer. I can view the pictures on the generic card with my reader on the computer, but the card itself now seems to be useless. I think I paid close to $40 for the card at a warehouse club. My advice is to spend a little more and get the Olympus card made for the camera so you don't wind up in a situation where your cheaper generic card suddenly goes out in the middle of an unrepeatable moment or occasion.
6 128Mb SmartMedia by Toshiba - Olympus Pano
Product arrive promptly, well packaged and as described. Just what I was looking for, I am very pleased and it was cheaper than E-Bay!
7 Reliable And Worth The Extra Money
As others have noted, Olympus Smart Media Cards are needed for some of the Olympus camera functions, so the card is worth it for that.
I have had other cards "go bad", but none from Olympus. To me that is worth the few extra dollars, and the price has come down a bit since I bought my last one.
8 I think the Olympus Smart Media Card is.
If you are going to get a memory card, why get less than the most available, especially now that you can get 128MB for about [money amount] Soon more memory is sure to become available, but at this point I believe 128MB is the most you can find in "Smart Media Card" from Olympus, or even a generic card for that matter. This will give you almost one picture per MB, meaning that with the 128MB Smart Media Card you get well over a hundred High Quality (HQ) pictures. HQ gives you a very nice 5x7" photo at 300dpi. You can significantly reduce the about of memory used by the card if you decrease the size of each picture taken. For small pictures used to attach to emails you could conceivably get well over a 1000 pictures on the card by going from just over 3.9 mega pixels (HQ) down to just over 0.3 mega pixels (Normal mode on the camera) similar to the resolution of the first VGA monitors, reducing the memory usage by more than 1/10th. As far as buying the Olympus Card, I would recommend it, particularly if you are considering using the "panoramic" feature that "stitches" multiple scenes together to make a panorama using the software that comes with the Olympus digital camera. I understand that this feature is only available on the Olympus Smart Media Cards and now you can find Olympus cards at a comparable price to the "generic" brands. I have had no problems using the Smart Media Card from Olympus. I would recommend it highly. The only con that I can see won't come until they come out with a card with more memory.
Tangent to the 128MB Olympus Smart Media Card is their Card Reader. I opted out of that option, because the only benefit of it seemed to be the convenience of not having to plug your camera into a USB port. This in my mind is off-set by the inconvenience and exposure to damage of removing the card itself to put it into the reader, sounds like an excuse to sell "every available gadget" to me. So why not download directly from the camera? The only other argument in favor of the card reader is that it saves camera batteries, and although I'm getting slightly off subject here, it goes almost without saying that if you are using NiMH 1700 - 2000 mAh rechargeable batteries, which I think you will find is the best bet in the long run, leaving your camera on a few more seconds is immaterial.
9 Get All the Functionality You Paid For out of Your Olympus
Why would anyone buy an Olympus D-510 Zoom camera with such a perfect panorama and stitching capabilities and not be able to use it? I want all the camera features to work -they WON'T if you slip another brand of SmartMedia in.
10 USB card reader with Smartmedia
Beware when you use USB card reader to read and write to your smartmedia. I used one to load the images from my camera. I made a mistake by erasing the files by the card reader. Now my smartmedia card no longer works on the camera although the card still works fine as a removable drive on the card reader. The camera would not reformat the card and shows card error. There is no warning anywhere in the user's manual. What a waste of money considering the price of the card.
11 Olympus Brand not required
Don't be fooled by the statement "only use Olympus brand media." I bought Simple Tech SmartMedia 128mb and it works great. I also paid less then half for the 128mb media...
12 Worth the Extra Cost
I have an Olympus C-3000, and bought a 64MB Olympus card to go with it. Used it for a long time, never had a problem. When I wanted more memory, I bought a SanDisk 128MB card to save a few dollars. That thing has flaked out on me many times, and I've lost important photographs. Take the photos, and get home only to find that they are not there.
I'm going back to Olympus cards. Memory is not all created equally. (BTW, I also had a SanDisk USB memory card reader. That was a piece of junk too - the memory card got stuck and wouldn't come out! Their tech support said "Push down real hard on the card with the reader upside down and it will come out" - I kid you not! Stay away from anything those pinheads manufacture.)
13 be careful how you use it
I love my Olympus digital cameras (I now have two), and I enjoy having lots of room on the card and not having to think whether or not I've got the right card to do panorama shots. However, I use an external PCMCIA card reader to copy the picture files to my computer, and I recently made the mistake of copying some files from the computer back onto the smartmedia card. After that the camera would not recognize the card, and Olympus is unwilling to offer assistance. They say my card just got corrupted and I need to buy a new one.
14 Brand name memory
Nice to have 128Meg and avoid running out of room for pixs. Of course the marketing by Olympus requires you to buy Olympus memory in order to use ALL of the features of the Olympus camera. I do not like this tactic and probably would not have bought the camera if I knew about this scheme in advance, my fault for not researching thoroughly
Generic Smart media does not function in some camera modes such as Panorama mode.
15 Brand name memory
Nice to have 128Meg and avoid running out of room for pixs. Of course the marketing by Olympus requires you to buy Olympus memory in order to use ALL of the features of the Olympus camera. I do not like this tactic and probably would not have bought the camera if I knew about this scheme in advance, my fault for not researching thoroughly
Generic Smart media does not function in some camera modes such as Panorama mode.
16 Mauibear
Worth the extra money for the upgraded card. This card will give you 163 shots at the standard HQ quality level, instead of 20 shots with the stock 16mb card that comes with the camera. Definitly want to go with the genuine Olympus card to be able to use the Panaramic Feature for Olympus cameras.
17 Smart card
Since I have an Olympus digital camera, I prefeer buying disks made by the same company... As I've seen in other reviews there are some features only this card supports, so I think this makes it worth the higher price.
Lets see: it holds between 270 - 300 medium resolution color pictures, so basically I need about 2 of these for a 3 - 5 day trip - I know that some other types of cards are already availabe with 256K - I hope that these would also be available at this size too soon. They are thin and relatively easy to store and use.
18 works perfectly
I received my Olympus C3000Z as a gift and since I was new to digital cameras and media cards, I felt comfortable starting out with an Olympus card. I wanted to be able to take lots of photos at large resolutions, and the price was right. I shoot pictures almost every day now with my digicam, and this card has never let me down. I recommend it highly.
19 marketing trick?
The card is fine, it works as advertised. And - as always true with digicams, the more memory you have, the merrier!
Having said that, I never liked the way Olympus have implemented 'panorama mode' with proprietary memory cards. Technically, there is no good reason for panorama support requiring special memory cards. For example see Canon's digicams - they give panorama support with any memory card (well, Canon cameras usually use CF rather then SM, but that does not make a difference for this matter), and, with better user interface. So - is this a trick used by Olympus, in their cameras design, to sell more memory cards? perhaps - you'll be the judge.
A little more about panorama mode, Canon vs. Olympus: considering Olympus smartmedia pricing - cost should not be an issue, prices are competitive. As mentioned above, Canon user interface is nicer, how? Well, Olympus cards simply lock exposure at the first frame, and give minimal 'stitch guide' support in the format of thin red frames at both sides of the LCD display. That's it. Canon adds the following: panoramic sequences have distinct file names, so that you can identify the sequences more easily, second, they support right to left / left to right / vertical / or four frame 'square' sequence. last, and IMHO, best of all - depending on the direction of the sequence, the camera LCD 'freezes' on one side of the display, an image of the edge of the previously captured frame, and shows 'live' viewfinder on the rest of the LCD, letting you calmly adjust better stitch with no need to try and remember where the last frame ended.
20 Might not be worth the price premium...
SmartMedia is sold under several brands. Olympus branded SmartMedia allows you to take "panorama" shots. Essentially, you take multiple shots while making sure to overlap edges. You then reassemble these multiple shots using the "Camedia" software that came with your Olympus camera. The difference is that when an Olympus brand SmartMedia card is used, your digital camera keeps exposure settings constant across these multiple shots; which makes for a consistent panorama when you reassemble the individual shots via your computer.
This is a nice feature, but not a feature most of us use often; for example, on a recent two week trip, I took 220 shots of which only 12 were panorama. If you are going to purchase multiple SmartMedia cards, you might be able to do with just one or two Olympus brand cards - especially since they cost more than other brands. I use two other brand SmartMedia cards, and save my Olympus brand cards for when panorama shots present (since you can switch the cards out at anytime - unlike traditional camera film).
Also to realistically determine what the price premium is, check prices for Olympus and other brand SmartMedia not only here, but also at other popular commercial sites.
21 Allows Olympus Panoramia to work on 3030/3040/4040 Cameras
Since Amazon sells the 128 Olympus Smartmedia Card at such a good price. I think it is well worth the extra ten dollars to have all the features of the camera work, rather than use a generic card. The 128Card has such a good capacity that it might be the only one you will ever need for normal shots. For fine shots it is essential!
22 128Mb card for C-3040ZOOM
128 Mb card works fine with the C-3040ZOOM, although not available from Olympus (yet).
Somewhat expensive but avoids the hassle of switching cards...
23 The Biggest Little Card
I own an Olympus C-2040 Zoom digital camera which comes with a 8MB SmartMedia card. When first turned on, it comes up in HQ mode (1600 x 1200 standard JPEG) and the number of photos that can be stored is 13. This equates to about one-half roll of film.
I plugged in the 128MB SmartMedia card and it shows that it will store 257 images in HQ mode. This equates to more than 10 rolls of 24 exposure film. Ten rolls of film... that's about what I shoot on a normal vacation. Plus, by using the Olympus SmartMedia card the panorama mode is always available.
24 LONG review: Very useful, great capacity, highly recommended
UPDATE: See end of review.
I bought this SmartMedia card many months ago (right after it came out) but I waited to write the review because I wanted to have some real experience with it first. I'm very satisfied with this product and I highly recommend it. Here are some comments that you might find helpful in the decision-making process. Some of these are answers to questions I originally had, but learned the answers to after using the project.
First, I required a SmartMedia card with lots of memory and support for the "panorama" function of my Olympus C-2100 digital camera. (This function guides the user through taking multiple pictures, panning slightly to one direction after each picture. The photos are automatically "stitched" together by the Olympus Camedia Master software that comes with the camera.) I also wanted a card that would work with my Creative Nomad MG MP3 player, but when I bought it I wasn't sure it would be compatible.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Thin plastic card with gold contacts. Measures 45mm x 37mm x 0.76mm. Weighs in at 1.8 grams. The package I got included a small, clear, medium-hard plastic case and a thin soft plastic sheath. Also included a label and a write-protect sticker. Apparently it offers a tolerance of one million program/erase cycles and zero-power data retention up to 10 years.
STORAGE: At 128MB, this card provides a great deal of storage space - the most to date (Sept 2001) of any SmartMedia card. Olympus was one of the first manufacturers to release this capacity and they did so with full support of the "panorama" feature of the camera. As far as photo storage is concerned, it was the only card I needed for a 10-day Caribbean vacation. At (mostly) 1280 x 960 resolution, I fit nearly 500 pictures on the card before it finally filled up. Surprisingly, it stored more photos than the camera originally thought it could hold (when the blank card was inserted). Used with my MP3 player, it holds about 25 songs - not bad at all!
FLEXABILITY & USEFULNESS: I can use the card in both my MP3 player and my camera interchangeably. The Olympus camera stores photos within the DCIM folder (presumably meaning "Digital Camera IMages," but don't quote me on it), and MP3 files can simply be stored in the root directory. I can literally be listening to an MP3, switch the card to the camera to take a few pictures, then switch back to the MP3 player to keep listening. Also, with a reader like the Zio!, I can use the card like an external hard drive to store or transfer any type of file - this has proven VERY helpful in transferring large files between work and home - it sure beats waiting for a 128MB email attachment to download! In fact, this is probably the most useful benefit of the card. Just BE CAREFUL not to format the card - I haven't tried it, but I believe if it's formatted, you'll lose the support for the Olympus panorama function.
SPEED: Using my Zio! SmartMedia reader (USB), I can transfer files to and from the card at about 800k per second. Transferring the whole card takes less than three minutes. This is faster than I expected, but obviously not as fast as other media types like hard drives. Other readers may even transfer files faster.
PROBLEMS: On only one occasion when I transferred a photo from the card to the computer using the Zio! Card reader, about 50% of the photo was digital garbage, rendering half the photo not viewable. I've experienced this problem in the past when part of a JPEG image is corrupted. However, I don't know if this problem is a result of a glitch in the camera, the media card, or the transfer via Zio! to the computer. (I had deleted it from the card before I tried to view it on the hard drive - oops!) Regardless, with as much as I've used this card, I don't consider this one incident an indication of a real problem. Also, to use this card with my MP3 player required a firmware update, which was very easy to do with software downloaded from the MP3 player site. If you want to use this card in other MP3 players, be sure to check with the manufacturer on compatibility, and remember: DON'T FORMAT the card with your MP3 player because you'll wipe out the panorama feature that's loaded onto the card.
RECOMMENDATIONS: If you're looking for a lot of storage for a great price, plus computability with Olympus' "panorama" feature, then this is the card for you. I recommend getting a card reader like the Zio!, too, which will give you the added benefit and convenience of a tiny and very portable storage device. And I'd recommend this solution to ANYONE who has to transfer large files between two non-connected computers. Finally, if you don't need the panorama function, you may want to take a look at different brands (like Viking or SanDisk). Though this was the cheapest available when I bought it, I believe the other brands are quite a bit less expensive now.
I hope this information was helpful to you.
UPDATE Apr 2002: I have now had this SmartMedia card for over a year and I am still very pleased. Two more times I have had the problem I noted above, but I believe it is due to the camera and not the SmartMedia card. Still it happens too infrequently to be a bother. This card has come down considerably in price, but other brands still may be cheaper.
25 must use for panorama on olympus cameras
with my new c-4040, it estimates 46 photos at shq, and over 1,000 photos at sq2, but only 10 or 11 at tiff uncompressed
26 Interoperability of Olympus vs other smart media cards
The only difference between the Olympus and other brands of SmartMedia cards is that only the Olympus SmartMedia card supports the Panorama function of the camera (see owners manual for details, but basically it allows you to stitch up to 10 images together into a panoramic image). If you never use this feature just buy the less expensive memory. If you have a need for panoramas, and already have one Olympus card, use that Olympus card for panoramas, and buy the less expensive SmartMedia cards for all your other photo needs. As an example, on Amazon, the Viking 128MB card is ... cheaper than the Olympus.
27 Why purchase Olympus SmartMedia, Buy Viking instead and save
I bought the Viking 128MB card, and took advantage of the reduced price and coupon being offered until 06/30/01. Works Great on my D490Z..
28 C-3030Z Compatability with 128MB Smartmedia
FYI: I was concerned that this 128MB Smartmedia card would not be supported with my camera Olympus C-3030Z. I called Olympus technical support at 1-888-553-4448 and George on 6/8/01 assured me that ALL Olympus digital cameras that take a 64MB Smartmedia card will also take a 128MB card. Technical support assured me that there are NO compatibility issues. The Olympus web site only lists compatability for cards up to 64MB, but the 128MB card is new and is fully supported while the chart is being updated. Olympus stuff is great!
