Customer Reviews

Viking CF256M 256 MB CompactFlash Card

5 star:		(115)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

This is a pretty big card for a very small price. While the size benefits are obvious, the more important factor is speed.

A while back I bought a SanDisk "Ultra" Compact Flash card because the single selling point was that it was supposed to be TWICE as fast as their standard product. To be honest, at that point I didn't think there were speed differences between CF cards. I assumed they were all the same speed simply because other brands didn't mention their speed.

What happened next was a surprise to me. I put my SanDisk Ultra into my camera and started taking pictures and noticed that the time between shots got longer and longer as the card started to fill up, and was clearly longer than when I had my older (smaller) card in the camera. Their Ultra card was clearly slower than my supposedly inferior older card.

That's when I started to question their claims to be twice as fast as a standard CF card. I did some research and confirmed what I had discovered; larger capacity CF cards are slower than smaller CF cards. So when you buy larger cards, you need faster memory to compensate.

That said, if speed between pictures is an issue, you have two choices: 1) Buy a bunch of smaller cards, and swap them when they fill up or 2) If you want larger cards, make sure they are as fast.

After my experience with my SanDisk card, I tried the Viking card and unlike SanDisk, they didn't make any claims of speed, but the Viking was CLEARLY FASTER! Later I found some sites where they did more scientific tests where they not only measured the time between photos, but tested them using a high speed card reader/writer. This guaranteed that the test results were not an indication of the camera's ability to manage larger cards (but that is a factor).

The bottom line: For cards this size, speed is important, and this card is FAST!

Nobody would argue that the more memory you have in your digital camera, the better. The question is what the reasonable compromise between the price of a memory card and its size is, and how to predict how much memory you actually need before you paid for it. I looked up some literature on the image compression techniques, and made some experiments with printing out pictures with different resolution and different compression ratios, and came to the following conclusions.

Most cameras offer a choice between several picture resolutions and several image compression modes. Low resolution is good for on-screen viewing, while high resolution is better suited for printouts. Additionally, one can choose between several compression modes. Higher resolution settings combined with the weakest compression result in better pictures at the expense of larger file sizes. The problem is that all digital cameras ship with very small memory cards - 8MB, 16 MB, sometimes 32 MB, and this is just not enough even for a day of shooting. I think most people would be happy to have a storage space for at least a couple of hundreds of puctures, equivalent to 8-9 rolls of film. In my experience, this is what you can expect to get from a 256 MB card if you use a 4 megapixel camera and medium compression. A few comments are in order to help you to understand better what resolution and compression mean in terms of the file size.

1. Resolution. The huge resolution numbers of ink-jet printers may be confusing, for instance, 1440 dots-per-inch (dpi) resolution may make you think that a 2000x2000 pixel image would print well only in the size of about 1.5x1.5 inches. This is absolutely wrong since resolution of the printer reflects primarily the minimum size of the ink dot which the printer can create, but not necessarily the size of a meaningful pixel of the image. In fact, printer manufacturers suggest that for the best results the resolution of the image should be 1/3 to 1/4 of the maximum printer resolution. Hence, expect that your final output will be printed with 250-300 dpi resolution. A four megapixel image will then print with a perfect quality up to the size of 8x10 inches. Smaller pictures, such as 4x6 inches, require a lot less pixels - 2 megapixels is sufficient! However, since you never know when you will need to print that one perfect picture in a larger size, I would suggest that you shoul always use the highest pixel resolution of your camera. Additionally, it gives you better flexibility in terms of cropping the image later on.

2. Compression. Unfortunately, high resolution images require lots of storage space: a 4-megapixel uncompressed image can be as large as 12 MB. JPEG compression, which is based on an algorithm specifically developed for image compressing helps to store large pictures in relatively small files. Specifically, JPEG compression algorithm divides an image into squares 8*8 pixels each, performes two-dimensional discrete cosine trasform of each of these squares, and compresses their frequency spectra by removing high-frequency components or by decreasing their accuracy through a "quantization" procedure. While this review is not appropriate for a discussion of technical details of the JPEG algorithm, it is worth saying that JPEG analyzes each small "brick" of the image individually and adapts the level of smoothing/compressing to the image to be compressed. In fact, when you choose the compression mode, you determine not the size of the compressed image, but its quality in the compressed form. Therefore, the final size of the compressed file may vary by as much as 2 to 3 times depending on each particular image. This is why you can never know for sure how many pictures will fit on your memory card, you can only have a rough estimate. The "adaptive" nature of JPEG makes it very efficient: it takes advantage of the smoothness of monotonically colored parts of the image by achieving great compression ratios in those areas without significant losses in quality, and it is also good at rendering sharp contrasts in the image. Since JPEG standard was optimized to take into account the specifics of our perception of visual information (like mp3 compression of music files takes advantage of the way how we hear music), JPEG compressed pictures are almost undistinguishable from the originals up to the compression ratios of 1:8 to 1:12. In my experience, medium compression works well almost always, with the exception of the case when you take a picture with lots of details, bright spots, contrast objects, etc., and want to print in 8x10 size. Then you should use the weakest compression ("fine"), or no compression at all.

I have a Canon Powershot S40 and used it with highest resolution and medium compression. The size of the file varied from 500 kB to 1.8 MB from picture to picture. The average size (calculated using 800+ pictures) was 840 kB. Hence, I could fit 200-300 pictures on this 256 MB card.

The last comment: note that there are three types of memory, flash, SmartMedia, and Sony memory stick. Check you camera manual which one you need, they are not interchangeable.

This is an outstanding card. It is one of the best performing cards on the market and also one of the most reasonably priced. I wouldn't spend the money on Lexar or some of the other over marketed cards. This card works flawlessly in my Canon S40 and is *very* fast. I also bought the Viking PCMCIA reader for my notebook and it's awesome as well. It plugs in and works. What more can you ask for?

I did a lot of research before buying this card and if you have time, go to dpreview and check out the reviews->digital media. They have a very straightforward and comprehesive analysis of compact flash media while cutting through the marketing hype. You'll learn a lot there and save yourself some money.

Here is the story. If you order this flash you will receive a compact flash from Viking Interworks (not Viking Components as shown in picture). What is the difference you ask? The Viking Interworks flash is "new" and SLOWER! The "older" complact flash from Viking Components was good value for money ie fast compared to other compact flash for its price. The difference in speed is the way the memory is allocated in the chip (this was verified by a call to Viking tech line). Problem here is that Amazon is giving specs on the "older" model which is faster when in fact it is selling the "newer" slower model. It may not be important to all but it is to some people who don't like the lag time when taking pictures. I advised Amazon of this some time ago and they have yet to change their picture or their description of the product. I thought it was important to let people know they are not getting what they thought they were getting.

In my informal comparison of the transfer rate of 256MB compact flash cards by Viking, SimpleTech, and Kingston, the Viking card came in a distant third. The Viking card took about 40% longer to transfer identical data. My card at least, did not meet the stated specified transfer rate.

So where speed of transfer is important, the Viking card may not be the best choice. For other less critical tasks, the Viking card has proven perfectly adequate.

Viking products are competitively priced, [...]

I have been researching and researching to determine if the SanDisk, Lexar, and Viking cards all had the same quality standards, read and write speeds, compatibility, etc.

I could not understand why the Viking cards tended to be less expensive (sometimes by quite a large delta), so assumed that there had to be some difference in quality.

SanDisk answered my question yesterday when they filed a lawsuit against Viking Components for purchasing the Lexar internal components for their CompactFlash cards (SanDisk had earlier sued Lexar, too) stating that they are infringing upon SanDisk's patents on the components.

Other than a lot of legal jargon, this tells me that the three cards: SanDisk, Lexar, and Viking are so similar in design, quality, speed, compatibility, etc. that they are able to get into lawsuits about it.

It also tells me one more thing--Lexar and Viking must be SanDisk's biggest competitors because they are the companies they are attacking first.

Kudos to Viking for building a product so similar in design, quality, performance, compatibility, etc. to their competitors but still willing to sell the product at a lower price to the consumer.

P.S. Viking is a very reputable company, I am sure that this matter doesn't deal with them directly. I would assume that it will go back to a battle between SanDisk and Lexar, after all the only thing Viking did was purchase a quality component from Lexar in order to build their flash cards to the highest quality standard.

Summary: I had a great deal of trouble with a Viking 512 MB compact flash card, Viking was very helpful in replacing it with two 256 MB cards, but now the only 256 MB card I've used thus far has corrupted data as well. I give Viking tech support manager Patrick Beard 5 stars, he was very professional. However, the product quality rates only 1 star. Average 3 stars. I did get my money back after shipping back the cards.

Details: In early December, just before a big overseas family vacation, I purchased one Viking 512 MB card, and one SimpleTech 256 card. The Viking card was the first one I used, and there were no problems for one week. Then one photo I took showed as a very small image with the caption CF CARD ERROR. I had no idea what this meant at the time and in fact the camera/card seemed to repair that image one hour later. Several days later I noticed a couple of images that were previously fine and now show CF Card ERROR. I had already saved over 300 photos on this card at this point and was concerned enough to switch to the SimpleTech card and saved 200 photos on that card for the rest of the trip.

After coming back into the US, the Viking card would not upload the images into the computer. By the way the camera is G3 and the computer is high end new Dell running XP. The only method I finally got the images into the computer was using Windows explorer. Then I realized 70 images were missing. Viking was very helpful. I shipped them the defective card, and they shipped me two 256MB cards. It took them one week, but Viking also recovered 60 of the images that were missing for me. I estimate that I lost less than 10 images all together. However helpful Viking was, the card was defective, and the whole experience probably cost me 10 hours of time. Unfortunately, one of the 256 MB card has corrupted as well.

The Simple card on the other hand, just worked. No Card ERROR, no problem in uploading into the computer, the way it should be. It has been 4 months.

I've owned two of these cards and used them with a Canon S110 and a Canon S200. They have been wonderful; 256 MB allows me to take more pictures (~243) than I've ever been able to in a single day, and at highest quality (2 MP, jpeg compression). The only time this hasn't been enough was on a multi week vacation. Buy a few if you're planning to take photos on a trip -- I'd gotten so used to having unlimited photos that it was difficult to take fewer. Speed has been great, and was one of the reasons I initially chose this card. I've never had any formatting or data loss problems, and I've used the cards in both cameras, a card reader, and a card reader in an HP printer. I use my card intensively, constantly taking photos, uploading them, then deleting them. I highly reccomend it, and it's a great value.

Just bought it in July after purchasing the Canon S40. Since it's a 4mp camera, this 256meg card give me about 125 shots in the highest setting. I love this card, it's fast and the price is pretty good. I read the CF cards speed comparison article on dpreview.com and didn't believe that this 8x card can out perform some 16x cards. But it's true I tested it with the Sandisk Ultra 384, and the Viking card was noticibly faster.

I have a Cannon S45 and loved the card up to the point it died. I was on Lake Tahoe for a friends wedding and had taken countless pictures and videos. All of a sudden, the camera froze up. The CF card error pops up and that's it. I've had 2 friends try the card in their cameras and the same thing happens... so I know it's not the camera. I won't buy another Viking....