Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Well, this is a surprise. Manfrotto has entered the world of memory cards. And they’ve done it with UHS-II V90 SD cards, V30 microSD cards, and UDMA7 CompactFlash. They’re called Pro RUGGED memory cards, and Manfrotto says that they are “the toughest memory cards on the market” for professionals.
Although unexpected, the launch of SD and microSD cards makes some sense, but the CompactFlash is an odd choice when everybody else seems to be piling onto the CFexpress bandwagon right now.
A year or so ago, I wrote a blog post on why I switched from Nikon to Sony. A few people asked why I didn’t move to the Nikon mirrorless system. And the answer was simple, I didn’t want to risk shooting a wedding with a single memory card slot.
I shoot RAW to both cards at every wedding. And have a rigorous backup process once home too. I know lots prefer to have their backup as Jpeg, but if my main card failed, I’d still want to have the RAW files. That’s just personal choice. I just believe that shooting a wedding with no real-time backup whatsoever, is irresponsible when there’s no real need to.
You know, I was just thinking the other day when SanDisk announced their new cards that Angelbird’s been awfully quiet on the CFexpress front. They’ve become a very popular brand over the last couple of years when it comes to high-performance CFast, SSD and other storage formats. So their silence with regard to CFexpress cards, when everybody else seems to have announced some, was surprising.
Now, though, Angelbird has officially announced that they’re entering the CFexpress market with two new cards, the AV PRO CFX for cinema users, and AVPRO CFX XT for tough heavy-duty industrial needs. Naturally, they’re bringing out their own CFexpress card reader to go along with them.
Sony Tough SD cards are basically indestructible. They’re unbendable, waterproof, shock-proof and freeze-proof. According to Sony, even X-ray, magnet or high temperatures won’t kill them. But are they really that tough? Steve Huff put them to an ultimate torture test in a swimming pool, washer, drier, ice and even blender. So, how tough is Sony Tough?
Although there have been some announcements of 1TB memory cards, Lexar seems to have beat them all. The company has released the world’s first 1TB SDXC memory card and it’s officially the first one actually available in the market.
After Lexar’s Polish distributor announced that Lexar will no longer produce XQD cards in order to focus on CFexpress, Lexar has issued a further statement to Nikon Rumors. In the statement, they say that availability of XQD has been “held up by multiple parties”, specifically naming Sony.
The SD card market seems to be hotting up, and getting pretty competitive (and fast!). With Lexar seemingly back, ProGrade taking square aim at the high-end market, and SanDisk & Sony releasing new cards boasting big numbers like there’s no tomorrow, who really is the fastest these days?
That’s what the folks at Camera Memory Speed wanted to find out when they tested 113 different UHS-I and UHS-II SD cards to find out which is the fastest in the Canon EOS R mirrorless camera.
This is probably not much of a surprise to some, but it will be very disappointing to others. Especially those who might have recently bought or pre-ordered a camera with an XQD card slot. It seems that Lexar is now not going to be making XQD cards since it moved from Micron to Longsys, after all.
The news comes as Polish distributor, My Adventure, issued a statement. The (Google) translated release reads “XQD cards with the Lexar logo will not appear on the market”. They say that Lexar’s focus is now on the XQD & CFast successor, CFexpress.
Recently, a user on Sony Alpha subreddit reported an issue with his a7 III when a SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB SDXC UHS-I Card is inserted. They were looking for an advice from fellow Sony users, but as it turned out – many more of them have had the same issue with the same memory card type.
Summary: One of the photographer’s greatest fears is to lose a significant chunk of images from a big trip or event. In this long-form article, find out how a memory card failure caused a week of photographs to disappear, what I did to try to recover them via software, then physical data services, and the valuable lessons, counter to common knowledge, to be learned about memory cards, dual card slots, and backups to prevent such a nightmare scenario from happening to you.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!