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…
When XQD memory cards were announced in December 2011, the CompactFlash Association touted the format as the successor to CompactFlash cards. We definitely seemed to be moving in that direction at first: one month after the unveiling, Nikon’s flagship D4 DSLR was announced with XQD card support. The day after that, Sony became the first major memory card maker to announce a line of XQD cards. Six months later, Lexar also announced its intentions to join the party.
Since then, things have died down to the point where you can hear grasshoppers chirping. Not a single XQD-capable camera was announced at Photokina 2012 this past week. Despite being the first to make them, Sony strangely decided to leave the cards out of its top-of-the-line cameras as well. Read more…
Up until now XQD cards have had a bit of a tough time getting off the ground. With only one compatible camera option in the Nikon D4, one manufacturer in Sony, and prices as large as the speeds they offer are impressive, people may have been starting to wonder if the format is here to stay. The answer, it seems, is yes — due in large part to Lexar’s newly announced interest in producing the cards by later this year. Read more…
At the end of last year a new format called XQD was unveiled as the eventual replacement for CompactFlash. About a month later at CES 2012, Sony announced the first XQD cards. If you’re not sold on the new format, here’s some good news for you: Lexar and SanDisk have both announced that they have no plans to release XQD cards in the near future and that they’re both committed to the CompactFlash format (a bit strange though, given that SanDisk was one of the companies that announced XQD in November 2010). Lexar’s actions certainly back up its words: at CES it unveiled its largest (256GB) and fastest (1000x) CompactFlash cards ever.
Well, well, well, look who’s first to the XQD game. It’s not Sandisk or Lexar, but Sony. On the same day Nikon announced its new D4 with XQD compatibility, Sony has announced the first line of XQD memory cards (intended to eventually replace CF cards). They offer 125MB/s transfer speeds, and can quickly store up to 100 RAW images in continuous shooting mode. A 16GB card will cost $129, while a 32GB one will be priced at $229. They’ll hit store shelves sometime in February.
In other news, Lexar has announced new 1000x CompactFlash cards, which can read at 150MB/s. A 128GB one is priced at a staggering $900. They’ve also announced the industry’s first 256GB card, which has read speeds of 60MB/s.
Perhaps in response to the growing capacities and falling prices of SD cards, the CompactFlash Association has announced a new format to replace CF cards for professional photographers. It’s called XQD, and has a size that falls between CF and SD cards (it’s thicker than SD cards, but smaller than CF cards). The interface used is PCI Express, which has a theoretical max write speed of roughly 600MB/s, though the target for real-world write speeds at first will be 125MB/s. It’ll start making public appearances at trade shows early next year, and will be licenced out to card makers around the same time.
Update: The deal prices seem to be fluctuating. They might not be what our screenshot shows.
In the market for memory cards? B&H is currently offering SanDisk Compact Flash cards at crazy prices. They’re listing Extreme Pro cards at less than 50% of the price offered at other retailers. For example, a 16GB Extreme Pro card currently costs $60 (with free shipping in the US) from B&H but $130+ at most other places.
Deal alert: you can buy a 16GB Kingston 266x CompactFlash card over at Buy.com for just $23 with shipping included. Just for comparison, these cards are listed for $33 everywhere else. Not sure how long this deal is good for.
Photographer Linhbergh recently purchased a used camera from B&H Photo Video and found a Compact Flash card left inside the camera containing photographs taken from inside the store offices. They offer an interesting glimpse into the operations at the largest non-chain photo equipment store in the United States. Read more…
Sure Lexar just launched a 128GB SDXC card, but that only transfers at a meager 20MB/s. SanDisk’s new Extreme Pro Compact Flash card announced today boasts the same 128GB capacity but has a write speed of up to 100MB/s. That extra 80MB/s is quite costly — unlike the $700 it costs to buy the Lexar SDXC card, this SanDisk one costs $1,500. But as they say, time is money… right?
