For once, the title says most of it, but if you’re one of of the few lucky enough to already have your hands on a D4 (the only current camera on the market that even takes XQD), you can now pick up a few more 16GB cards and enjoy even more of that delicious 125mbs write-speed goodness, as well as working on your sneer for those poor fools stuck using that antiquatd “compact flash” technology.
Go order yours here: http://robertscamera.com/xqd-h-series-memory-card.html
We don’t often talk memory on here, but considering most of our cameras would be pretty well just really high-tech paperweights without modern NAND memory technologies, we thought maybe we’d stp and talk about SanDisk’s new breakthrough. Notably, they’ve found a way to make a smaller, thinner (and we’re talking “thinner” for something that already has to be defined in nanometers here) wafer that’s smaller than an American penny but can hold 128GB and stores 3-bits per cell instead of the usual two, making it possibly the highest specced NAND of its type announced right now. Why do you care? Some analysts are saying it might only cost $0.28 per gigiabyte to manufacturer these new wafers, which means the progress of larger cards with faster speeds for less money is continuing unabated, that’s why. And, that’s gotta make you happy, right?
Press release after the jump, for all the nerdy details.
SDXC, which was announced at last year’s CES and has theoretical maximums of 2 TB capacity and 300mb/s speed (currently limited to 104mb/s, but the engineers remain confident they can break the barrier), is finally seeing some real-world love as Panasonic announces at this year’s CES that it’ll be dropping this on the market next month. The prices being batted around right now are jaw-dropping but not unexpected, at $499.95 for 48GB or $599.95 for 64GB. But, it’s good to see it cross the line to reality at all.
So we’re sitting on a moderate quantity of Sandisk’s Ultra II (Class 4) 2 gb SD cards. They’re going for the stupendously low clearance price of $5.97 each right now. Once they’re gone well, baby they’re gone. It’s a last-chance opportunity here because there aren’t any rain-checks, sleet-checks, body-checks, or IOUs -just cheap 15mbps SD cards.
Linked here: Sandisk Ult II 2gb SD clearance cards.
Around the end of the month, Lexar will be keeping up with the neighbors and releasing 600x speed CF cards in 8, 16GB sizes with 32GB on the way later. They’ll be shipping with a new ExpressCard reader that supports up to 133 mbps transfer speeds when slotted into a Mac or PC’s, ahem, express card slot.
With the D3s sporting a 48 RAW image buffer, the 5D Mark II, 7D, and 1D Mark IV all featuring HD video in varied frame rates and the 1D Mk IV shooting ten stills a second- high speed data transfer will obviously not go out of style any time soon.
Sandisk has gone official with its new lines of high-performance memory cards. At the top of the pack (if not at the top of the world) is the new Extreme Pro line. Available only in CompactFlash, the Extreme Pro line sports maximum write speeds of up to 90 megabytes per second (that’s 600x, for those of you used to the older terms). It’s also the not only UDMA, but it’s the newer UDMA 6 spec (which means it’s actually faster than your hard drive, very likely). As if to reinforce that these are, indeed, just for pros, they come in three sizes starting at 16 GB and working up to 64 GB.
Next up are the new “Extreme” line cards. No “III”, no “IV”, just plain old extreme. Apparently slotting above the Extreme IV line, but below the Extreme Pro line (and just-as-apparently replacing the discontinued “Ducati” line), the Extreme line comes in both CompactFlash and Secure Digital High Capacity flavors.
The CF flavors sport a jaunty 60 MB/s maximum write speed (400x), and are obviously UDMA-enabled (although since they don’t specify they’re probably the slower UDMA 5 spec). Oriented to be a bit more consumer-friendly, they come in three sizes from 8-32 GB.
And, lastly, we have the Extreme line in its SDHC flavor. Now extending up to a rather impressive 32 GB in capacity, these new SDHC’s feature 30 MB/s maximum write speed (200x), and, if Sandisk is using its classes properly, the note that it’s Class 10 should intimate that the slowest it’ll go is 10 MB/s. The SDHCs are available in four capacities.
Ever wanted to see USB drives like the Data Travelers being made? Do you now that I’ve mentioned the possibility? If you answered yes to either of those, check out the video below (found via Wired) and watch a nice tour of the factory.
I’ve been helping Nick slug through the new inventory list for the website (staff shortages the past couple of weeks and internet interruptions have made it something of a mess to catch up on), and hidden in there I found this little gem:
Kingston’s Elite Pro 133x Compact Flash Card – $24.97
Now, as you probably don’t know, the 4GB version of this card has been the staple of my shooting for the past year (I currently have two of them). Running at about 20 megabytes/second (133 x 1.5 kb/s = 199.5 = 19.95 mb/s, close enough for me), they’re fast enough for me to chug 10mb raw files at 5 frames per second for about 14 shots, and if I lay off the continuous drive it’ll clear the buffer in about 10-20 seconds I’m off again. Probably not for sportsshooters, but for your everyday joe that’s plenty fast enough.
And, while Kingston plays third fiddle to Sandisk and Lexar’s reputations it seems, their cards are certainly reliable in my experience (again, used two of them exclusively for a year, they’ve survived my washing machine and my attrocious habit of hot-swapping them in and out of readers and cameras.)
And, they’re 25 friggin’ bucks. You know that’s a nice price. A year ago I paid 40 bucks for the 4 GB one.
American-based Sandisk’s cards (and I’m going on a limb and guessing particularly the Ultra and Extreme III / Extreme IV series cards from them), seem to be quite popular among the readership over at Digital Photography School, with them snagging a notable majority after 2 weeks on the poll.
Survey Results Captured on July 22, 2009
And, while it doesn’t hurt our feelings any to see Sandisk doing well, they’re a wonderful company, Roberts should point out these polls shouldn’t dissuade you from Kingston (my card of choice right now, actually), or Lexar (very popular among pro users). All three of those companies produce very reliable cards these days and should be considered equally.
Did I forget to make a big fuss about the best spec ever on the new Olympus EP-1? Why yes, yes I did. So, allow me to illustrate the missing point with this diagram:
That’s right, that’s me showing you that Olympus has finally taken the plunge and gone to SD over their aging and (fairly) obnoxious xD format. I love Oly, everyone knows that, but man, xD was not a good time. This is a pretty huge occasion for them, and it had to be tough. If you need a hug, Olympus, I’m here for you, you did good.
