Canon Digital Rebel (300D) Maximum CF Card Capacity

[BurnUnit]

I have an old Digital Rebel that works fine that I plan on giving to a friend who has shown an interest in stepping up from her phone camera. I figure this Rebel should work well enough to help her decide if she wants to dive in any deeper.

The camera works fine with an old Transcend 1GB CF card. But I thought she might want to buy a spare card. The user manual doesn't doesn't seem to list a maximum capacity, but I've got it in my head that a 16GB or larger card might give this camera a "brain freeze". Some old threads on the Canon Users' Forum list using 64GB to 128GB in a Digital Rebel but that just sounds downright crazy to me. And nobody there seems to know what the maximum size might be. Do the larger CF cards just have better backward compatibility with these older cameras by design? I don't want to tell her what to buy if it will give this old Rebel a seizure.

 

[Gnhntn]

Maximum card size was 8GB but there were some that had 16GB cards that worked, but if I remember correctly the camera would only recognize 8GB when formatting them.. I still have the Rebel XT hanging out in the closet and never used more than an 8GB card with it, and never lacked for space.

 

[3Rotor]

It has been long time since I last used one of these. This is what I found on the Rebel XT, not exactly your Digital Rebel. Looks to recognize 8GB.

Digital XT

 

[BurnUnit]

It has been long time since I last used one of these. This is what I found on the Rebel XT, not exactly your Digital Rebel. Looks to recognize 8GB.

Digital XT

Maximum card size was 8GB but there were some that had 16GB cards that worked, but if I remember correctly the camera would only recognize 8GB when formatting them.. I still have the Rebel XT hanging out in the closet and never used more than an 8GB card with it, and never lacked for space.

Alright now! That's what I'm talkin' about!

I'd done some general web searching but was looking specifically for info for "Digital Rebel 300D". That's likely why I didn't find the same info you did for the Rebel XT. I'd bet that you're right about this info also applying to the 300D. Most of the current members on the Canon Users' forum probably haven't had their hands on a Digital Rebel for 15 years or longer (or ever).

If the need arises I'll suggest that she use nothing larger than a 4GB CF card. That should hold more than enough large, fine JPEGs. But finding some of these smaller capacity cards is getting to be a bit tricky these days. BHPhoto's selection, not surprisingly, seems to start out at 32GB.

Thanks again for sharing that link!

 

[paddler4]

just search online for "8 gb cf card" without the quotes. There are lots of 8 GB CF cards still available, but some cost almost as much as the camera is worth.

 

[Wilt]

Lotsa folks avoid shopping with Amazon, but they have 4GB CF

 

[Bobtographer]

Damn this takes me back.. I used 128MB cards with my 300D!

 

[Wilt]

Damn this takes me back.. I used 128MB cards with my 300D!

You're a youngster!...Canon G1 originally shipped with 16MB CF cards.

 

[BurnUnit]

I've seen some of the smaller 4GB or 8GB CF cards online. But most seemed to be unbranded, some were only sold in multi-packs of 6 or more, and some were kind of spendy.

It appeared that a lot of them specified usage with CAD plotting and cutting machines. I wondered what the write speeds might be and if they might be a little slow for camera use. Not that the Digital Rebel is any blazing speed demon. BHPhoto has single, brand name CF cards for sale but the smallest I saw was 32GB. And as I recall they were around $70.

 

[Bobtographer]

You're a youngster!...Canon G1 originally shipped with 16MB CF cards.

Oh I have a 4MB card floating around somewhere, but this thread is about the 300D and it's max CF capacity

 

[Nick5]

Talk of the old Rebel cameras reminds me that I need to grab my old XTi and give it a nice cleaning, along with 40D and 7D as we just moved and put it on display.

 

[paddler4]

I've seen some of the smaller 4GB or 8GB CF cards online. But most seemed to be unbranded, some were only sold in multi-packs of 6 or more, and some were kind of spendy.

You can find individual brand-name 8 GB CF cards online, but they cost more than that camera is worth.

My first digital SLR was a 10.1 MPX Rebel XTi, which was also known as the 10.1 MPX 400D. I believe it was introduced in 2006. For some purposes, it was a perfectly adequate camera. Here's one I took with that body and a used 50mm 1:2 Canon macro lens:

 

[Wilt]

Oh I have a 4MB card floating around somewhere, but this thread is about the 300D and it's max CF capacity

...which one response identified as 8GB (as noted in some reviews), prompting your comment about using ('only') 128MB (note: the 300D came with zero memory from the factory), to which I made comment of 16MB CF as the tiny size of the G-1 factory load.

 

[LeftHandBass]

The largest card I ever used with my 300D was 1GB. I've probably still got it somewhere!

 

[BuckSkin]

I have an old Digital Rebel

THIS THREAD shows how to use up to 128GB cards in a Rebel 300.

I have CFxSD adapters in all of our CF-only Canons and they work without a hitch; I cannot detect any difference in speed or photo quality between using a straight CF card and using the SD-card adapter.

A decent CFxSD adapter is around $14 and I have used just about every kind of SD card out there; I can buy a handful of SD cards for what a single CF will cost.

 

[BurnUnit]

THIS THREAD shows how to use up to 128GB cards in a Rebel 300.

I have CFxSD adapters in all of our CF-only Canons and they work without a hitch; I cannot detect any difference in speed or photo quality between using a straight CF card and using the SD-card adapter.

A decent CFxSD adapter is around $14 and I have used just about every kind of SD card out there; I can buy a handful of SD cards for what a single CF will cost.

Does the camera recognize the full capacity of the larger SD cards? I've seen comments online stating that the Digital Rebel may only be able to access 4GB or 8GB on the larger cards due to the older file system used on the older bodies. Though 4GB would still hold plenty of images from the old Digital Rebel series.

 

[BuckSkin]

Does the camera recognize the full capacity

Did you visit the link I provided ?

The way the author of that article I linked to explains it; instead of formatting the card in the camera, format the card as fat32 in the computer and do not format in the camera.

He states "using formatting software such as guiformat"; I asked the question whether just using the Windows capability to format to fat32 instead of using a 3rd party software would suffice and never got a response.

He does show a photo of his 300D displaying full capacity of a 64GB card.

 

[Wilt]

Did you visit the link I provided ?

The way the author of that article I linked to explains it; instead of formatting the card in the camera, format the card as fat32 in the computer and do not format in the camera.

The Canon camera does need to write some special information of its own, in order for it to be able to even see files for it to be abcle to view it for in-camera review...it does not work to simply copy a JPG to the card from a computer and then also have the camera able to display that JPG!

 

[BuckSkin]

The Canon camera does need to write some special information of its own, in order for it to be able to even see files for it to be abcle to view it for in-camera review...it does not work to simply copy a JPG to the card from a computer and then also have the camera able to display that JPG!

No jpeg is being copied to the card in-computer - the card is being formatted fat32 in-computer - no jpeg involved at that point.

 

[Wilt]

No jpeg is being copied to the card in-computer - the card is being formatted fat32 in-computer - no jpeg involved at that point.

My point is that the camera needs to write its own 'invisible (to you) information for each photo written by it to the card, so I believe that Canon needs to do something during its formatting process which is not done by normal computer formatting.
Canon's own information states,

"Using a computer to format a memory card, may seem to work, too. But, computer data can be stored in blocks of varying size. While the computer may use the correct file format, the block size could be incorrect for optimum read and write speeds by the camera. Any card formatted in a computer should still be formatted in the camera."​

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS-DSLR-Mirrorless-Cameras/Question-about-formatting-memory-cards/td-p/222038#:~:text=Memory%20cards%20are%20not%20pre%2Dformatted.,actually%20residue%20from%20the%20testing.

Plus:

"Format the card in the following cases:​

• The card is new.
• The card was formatted by a different camera or a computer.
• The card is full with images or data.
• A card-related error is displayed"

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