CF or XQD for D5? XQD + SD for D500?

<p>CF memory cards are based on the out-of-date Parallel ATA (PATA) technology. A decade ago I used to have a lot of PATA hard drives; they have all been replaced by Serial ATA (SATA), which is what CFast is based upon. Besides those vulnerable pins, the move away from PATA/CF is inevitable due to various speed demands, more pixels + higher frame rate, 4K video and future 8K video down the road.</p>

<p>The main issue at this point is that there is not just one clear successor to CF. There are XQD and CFast. Hence another memory card format war is brewing, and unfortunately there will probably be one winner and one loser, rather than co-existence.</p>

<p>As we discussed some 11 years ago on the following 2004 thread, memory card prices can drop drastically: <a href="/nikon-camera-forum/00AQk2" rel="nofollow">D2H Price Drop-Just in Time for Christmas?</a><br /> CFast and XQD may appear to be very expensive now. Potentially it can change in a real hurry:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=67577">Michael Dougherty</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub10plus.gif" alt="" /></a>, Dec 15, 2004; 10:51 p.m.</p>

<p>I also paid $3,200 for my D2H at the beginning of 2004. I bought two 1-gig CF cards and one 2-gig card for a total of $1,200 at the same time. Now these cards are worth $400 for a nice $800 loss. Add to that the D2H and I only blew $2,000 since the beginning of the year. Could have bought a very good lens instead.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>In that same year 2004, in March I bought a $240 1G CF card. By October, they were selling that same card for $70. Of course, by now you can get a 64G card for less than $70.</p>

<p>If one can afford a $6500 performance camera in the D5, to me, choosing the CF option seems to be a bit shortsighted.</p>

<p>Incidentally, since the D5 is introduced and therefore the D4S no longer in production (officially or practically), the only other current Nikon DSLR that still accepts CF memory cards is the D810 (and its special astro-photography edition D810A). Everything else uses SD from the Df, D750 and down.<br>

<br />It seems obvious that technologies in the D5 and D500 will trickle down to the successor to the D810 and so on. It'll be interesting to see which memory card slots Nikon puts into the successor to the D810. It'll probably be XQD + SD just like the D500. On the Sony's end, maybe they'll also start putting XQD in the next generation of A7 cameras ....</p>

<p>Meanwhile, are we going to see CFast in the successor to Canon's 1DX soon?</p>

<p>Not sure it is exactly fun, but it is interesting to witness technology evolves.</p>

Edited December 29, 2018 by ShunCheung

<blockquote>

<p>"Lexar makes those cards too."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Micron/Lexar may well make the flash memory chips that are then XQD wrapped (probably under license), but only Sony have the clout to steer the standards, production and marketing of XQD.</p>

<p>Fundamentally, any flash memory has its speed limit built in at the chip level. Those chips could then be wrapped and connected any which way. But passing through a PCI-express bus seems like an unnecessary detour that must again reach a limit. It may be expedient to use an existing interface standard, but short-sighted nonetheless. For example; we've still to get memory sticks that fully utilise the transfer speed that USB 3.0 is capable of. And even at a few tens of MB a second, they still get darned warm! A metal wrapper would serve as a heatsink <em>and</em> make the package more robust; and that's something that should be part of the standard. Not a flimsy piece of heat-insulating plastic as seemingly specified by Sony et al.</p>

<p>Sony, Sandisk, Nikon were behind the original XQD design. You seem to be so bothered by anything that involves Sony (does it not bother you that some of your cameras have Sony sensors in them?). Who then should design it if not Sony or Sandisk, or Lexar for that matter? In any case both SD and CF have problems; SD cards are fragile, in my case instead of dying after 100000 writes they seem to be dying 1000 times more prematurely than they should, and CF cards can break pins in readers and cameras. So a new physical standard is needed that is more robust. XQD seems very good in that respect. Nikon is of the opinion that systems are rapidly moving from eSATA to PCIe and this is why they don't want to use CFast/eSATA as a stopgap format but think XQD is the future.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Sony, Sandisk, Nikon were behind the original XQD design.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Right, but the problem is that Sandisk has not produced any XQD card for the market. In the last four years, only Sony and Lexar are selling XQD cards. Granted, only a few high-end Sony video cameras and the D4 family use XQD, but that is changing.</p>

<p>Instead, Sandisk is currently producing the rival CFast cards along with Lexar and Transcend, and that market is so far only limited to some high-end video cameras. Since Sandisk is one of the two dominant memory card producers, this whole situation leads to confusion and uncertainty in the market. We'll see whether Sandisk jumps back into the XQD market as demand goes up.</p>

<p>Just for fun, I am attaching a screenshot of the eight XQD version 2 cards currently available at B&H. I am excluding a couple of cheaper version 1 cards. It'll be interesting to revisit the cost and capacity (both memory size and speed) down the road. While they are not cheap, but if you can live with the slower version, a 64G Lexar XQD is $120. Two years ago I was paying a similar price for a 64G, 95MB/sec SD card.</p><div></div>

<p>I noticed on Saturday that Adorama had reduced the price of the Lexar 64 GB XQD 2933 card from $229.95 down to $192.95. On Sunday it was back to $229.95. Not sure if it was just a one day special or an error.</p>

<p>Joining this a bit late... I think both XQD and CFast goofed by losing backwards-compatibility. It should have been possible for either to use the original CF form-factor and have dual-mode pins, at least on some devices. SD cards have pushed the speeds considerably, and UHS-II is at least backwards-compatible. It's not exactly set the world on fire yet, but at least I know I can stick a budget SD card in a UHS-II camera if I'm out of space, and use a UHS-II card in an elderly card reader to get the images off. (At least, I hope - I remember plenty of compatibility problems in the SDHC generation.) SD is also small enough to have integrated readers in a lot of laptops. Personally I prefer the CF form-factor, but since most cards only support the HD/PATA implementation and not the rest of PCMCIA which CF originally handled, SD cards often tend to be more flexible - witness Eye-Fi. SD - give or take micro and (occasionally) mini formats which always had adaptors - has survived with good compatibility from MMC to UHS-II. Change to a new format - like SmartMedia and xD - and you're really going to have to persuade the consumers of the reason to switch. Or you could keep smacking your head against the wall - I can't believe Sony are still trying to push Memory Stick.<br />

<br />

Had there not been the format fight between XQD and CFast, one might be competing with SD cards by now. Yet again, the short-sighted decisions of companies using those standards have resulted in nobody winning, and SD is by far the most ubiquitous format. Blu-ray only took off when HD-DVD collapsed. If one of XQD and CFast loses its supporters, I'd expect the other to get some support - but for now, everyone's waiting, and SD, for all its disadvantages, looks like the only safe bet for a card format.<br />

<br />

BeBu: I would argue that if you don't need a lot of cards (or don't care about big cards), you don't need a D5. It's a speed camera, it'll fill a card very quickly. Still, could be worse - the F5 can chew a film roll in 4.5 seconds if something presses on the shutter button.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I think both XQD and CFast goofed by losing backwards-compatibility.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Andrew, SD is physically too small such that backward compatibility with that is impossible. Backward compatibility with CF means retaining all of those vulnerable pins required for Parallel ATA, but that is the very major disadvantage of CF (besides the speed limitation for PATA/CF) we would like to stay away from. In other words, backward compatibility is a non-starter.</p>

<p>As I pointed out above, the remaining Nikon DSLRs that are still using CF are the D4/D4S and D810/D810A. The entire D800 series has dual CF/SD card slots. We are now in 2016. You need to go back to DSLRs introduced in the last decade to find ones that can only use CF: the D3 family has dual CF slots and the D700 and D300. In other words, the need to support CF has largely faded by now.</p>

<p>Again, I wish Nikon would only support XQD on the D5 to speed up the conversion to the new card type. Having two flavors of the D5 shows that Nikon is uncertain on one hand, but they are pushing XQD onto the D500 on the other. Assuming that XQD indeed takes off, those who have the CF flavor of the D5 may have difficulty selling it in the used market in the future (i.e. D5 w/ CF will likely have a lower value than those w/ XQD). At least Nikon provides a backdoor for people to a get a D5 converted to the other card type.</p>

<p>Incidentally, I have confirmed with Nikon that such memory slot conversion service will be available for the D5. It is not clear how much the cost will be. I assume it will be in the order of a couple hundred dollars, but that just my guess.</p>

<blockquote>Andrew, SD is physically too small such that backward compatibility with that is impossible.</blockquote>

 

<p>Well, UHS-II has compatibility with SD already, and seems to be continuing for now. I wasn't talking about that for XQD/CFast, though.</p>

 

<blockquote>Backward compatibility with CF means retaining all of those vulnerable pins required for Parallel ATA,</blockquote>

 

<p>True, unless the first set of XQD cards had double-ended interfaces. (Which would make them expensive. Except they are...)</p>

 

<blockquote>but that is the very major disadvantage of CF (besides the speed limitation for PATA/CF) we would like to stay away from. In other words, backward compatibility is a non-starter.</blockquote>

 

<p>Well, I don't deny not being a fan of the pin interface - I've only ever mangled pins in a reader (although I've killed hard disks). But given "risk bending a camera pin, which I've never done" as an alternative to "spend a lot of money on cards and readers for a format that nobody may adopt and which there's no way to share with legacy devices", I'd risk the pins. That there aren't a huge number of XQD or CFast devices on the market suggests to me that I'm not alone. I think they chose the more imperfect of two imperfect solutions.</p>

 

<blockquote>the need to support CF has largely faded by now.</blockquote>

 

<p>The D8x0 and D4(s) had to support CF because they were successors to the D700 (denialists aside) and D3 series; people had a lot of CF cards. Since my (CF) D700 and (CF - but sometimes type-II) 300D, I've had a D800 and D810. And I have even more CF cards for them - in the D800's case because that was the fastest write option, and it would hang in live view until the image had been written. My fastest CF card is still faster than my fastest SD card. If Nikon had put a UHS-II interface in the D810, I might only have used my old CF cards for backup. As is, they're still very much in use. Because they're faster, I usually write JPEG to SD card (where I can access it in a hurry) and raw to CF - so I need more CF cards. I also have an Eye-Fi, which would avoid SD space being a limit at all under some circumstances. Summary, I have a lot of CF cards, a reasonable number of which are faster than the SD cards I've got. Without confidence about XQD's future, I'd absolutely hesitate on buying an XQD-only camera right now - I'm very glad that Nikon have a conversion service for the D5. It would make me hesitate for the D500, but then so would switching to DX; I'd likely concentrate on the SD cards and invest in UHS-II.<br />

<br />

Nikon's problem is that I doubt two camera segments from one manufacturer are going to be enough to convert the market to XQD. They'd have more luck if they put it in the D3400 - at least they'd sell more of them. If Canon starts supporting XQD, and if it bubbles down Nikon's range, I'll start believing (I'm a little surprised the D810 didn't got this way). With the D5, I almost believe they'd have been better with an e-SATA interface. I'm happy to be an early adopter, but I've seen too many format wars come and go to want to be on the losing side of another one, however nice - especially with Nikon still hedging their bets.</p>

<p>There is little doubt that Nikon is going to update the D810, with the new Multi-CAM 20K (20000) AF module on the D5 and D500. Perhaps they will add more pixels since Sony and Canon have been doing so. I wonder whether Nikon will also put XQD + SD UHS-II on that just like the D500. If so, 2016 will be remembered to be the year XQD is finally launched, and other than those who choose the CF option on the D5, there will soon be no current Nikon DSLR that uses CF any more.</p>

<p>IMO putting XQD + SD onto the successor to the D810 makes a lot of sense. That will work well with either the D5 and/or D500.</p>

<p>I bought a CF to SDXC adapter and 3GB SanDisk extreme SDHC UHS-I to go with it.<br>

To get enough for free shipping, I also bought a zipper case to hold both CF and SD cards. (Slots for four CF and 18 SD.)<br>

Also, as noted above, to keep them from getting lost.</p>

<p>I have the type II adapter, as it is for a D200, but there are type I versions.</p>

<p>For type I, it might be easier to find for microSD, but then those are even easier to lose. Keep them inside the adapter, though, and they are harder to lose.</p>

<p>I have only tried a few shots with it so far, but it seems to be fine. </p>

<p>Recall that I posted various XQD prices at B&H on January 11: http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00d/00dgM8-560187584.jpg<br>

Merely 16 days later, prices have already comes down a bit, even before any D5 and D500 is shipped.<br>

This is the current link: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?setView=GRID&atclk=Card+Type_XQD+%28Ver.+2.0+%2f+USB%29&ci=1097&N=4093113320+4129206588&view=GRID</p><div></div>

<p>There are a couple of new developments:</p>

<ol>

<li>Canon has announced the long-expected 1DX Mark II: <A HREF="http://tinyurl.com/jm5ew5k">http://tinyurl.com/jm5ew5k</A>. At $6000, it is $500 cheaper than the Nikon D5. The memory card arrangement on the 1DX II is similar to that on the D4/D4s: one CF and one CFast (instead of XQD for Sony and Nikon).</li>

<li>I am going to sound like a broken record. XQD prices continue to come down, significantly even within the three weeks since this very thread started.</li>

</ol>

<p>In particular, concerning the 128G Lexar 2933x XQD card:</p>

<ul>

<li>On January 11, it was $440</li>

<li>On January 27, it was $372</li>

<li>Today, on February 2, it is $300</li>

</ul><div></div>

<p>New lower prices as of March 8.</p><div></div>

<p>It has been a month since I last updated this thread. While the Lexar XQD prices are holding still (with plenty of shortage, there is no incentive for Lexar to further drop their prices for now), Sony has finally drop their prices to more or less match Lexar. Now there are more choices in the same price range. The 128G Sony G series card was $379.97 a month ago. Today it is $169.95.</p>

<p>However, Sandisk still has yet to get into this market.</p><div></div>

<p>When browsing amazon for the CF adapter linked to earlier in the conversation, I noticed a related item which fits CF Type I slots!<br>

https://www.amazon.com/DIGIGEAR-SLIM-CF-Adapter-WiFi-SD/dp/B00XO2KSEO<br>

It has reviews saying that it'll fit Nikon D3s, Nikon D4, Nikon D4s, Nikon D700, Nikon D800, Canon 20D, Canon 300D (8GB limit), Canon 350D, Canon 40D, Canon 5D mark III, Canon 7D mark II.<br>

Caveats:<br>

- Need to remove CF adapter to get SD card out of camera.<br>

- EyeFi cards not working properly<br>

- 25 MB/s speed limit (one older review mentioned a 12 MB/s speed)<br>

- No spring (i.e. can't push in the SD to have it pop out)<br>

- Older reviews state it breaks after a couple of uses, this seems to have been fixed<br>

Still, if the alternative is to have to buy a stack of new cards for a new body when you still have SD cards to spare...</p>

<p>I haven't updated this thread for 8 months. Since the sharp XQD price drop at the beginning of 2016, prices have mostly stabilized. They maybe a few dollars cheaper than they were in April, but it'll probably be well into 2017 before we see more price drop. Lexar and Sony remain to be the two major suppliers. Somehow Sandisk is still not in the game yet.</p><div></div>

<p>Sony</p><div></div>

<p>Seems that the reason I never saw SD to CF adapters is that I didn't look:</p>

<p>http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-Extreme-Ultimate-Compact-Adapter/dp/B00EPMWT1M</p>

<p>only $13, works with SD, SDHC, SDXC, so should be plenty big enough.</p>

<p>Buy a few, put SDXC cards in each one!</p>

I also had the same idea when i still had my D300 / D300S but.... those adapters are a bad fit, and can damage the internal card connector ( it did in my D300) soi would not avise to chase that direction..

In my D70s, I had problems with the connector, sometimes it was say that there was no card.

(and before I had an adapter)

 

That was one reason, besides a good price, for buying a used D200.

 

I suspect that putting a card or adapter in could cause problems with the connector pins.

One should always be careful not to force it in.