ACADEMY
MEMORY CARDS
IMAGE The Sony A7S III is the only camera that currently uses the brand new CFexpress Type A cards
5 XQD These cards found favour in cameras like the Sony Z100 and FS7 cinema camera, as well as Nikon’s D4 camera that was launched as far back as 2012. However, since then, XQD cards have had upgrades. They have become faster, which has necessitated newer card readers. The original S Series had a speed of just 180MB/s, but now, the speed has almost tripled in the G-series cards. Maximum size has also increased to 2TB. The XQD is physically the same as the CFexpress Type B and therefore fits inside the same cameras that use these newer cards. But unfortunately, they don’t necessarily work. Some cameras can accept them, though, such as the Nikon Z 6, Z 7, D500 and D850, Panasonic S1 and S1R. 6 CFast 2.0 The relatively rare CFast 2.0 cards are very similar in size and form factor to CompactFlash, but have totally different connections, so they are not compatible at all. They actually use the same connection as SATA hard disk drives. But the power connection is not the same, so an adapter is needed to use themon standard SATA ports. Not that anyone sensible ever would. Compared to CF, they are much faster with a typical rating of 3500x, which equals 525MB/s. They are used in some of the most high-end, data-hungry cameras.
In standard CF cards, the fastest were 133x, or 20MB/s, which is pretty pedestrian. Then, Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) spec cards came out. If your camera was compatible with the faster speed, they were a much quicker alternative. These initially came in 200x speed, about 30MB/s, but this increased quite quickly to about 1000x, which equates to about 150Mb/s. These are typically UDMA Class 7 cards. Despite their capabilities, there aren’t any current cameras that use them any more. Legacy cameras like the Nikon D5 can, though.
Cameras that use CFast 2.0 include the Arri Alexa Mini and Amira and Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K, but also the Canon XC15 hybrid. CFast 2.0 cards remain relatively expensive, so it’s an odd choice by Canon. 7 CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) cards were the mainstay of many professional DSLR cameras. They’re larger andmore robust than SD cards, making them less likely to be lost in a pocket. CF cards were often faster than SD cards, but this advantage has gone as SD receives the lion’s share of investment.
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