Lexar Announces Development of SD Express Memory Cards

[David - Sydney]

Uh, no it won't...you will be able to use your existing SD cards there.

Buying a camera with a CF Express slot (because Canon took your advice) WILL force you to buy new media even if regular SD speeds are satisfactory, if you have been using SD all along.

You are in the position of advocating forcing everyone else to upgrade to what you like (and never mind the fact that the reasons you give for liking it have largely been debunked by other replies). I generally agree with the things you say but this time, I really hope you don't get what you want, here.

My existing SD cards for my R5 would have hit buffer limits pretty quickly. I didn't even understand the V ratings when I bought them for my 5Div so got the wrong ones back then. The R5 forced me to buy new UHS-II and Type B cards to make sure the functionality worked. Yes, I could still buy a low spec SD card and take single shots if necessary but dual slots gives you redundancy anyway in case of failure.

The new cards were a significant cost and I wanted to make sure they would work for a long time. For my 5Diii I had to buy CF cards so it is not unusual to force users to buy new media.
In hindsight, I wish that Canon used dual CFe Cards in the R5. The space is there, the cost and availability at the time was the same and it is better to have dual media IMHO.

 

[SteveC]

The new cards were a significant cost and I wanted to make sure they would work for a long time. For my 5Diii I had to buy CF cards so it is not unusual to force users to buy new media.
In hindsight, I wish that Canon used dual CFe Cards in the R5. The space is there, the cost and availability at the time was the same and it is better to have dual media IMHO.

I'm glad they didn't. I'd have been forced to buy very expensive cards designed for a group of features I have no interest in using (basically ones that can inelegantly be lumped under "super duper video"), in order not to be stuck with a 20MP sensor by stepping down to the R6.

I really wish the R6 had been 30-35 MP.

If nothing else you've just convinced me the people who gripe about wanting the same camera without having to pay for the video might actually have a point--at least, in a hypothetical universe where the R5 had two CFE slots. Sure, leaving out the video probably wouldn't lower the cost of the camera, but if putting it IN had meant the guy buying the camera has to buy the damn cards and a card reader because the camera wouldn't take an SD card, that's an added expense, albeit one external to the camera itself. Fortunately, the camera does take an SD card so the gripers working off a bad premise (that removing the video would significantly cheapen the camera itself) are still just gripers working off a bad premise.

If you had your way, anyone wanting to take high res stills would have no choice but to buy very expensive cards designed for a video data rate. Thankfully, Canon knew better.

 

[David - Sydney]

I'm glad they didn't. I'd have been forced to buy very expensive cards designed for a group of features I have no interest in using (basically ones that can inelegantly be lumped under "super duper video"), in order not to be stuck with a 20MP sensor by stepping down to the R6.

Remember that USH-II cards and CFe Type B cards were the same price last year and UHS-II cards were needed to handle the fps @ 45mp. Buying the R5 12 months after release gives better options for saving money. I did pre-order but have no regrets even if the price was somewhat painful at the time

If nothing else you've just convinced me the people who gripe about wanting the same camera without having to pay for the video might actually have a point--at least, in a hypothetical universe where the R5 had two CFE slots. Sure, leaving out the video probably wouldn't lower the cost of the camera, but if putting it IN had meant the guy buying the camera has to buy the damn cards and a card reader because the camera wouldn't take an SD card, that's an added expense, albeit one external to the camera itself. Fortunately, the camera does take an SD card so the gripers working off a bad premise (that removing the video would significantly cheapen the camera itself) are still just gripers working off a bad premise.

Yes, the CFe Type B card reader was an additional expense for me. I now know that I can just use the USB-C connector (or even wifi) to offload from the camera though so it isn't mandatory. I don't have a UHS-II card reader though and just have slow transfers via a UHS-I slot. It is good to be backward compatible in this case

If you had your way, anyone wanting to take high res stills would have no choice but to buy very expensive cards designed for a video data rate. Thankfully, Canon knew better.

Again, 12fps @45mp (or 20fps eshutter) still needs the very expensive UHS-II cards. There wasn't a cost difference at the time.

SD Express will be expensive for years to come. Whether they sell in volume and be cheaper than the equivalent capacity and performance of the CFe card is a good question. Whether people need it is another good question but 10 years ago it would have been hard to imagine a camera having 12fps @45mps or even 4k/120 or 8k in a small body

 

[Dragon]

Sony didn't have a choice but to use the dual SD USH-II/Type A slot on the A1. They needed to support 8K recording which UHS-II can't do and their body is small so dual CFe Type B wasn't an option. Can you imagine the situation where the A1 was future proof by including CFe Type A but there was no cards available to support their 8k recording? Sony had to make them because no one is.

CFe Type B spec was launched 2Q17 => multiple OEMs and multiple cameras using them in 2020
CFe Type A spec was launched 1Q19 => 1 OEM and 1 camera using them in 2021
SD UHS-II spec was launch in 2014 => Wikipedia says that >50 cameras is now using it in 2021 so it must be true
SD UHS-III spec was launched 1Q17 => no support from OEM or users
SD Express spec 7 was launched 2Q18 => had hacking issues
SD Express spec 8 was launched 2Q20 => extra row of pins. 2021 = 1 OEM and no camera using them. Backward compatible to UHS-I
I would suggest that SD Express is late to the party and could be rendered obsolete just as UHS-III has been
Anecdotally, A1 users are not buying CFe Type A cards yet due to their current cost, capacity limitations and availability relying instead on USH-II cards

I get the SD card backward compatibility benefits but that is the only benefit that I can see. It takes a few years to get manufacturers to make and distribute new cards after the spec is released. CFe Type B and UHS-II has been successful but SD Express brings a limited incremental performance (based on the Lexar announcement) and still slow compared to CFe B

True but they can be combined into one slot which the A1 needed. XQD and CFe Type B cards also use the same physical slot.

I think the reason you haven't seen SD express until now is technology related. CFE B cards get quite hot in spite of their much larger size. Sony had to put contact cooling into the A1 to keep the CFE A cards from overheating. SD cards have always been very forgiving of the the environment they are used in, so making an SD Express card that required a contact head sink would have been heresy. I suspect the latest generation of PCIE driver chips has lowered the power enough to avoid the extra complexity, so now we see SD Express on the near horizon. CFE cards will also take advantage of the march of technology, but in the end, the CFE A cards will likely be at a price disadvantage (particularly if Sony continues to be the only one making them). My bet is that CFE B cards are here to stay and CFE A cards will bite the dust along with all the other Sony-only storage formats (Betamax anyone?). CFE B and SD Express will also thrash the proprietary professional video cards from Sony and Panasonic because they have always been ludicrously overpriced and that is not likely to change.

 

[David - Sydney]

I think the reason you haven't seen SD express until now is technology related. CFE B cards get quite hot in spite of their much larger size. Sony had to put contact cooling into the A1 to keep the CFE A cards from overheating. SD cards have always been very forgiving of the the environment they are used in, so making an SD Express card that required a contact head sink would have been heresy. I suspect the latest generation of PCIE driver chips has lowered the power enough to avoid the extra complexity, so now we see SD Express on the near horizon. CFE cards will also take advantage of the march of technology, but in the end, the CFE A cards will likely be at a price disadvantage (particularly if Sony continues to be the only one making them). My bet is that CFE B cards are here to stay and CFE A cards will bite the dust along with all the other Sony-only storage formats (Betamax anyone?). CFE B and SD Express will also thrash the proprietary professional video cards from Sony and Panasonic because they have always been ludicrously overpriced and that is not likely to change.

I agree. The SD Express spec has only recently been released and the CFe B card/slot gets really hot. This is clearly due to the data speeds but they also seem to generate heat with just the card installed and ready to write which is a definite issue.
My guess is that CFe B cards and UHS-II will be the ones to stay - at least for the next few years. Sony Type A cards will go the way of the Memory Stick. There just isn't demand for additional formats/cameras needing increased speed that can't be addressed today.
The benefits for SD Express is that they are smaller than CFe and perhaps the lower voltage will mean lower heat generation but I can't see them replacing CFe B cards IMHO.

Who knows in 5 years time though. Maybe future cameras will use HDMI 2.1 for external recording of 8k raw and avoid internal video recording due to heat generation or only compressed/lower quality video... especially as the price of high capacity cards is really dear. 20 minutes of 8k raw is 512gb CFe Card @ ~USD500 and you would need to change batteries when the card is changed. Raw light is better @ 20minutes on 256GB

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Sony didn't have a choice but to use the dual SD USH-II/Type A slot on the A1

The SD Express option was already around for three years.
Sony was the first to make CFExpress Type A slots and cards.
They could have been the first to make SD Express slots and cards.
They may very well have a good reason to choose CF Express Type-A but they did have a choice.

 

[VegasCameraGuy]

The only issue I see with cameramemoryspeed.com is it doesn't appear that they've posted anything since 2018, 3 years ago?

 

[VegasCameraGuy]

I used to feel one type card slot would suit me better, turns out I was wrong for the times I have needed it but I appreciate everybody doesn't use their card slots the same as me.

I find having a ubiquitous card type can help pass off images to third parties quickly. I shoot RAW to my main card and when possible jpegs to an SD card. If I really need 'backup' there is little I can't save by just having a jpeg but I can give that card to practically anybody and they can upload those files either with or without editing software to social media to raise awareness of their event quickly and easily.

I agree and also use a CFx for RAWs and the SD for JPGs. Personally, I would rather have two CFx cards and hopefully, the camera would be fast enough to write two RAWs at a time.

 

[privatebydesign]

I agree and also use a CFx for RAWs and the SD for JPGs. Personally, I would rather have two CFx cards and hopefully, the camera would be fast enough to write two RAWs at a time.

I’ve just never felt the need for dual RAW or using two cards slots as ‘backup’, I never use that as a strategy. So for me, despite the fact I thought I’d prefer two of the same slot, the truth is my actual use is different, I use the different card slots for different uses. The ubiquity of SD cards suits fast on site jpeg delivery, the speed of a ‘better’ bigger card suits RAW capture. For me.

 

[Sporgon]

I’ve just never felt the need for dual RAW or using two cards slots as ‘backup’, I never use that as a strategy. So for me, despite the fact I thought I’d prefer two of the same slot, the truth is my actual use is different, I use the different card slots for different uses. The ubiquity of SD cards suits fast on site jpeg delivery, the speed of a ‘better’ bigger card suits RAW capture. For me.

And me.

 

[privatebydesign]

And me.

It’s funny to me how often Canon get it right , despite my own opinion! They come out with what I need rather than what I think I want.

 

[SteveC]

Remember that USH-II cards and CFe Type B cards were the same price last year and UHS-II cards were needed to handle the fps @ 45mp. Buying the R5 12 months after release gives better options for saving money. I did pre-order but have no regrets even if the price was somewhat painful at the time

Yes....and no.

I could buy a 128Gb SD card of that type, and yes, it was expensive per GB.

I couldn't buy a compatible CF-E card of that size (i.e., the limited number of ones that were claimed to be compatible, that weren't made by S*ny), the minimum seemed to be half a terabyte. So it was four times as much money to play because of the table minimum.

(If I ever were to fill a half terabyte card, my problems would have just begun.)

 

[David - Sydney]

The SD Express option was already around for three years.
Sony was the first to make CFExpress Type A slots and cards.
They could have been the first to make SD Express slots and cards.
They may very well have a good reason to choose CF Express Type-A but they did have a choice.

Not sure they had a choice. With no sd express cards available this year, they would needed to use uhs-I cards as sd express cards are not backward compatible with uhs-ii catds. Sony could have made sd express cards I guess but decided that cfe cards made more sense to them

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Not sure they had a choice. With no sd express cards available this year, they would needed to use uhs-I cards as sd express cards are not backward compatible with uhs-ii catds. Sony could have made sd express cards I guess but decided that cfe cards made more sense to them

There were no CF Express Type-A cards available either until Sony made them.
I am not saying that I am sure that Sony could have developed SD Express in the same time frame.
I am just raising the question of why they chose CF Express Type-A.
A combined drive took a lot of ingenuity but using SD Express seems the logical choice

 

[David - Sydney]

There were no CF Express Type-A cards available either until Sony made them.
I am not saying that I am sure that Sony could have developed SD Express in the same time frame.
I am just raising the question of why they chose CF Express Type-A.
A combined drive took a lot of ingenuity but using SD Express seems the logical choice

Sony always likes to back a memory format winner.