Copy protection and data encryption are standard in most storage media, but you don’t often hear of copy protection as it pertains to memory cards. Although all SD cards come with a form of DRM copy protection (CPRM), it’s rarely used; and something as common as re-formatting the memory card can erase protected sections that are required to make use of the copy protection in the first place.

Other copy-protected memory card options are marketed to/used mainly by companies, and not typical consumers. Seeing this market as an opportunity, Transcend Information recently announced plans to manufacture its own copy-protected SD and microSD cards and a corresponding reader. 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.
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Check out the two memory cards above. One of them is a counterfeit card while the other is a genuine one. Can you tell which is which? If you can’t, we don’t blame you. Japan-based photography enthusiast Damien Douxchamps couldn’t either until he popped the fake card into his camera and began shooting. The card felt a bit sluggish, so he ran some tests on his computer. Turned out the 60MB/s card was actually slower than his old 45MB/s card.

While it’s not unusual to come across counterfeit memory cards — it’s estimated that 1/3 of “SanDisk”-labeled cards are — what’s a bit concerning is how Douxchamps purchased his: he ordered the cards off Amazon — cards that were “fulfilled by Amazon.”
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Just a few years ago, Eye-Fi was the only company at the wireless memory card party; now the dance floor’s starting to get a bit crowded. Transcend launched its own line of Wi-Fi SD cards yesterday, joining Eye-Fi, SanDisk, Toshiba, and PQI.
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Eye-Fi, a pioneer in the Wi-Fi-enabled memory card market, has announced a new flagship SD memory card. The new Pro X2 doubles the capacity of the old one, from 8GB to 16GB, and increases the speed as well, from Class 6 to Class 10.
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A few days ago we shared the story of a memory card that stayed alive after three years at the bottom of a muddy creek. What’s important to note is that the card had the luxury of being protected by the Canon XT it was inside — a camera that was utterly destroyed during those three years.

What if memory cards could be as durable as the weatherproof cameras that are becoming popular amongst compact camera users? That’s what Panasonic is trying to do with its new line of sturdy SD cards.
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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…

Needing a way to test the speed of memory cards, Jaroslav of Crazy Lab realized that camera shutter sounds can do the trick. By recording the sound of his Canon 600D snapping away in continuous burst mode and then viewing them audio file, he was able to visualize the card’s speed and compare them against each other. He also learned some things about burst speed and ISO/format:

As you can see, the burst length is getting shorter with rising ISO. The time camera needs to write the buffer to the card is also significantly grown. The reason is the noise. On higher ISO settings we getting more noise in picture and noisy pictures are not good for compression. The RAW-File size (black picture shouted with closed lens cap) varies from 19MB @ ISO100 to 32MB @ ISO12800.

Also interesting is the comparsion of burst speed shooting in RAW versus JPEG. While the burst length with JPEG files is virtually infinite (with fast sd-card), the burst speed is slightly lower.

You don’t need anything fancy to do this experiement: Jaroslav used a webcam mic and the free audio program Audacity.

Measuring the performance of DSLR cameras [Crazy Lab]

Nikon D4 owners looking to speed up their transfer rates may take well to the news that Sony has just announced its new S-Series XQD cards — although their wallets probably won’t react in kind. The new cards, which will be available in Japan on July 11th, can hit transfer speeds of up to 168MB/s, and will come in both 32 and 64 gigabyte sizes. Read more…

Here’s a great little-known tip coming at you via photographer Dan Carr that has the potential to make using Lightroom just that much easier. If you didn’t already know — and it seems most people didn’t — assuming you have enough card readers, you can actually import multiple memory cards into Lightroom all at once.

Many amateurs and most enthusiasts never shoot more than one card at a time, but professionals often fill up several over the course of a photo shoot. For them, this tip should help get the process of importing all of those cards into Lightroom closer to that ideal “set it and forget it” scenario.

(via ISO 1200)