When it comes to data, redundancy is the best policy; backup, backup and backup again. This is doubly true where photos are involved, which is why professional photographers have gotten in the habit of keeping several external backups or using multiple cards for backup in DSLRs that support twin slots.

And now, Japanese company Amulet is hoping to add yet another layer of safety (and peace of mind) between you and the potential loss of your photos with its upcoming ‘Wise CF Card Duo.’ Read more…

A week ago we shared some reports that Toshiba was developing a re-focusable smartphone camera, but it looks like its sights are set on bigger fish than just Lytro’s market. While the photo world was focusing on the tiny re-focusing camera, Toshiba officially announced a new line of high performance CF cards that should blow the competition away and, the company hopes, secure one third of the CF market by 2015.

The new cards — dubbed the Exceria Pro series — are set to launch in Spring of this year and bring with them read and write speeds very near the theoretical 167MB/second max provided by the CF’s UDMA 7 interface.
Read more…

Photographer Jeff Cable purchased a couple Canon 5D Mark IIIs recently and discovered that although the camera offers both SD and CF card slots, you should avoid the SD slot if you want maximum shooting speed. He writes,

[...] for some reason unbeknownst to me, Canon decided to build the 5D Mark III with one very fast CF slot which supports the newer UDMA7 protocol and a standard SD card slot which does NOT support the high speed standard [...] Without UHS [Ultra High Speed] support, the top speed that can be achieved by the SD card is 133x. This is true even if you purchase a 600x SD card and insert it in the camera. The best you will get is 133x

It turns out that the camera will default to the slowest card inserted. So, if you have a 1000x CF card in slot one and any SD card in the second slot, the very best buffer clear that will achieve is 133x.

It might not be a big deal for most photographers, but if your line of work requires clearing the camera’s buffer as quickly as possible, it something you might want to be aware of.

Why you should not put an SD card in your Canon 5D Mark III (via Photography Bay)

Image credit: Photograph by Jeff Cable