4gb CF vs. 2gb Xd

I have recently purchased an E-510, and one of the selling points for me was that I had about 12gb's of CF memory. I also purchased a 2gb Xd card. I currently have both the 2gb Xd and a 4gb CF card in the camera. When I set the camera for the highest resoultion (not RAW) it appears that not all of the density of the CF can be addressed. When the CF (4gb Sandisk) is selected the picture count shows that 258 images can be seved. Then I select the Xd (2gb Olympus) the count shows 264 images can be saved. Both cards have been formatted by the camera. Logic would tell me that the 4gb card should be nearly 2x the 2gb card. Does anyone have an idea as to what is happening?

I received this email from bristolcameras.co.uk


----- Original Message -----
From: customersupport@bristolcameras.co.uk
Subject: bristolcamera.co.uk FAQ's support
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:13:38 GMT

Dear Customer,


Answer is: Hi, the camera will accept CF cards up to 16Gb, it sounds like the CF card is only being read as a 2Gb (as the number of shots are the same as your xD card). Some Sandisk CF cards comes with a partition switch which basically lets you choose ! which half of the 4Gb card to take pictures on (2 lots of 2Gb) so check to see if you CF card has any small switches on. The only other thing i can think of is that it hasn\\\'t been formatted properly in FAT32 which is required to gain access to more than 2Gb of storage, so you could try making sure the card is formatted in the camera and then see how many shots are available. Hope this is of help to you.

Yours Sincerely,
Bristol Camera Administrator

__________________________________________________

My Reply to Bristol

Thanks,

Your were completely correct.

I feel like I should have known, or at least looked. After all I am a EE specializing in electronics. The only thing I can say in my defense is that the switch you described in very well hidden on the keying track of the CF, and I donot recall seeing anything in the documentation either.

It is an older card. (18 months or so)

on the front:

SanDisk (Logo)
4.0GB
Compact Flash


On the Back:

lower left side (same side as the switch) (DUHHH) is a diagram of the switch (guess I was too inorant to look)

and it shows three locations of the switch

left half of circle 3.-2GB
right half of circle 2.-2GB
full circle 1.-4GB


516 images can be saved to the CF now!

Thanks again

Iforget,
Excellent sleuth work, and thanks so much for the follow-up so we can all make use of the info. Obviously, not common knowledge as I had never heard of that before, and no one else jumped in with the information before you figured it out.
Larry