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.
Here’s a short and sweet video in which famed wedding photographer Joe Buissink shares some advice regarding the “psychology” of wedding photography, or how to capture genuine emotions and expressions on camera. The tips he shares are useful for other kinds of photography as well, not just wedding or engagement photography.
Lexar posted this interesting behind-the-scenes video showing how they make memory cards from start to finish. May the ingenuity and engineering-prowess of man amaze you and cause you to appreciate your memory cards more. Imagine what it would be like to watch this video back in the early 1900s…
Lexar has announced two new SDXC memory cards ahead of CES 2011 that tip the scales at a whopping 64GB and 128GB. The Class 10 cards have transfer speeds of up to 20MB/s, meaning a full 128GB card would take nearly 2 hours to unload. Ordinary photographers won’t likely need storage capacities anywhere near what these cards offer, but people who work primarily with HD video may find these sizes useful. The capacities aren’t the only way these cards are massive — the costs are up there as well, with the 64GB priced at $400 and the 128GB at $700. They’ll hit the market sometime in early 2011.
Lexar recently put out this video showing what goes on inside their quality labs. It’s pretty much an advertisement for the brand, but it’s an interesting look at how the memory cards we use are tested for quality. It’s pretty crazy how each of the memory card lines are tested on the 800+ cameras and devices stored in the lab, and how there’re high-tech machines for testing everything from shocks to temperature in a controlled way.
