Olympus Smart Media SM 128 128 MB

...a memory card for earlier Olympus digital cameras, using the ‘smart media’ specification.

Virtually indistinguishable from virtually every other Smart media card of a similar capacity, it can be used in Olympus branded cameras, or independently as a ‘removable media’ with an appropriate reader. Of course, you should be able to use it in other brands of cameras as well, but one is forced to ask the question ‘why’?

As ...
...charge for postage) – the Olympus version commands a price approximately double that.

It doesn’t even as though you can see the brand name from the outside of the camera, so why does it cost twice as much?

Quite simply, the camera can ‘tell the difference’.

Standard cards offer ‘standard’ features – ie simple ‘point and shot’ functionality.

The ‘smart’ Olympus cards unlock extra features ... more

The description of this item is virtually self-explanatory, and as such, doesn’t require a terribly long review..

It’s a 128 Mb smart media card – ie it is a memory card for earlier Olympus digital cameras, using the ‘smart media’ specification.

Virtually indistinguishable from virtually every other Smart media card of a similar capacity, it can be used in Olympus branded cameras, or independently as a ‘removable media’ with an appropriate reader. Of course, you should be able to use it in other brands of cameras as well, but one is forced to ask the question ‘why’?

As with most ‘original equipment Manufacturer’ kit, it attracts a price premium, the street price for a bog standard 128Mb card is around twenty bucks on Ebay (plus a nominal charge for postage) – the Olympus version commands a price approximately double that.

It doesn’t even as though you can see the brand name from the outside of the camera, so why does it cost twice as much?

Quite simply, the camera can ‘tell the difference’.

Standard cards offer ‘standard’ features – ie simple ‘point and shot’ functionality.

The ‘smart’ Olympus cards unlock extra features in the camera – notably, the ability to take ‘panorama’ pictures.

To shoot a panorama picture, you follow the instructions to place the camera in ‘panorama’ mode, choose your subject, and then start at one side of the view, and work your way round taking successive pictures which overlap slightly – there’s even a special guide in the LCD viewfinder which shows the overlap you need to make it work properly.

You can select whether to pan left to right, or right to left.

The Panorama feature only woks on ‘landscape’ format pictures.

When the pictures are downloaded onto your PC, the CAMEDIA software supplied with the Olympus camera allows the pictures to be ‘stitched’ together to make one long panorama shot, it’s even smart enough to work out where the overlaps are, make a guess at where the same item appears on the overlap, and fades the image of one frame into the other.

This process isn’t infallible, especially if the frames include ambiguous ‘key points’ on each frame, the application allows you to manually adjust the matching before the final image is generated.

Of course, this facility is only available if you use Olympus hardware, memory cards and software ‘end-to-end’ – so no point in trying to use a KODAK camera (or whatever) and someone else’s software.

128Mb isn’t that huge a capacity for modern cameras, but given that this format was used on older lower resolution cameras, it’s still quite useful.

The instruction manual suggests that reformatting the card on anything other than an Olympus camera can permanently damage the card – I’m not sure if this is actually the case, or if it’s the guys in Olympus simply ‘covering their ass’ – in any case I’ve not tried it, I’m not that curious, and whilst I’m not that clever, I like to think I stop short of ‘plain stupid’

– I can imagine the support call; ‘Any you say you read the manual, and in spite of this, you still insisted on formatting the card? – Just how do you think we can help you sir?’

I regularly use an 8Mb card on a 2 Megapixel camera, and can get around one decent panorama on it, so a 128Mb card would allow up to 16 of these shots to be generated.

I would suggest this was a very handy extra piece of kit to have in your camera bag, but you’d probably only ever need one, unless you were planning on taking literally dozens of panoramic shots and need to go to a second card – you might as well use third party ones instead!

I have uploaded an example of a Panorama shot taken on an Olympus camera, unfortunately the kind people at Ciao won't let me send a file large enough to show the picture to it's full advantage.

You may, however, notice that the group of cottages at each end of the picture are one and the same, as this is roughly a 380 degree shot!
 

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