| Secrets of Digital Photography Sima Image Bank Model CP-150 |
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Jump back to Breaking News... Vacationing? Don't want to take the whole dimroom with you? Here's a way to keep your images without hauling the computer with you |
T E C H N I Q U E
The Sima Image Bank Model CP-150 is a small storage device for photographers on the go. It lets you plug your CompactFlash or SmartMedia cards into a slot, press a button, and have the entire contents of the card transferred to its large multi-gigabyte hard drive. And you can do that about 375 times with this 8 meg card before filling the Image Bank up! Why? Typical 2 MB cameras like the 950 and 775 take shots in the 700KB size range and 3 MB cameras like the 990 and 995 often end up as about a megabyte apiece. This can run your storage card into overtime real fast. Sure 35mm cameras had only 36 exposures, but todays digital photographer wants a lot of exposures per card. Except that once you fill the card you have to make the tough choices of what-to-throw-away if you want to keep shooting. The 995 offers the potential for deep storage with miniature hard disk drives instead of a solid state CF memory card. Great. Now reviewing the entire contents of a 1 GigaByte card can take 15 minutes to half an hour--not even counting the moments you stop to delete something. Wouldn't it be cool to drop your shots into a secure place and recycle your in-camera card? You betcha. How? So that's where the Sima gets friendly. You can dump up to 3 Gigs worth of images into it over the period of time that you are away from your computer, confident that they're available when you get back. Let's see, that's around 3000 Fine/Full Size 995 images... Then you connect it to your computer with the handy USB cable (provided) and -poing- there on your desktop is a new drive. The IMAGEBANK drive. Inside are folders within folders and at the bottom of things you will find one called 100 NIKON. Just like you would find from the CF card direct. Copy this, and all the others, onto your computer hard disk, and once you are satisfied the images are all transferred, trash the files on the Image Bank. Now you are ready for the next outing. Power The CP-150 is powered by a neat go-anywhere system that includes a 120VAC to 12VDC power supply, a 12VDC power cord that ends in the standard "cigarette lighter" car plug on one end and the appropriate barrel plug on the Image Bank end. So you can plug it into your rental car, taxi or perhaps airline computer power supply and do the transfer without having to be near a wall plug. Hmm. I wonder if they have a 240 VAC version of this transformer... It's only about the size of a paperback book, simple as can be and very easy to use. I give it two thumbs and one big toe up. The price is a little steep at $349 and a less expensive tag plus an internal power supply from batteries would have gotten the other toe to rise. Learn more Check out the photo products over at www.simacorp.com and they'll link you to reviews from famous people like Steve Sanders over at Steve's Digicams.
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