Lexar XQD Card Update

I received the following email yesterday concerning a backorder for the Lexar XQD 64GB card at Adorama

:

 

"In regards to your order for the Lexar Pro 64GB 2933X XQD Memory

Card.

 

We are sorry to report that we have just been informed by Lexar that

they have discontinued this card and will no longer be fulfilling any

orders for this.

 

We can offer to replace this with the Sony 64GB XQD G/E Memory Card

at the same price or if you not wish to have this replaced we would

have to cancel the order, Please reply to this email how would

like to proceed.

 

If we don't hear back on this we will have no choice but the cancel

the order.

 

We apologize for the delay and inconvenience it may have caused."

 

Since my original order was priced at $99.95 I am going to accept the Sony card.

Barry, you are getting a very good deal, as Adorama is now selling the 32G Sony XQD card for $99. You are getting double the capacity at the same price.

 

As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Adorama still had the 32G Lexar with card reader package. And we had the following discussion back in April. Later on Thom Hogan reported that Lexar XQD cards should be available in June, and we are in June now.

Availability of Lexar XQD Cards, Directly from Lexar

 

Time to check with Lexar again.

Edited June 20, 2018 by ShunCheung

This is the response I just received from Lexar (June 20, 2018). As before, they reply very quickly. However, while they told me "very soon" two and half months ago, they still don't have a firm date. That is frustrating.

We are still in transition of new ownership so we are not manufacturing our products at this time. I do not have an estimated date of when production will start in the future. I would recommend contacting one of our certified resellers such as Amazon, Adorama or B&H. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for being patient!

 

And this was what they told me back on April 6, 2018:

We have indeed temporarily stopped production. This is due to the recent purchase of Lexar, acquired by Longsys which now controls production. In this time of transition we have ceased production, until the two companies sort out all new processes. We do not have a ETA at this time when production will continue, however we do plan to start production very soon.

Edited June 20, 2018 by ShunCheung

Shun, I agree it is a very good deal at $99.95. I placed the order originally because one of my Lexar 64GB XQD cards went bad. That was the first memory card of any type I have had go bad.

Just noticed that the Sony card is now on backorder. Oh well. Maybe someday.

Does anybody still think that Nikon's uptake of XQD cards was a good idea? When the rest of the world's still cameras, Sony's included, get by (very nicely) with A.N.Other type of card.

 

Sony was the company that thought 3.5" floppy disks were suitable media for digital camera storage remember.

Edited June 20, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

Does anybody still think that Nikon's uptake of XQD cards was a good idea? When the rest of the world's still cameras, Sony's included, get by (very nicely) with A.N.Other type of card.

Absolutely. XQD is by far the best type of memory cards I have used. It is robust and not fragile like SD, and it doesn't have the vulnerable pins CF cards use. And I have mentioned a number of times that SD cards are too small and are easy to lose. In a way XQD is expensive, but if you compare prices between XQD and 300MB/sec UHS II SD cards, the prices are similar or XQD is sometimes cheaper but yet faster.

 

The problem is that Nikon started using XQD a few years ahead of its time, especially with the D4 in 2012. Among still cameras, Canon puts CFast in only the 1DX Mark II, and it is only in one of two slots. CFast has hit a dead end and will be phased out in the next few years. Therefore, XQD is clearly a much better choice than CFast.

 

I am not sure what Lexar's problem is. If they are unable to deliver XQD cards, we'll just have to wait for CFExperss to be available to have other suppliers than Sony XQD. For all practical purposes, CFExpress are just faster XQD cards and should be totally compatible. There is really no need to change the name from XQD to CFExpress, as they didn't change the SD name when UHS II SD cards were introduced. But we'll likely have to pay more for CFExpress because they are even faster, although the current Nikon DSLRs: D4, D4S, D5, D500, and probably the D850 cannot take full advantage of the speed from CFExpress.

I do not have a camera requiring the XQD cards, however, because of my curiosity, I just checked if any XQD cards are available in Vietnam, but only Sony is available in one of the bigger nationwide shops:

 

32GB usd 118

 

64GB usd 153

 

64GB G usd 219

 

128GB usd 241

 

256GB ask for price

 

These cards are so new, that it is unlikely, that fake ones are in circulation in Asia yet -:)

Well, i am now regretting having bought a camera that uses XQD cards..

- SOny's prices are rising , and it is the only supplier of XQD cards so it has a monopoly.

- Availability is now also a problem

- No more new camera , or other device, models will be introduced so it looks like a "dead end" to me, just like the Sony memory stick idea which was only used by portable game devices.

 

I also had a XQD card failing, never had any other memory card failure so it feels XQD is not ideal after all , and now i am reliing on SD cards for my D500 since XQD cards are hard to find in regular stores where i live ..

 

All camera prices for models using XQD are dropping fast so the return value of this D500 makes it the most expensive digital camera i have owned because it will be virtually not saleble when moving on to something else...

I don't think you'll see any counterfeit XQD cards. The technology is not that trivial and unlike SD cards, the market for XQD is narrow. It is difficult to make money selling faked XQD cards. At most you may see someone print a new label and stick it on some old, slow XQD cards.

 

And if one really dislike XQD cards, so far there is no one Nikon body that requires you to use XQD. The D4 and D4s have dual XQD and CF slots. The D500 and D850 have dual XQD and SD slots. The D5 comes with an interchangeable module (interchangeable by a Nikon technician, not by user) so that you can either use dual XQD or dual CF cards. I use XQD whenever I can because I prefer it, not because I have to.

 

Incidentally, I have finally experienced the first problem on XQD cards, after two years. A few images I captured are blacked out in the top half, but fortunately I used dual XQD cards and the images on the other card are good. I have since re-tested that card and so far haven't reproduced them. I am just glad that as soon as I heard the news that Lexar would shut down completely last year, I immediately bought a couple of extra XQD cards so that I now have too many. I probably will never buy another XQD card in my life because the next ones will be CFExpress. However, since Sony needs to support their higher-end camcorders, they need to supply XQD at a reasonable cost, but it is never a good thing that there is only one supplier for the time being.

 

CPM, your concern is unfounded. I see a lot of D500 users out there. The D500 is the most expensive camera you have because it is highly desirable and its value is holding up, while the others are quickly depreciating. The XQD problem is temporary. Once CFX (CF Express) goes onto the market and becomes more popular, there will be plenty of memory card options for the XQD slot. CFX will be popular among the high-end camcorders because CFast has hit a dead end, but it'll be a while before it happens.

XQD cards have been a really positive experience for me (using them in the D5 and D850). I suspect the CF version of D5 would work just fine (since the camera has a large physical memory buffer) but transfering images from XQD to computer is faster and there are no pins to break in the camera. The XQD card also has a convenient to handle size (in my opinion).

 

However, the D850 really benefits from high-speed cards. I was taking some shots of deer running in the fields and when I was reviewing the shots there were some delays. I realized I had had backup to an SD card on - though it was jpg it slowed down the review of the images. Taking out the SD card (leaving just the XQD in place with the raw files) the review of images and searching for one that you want to check was quick. I know I could buy some UHS-II cards but the reality is that they cost a lot (also typically UHS-II is not something I can just find in a store easily) and I don't trust in their durability and longevity because they have the SD plastic chassis and openly exposed contacts. I was hoping to get by with the UHS-I cards but it surprised me that their use slowed down scrolling images (even though the image on the card was just a JPG and a NEF was available on the other card). I think the camera preferentially opens the JPG if NEF+JPG writing is enabled and that could be the reason.

 

For landscape photography, portraits, macro, architecture etc. the D850 is wonderful. The ISO 64 delivers magnificent image quality (with the camera on tripod). However, as an action camera (if someone wants to use it that way) it would benefit from a dual XQD configuration. Reasons why I might want to use the camera for action include (1) situations where the event occurs in bright sunlight or otherwise bright, contrasty lighting conditions the camera's dynamic range can be helpful, (2) when I don't have a long enough lens and/or subject is at varying distances so I may need to crop a bit, with the high resolution sensor the damage to image detail from cropping is a bit less than with lower resolution cameras, (3) when I need a second camera in case the primary should fail, or if I need to switch between a longer and shorter lens quickly. But, in practice, I enjoy shooting with the D5 more, a part of the reason is that it never has a hiccup, it is always ready to shoot, and the images are quicker to edit. I think it is bizarre that some manufacturers are delaying the adoptation of fast cards in their (still) cameras (this includes Canon and Sony; Nikon are the leader in this area). Many functions (such as image review and zooming) are slower than they need to be in some of the competition's cameras and adopting modern cards would no doubt help. Of course, as a Nikon user it makes me smile a bit.

I also had a XQD card failing, never had any other memory card failure so it feels XQD is not ideal after all

 

Any type of memory can fail, the XQD is just a specification, it doesn't mean the components are infallible. I've experienced several memory card failures (all of the failed ones were types with exposed contacts) but no XQD or CF failures so far. WIth XQD I've shot about a hundred thousand images so far.

 

All camera prices for models using XQD are dropping fast so the return value of this D500 makes it the most expensive digital camera i have owned because it will be virtually not saleble when moving on to something else...

 

Now that is complete nonsense. The D4s seems to be holding value reasonably well for a digital camera (all of which depreciate quickly because of the rapid changes that are occurring).

For what it's worth, Samsung make metal SD cards which might be a little more robust if you're worried about that kind of thing. I've never actually managed to trash one, though, so it's never been a priority for me (I have, however, trashed a cheap card reader's pins with a CF card). I've not yet spotted Samsung making UHS-II cards.

 

My D850 did glitch when reviewing images from a slower (440/150MB/s generation) Sony card, although oddly given that the read speed is the same I think it was on image review that I noticed a slow-down. With JPEGs to a UHS-II card and raw to a fast XQD, I can run through review images fast enough that they look like an animation; that may not hold if I had raw files on the UHS-II. I don't think I've felt the D810 was as fast with CF and UHS-I. With JPEG and raw stored to different cards, the camera lets me run through each separately - I think it remembers which one I was looking at last. The raw may well open faster than a JPEG at default size, since it's got a low-res JPEG embedded in it, but even at zoomed size the D850 has been very fast from an XQD. Recording both formats to a single card, I'm prepared to believe the camera might treat them together - that's how my D700 used to work with a single card, and I think how my Coolpix A is working. Having them separate does mean that I have a habit of deleting junk raw files but still leaving the JPEGs hanging around.

 

While CFExpress should work in an XQD slot, it's dependent on firmware updates from Nikon, and dependent on nothing prohibitive being hard-wired into the card interface. I'm tentatively hopeful, but I'm not going to relax about the impending CFExpress supplies until I actually see them working.

 

As for others using fast cards, Sony and Panasonic have both been using UHS-II SD cards. They're not as fast as XQD, but there's a lot to be said, in a consumer product, for being backward-compatible with UHS-I cards. While CFast is used in a lot more devices than XQD, it's definitely a short-term fix, and the format has the same issues with backward-compatibility that XQD does. While the larger size of other formats helps with robustness and heat dissipation, SD still holds an advantage when it comes to integrating it into a space-limited device - and the compatibility with micro-SD gives more integration opportunities.

 

So far, I've had good experiences with XQD. But I'm not as anti-SD as many here seem to be. I just wish Nikon had doubled down on XQD in the D810 generation rather than waiting - with the D4 and D4s being pretty much the only devices consuming XQD cards (and even then only optionally) for several years, there's been no push to make them affordable until very recently; the volumes on the single-digit Nikons just can't be high enough. Maybe Nikon were expecting Sony to make more use of it, but the extra size would compromise some of the vaunted portability of the A7 series, so I'm not surprised they didn't. No wonder Lexar had trouble.

For perspective, I paid $200 usd for each of three 4G Hitschi micro drives. That was 15 years ago. I don't want to pay a lot but I am willing to put up with the current price for Sony cards. So far xqd cards have been working well for me though I need a second reader. Wish there was more competition. Hopefully soon.

Recently started using XQD cards, had two Sony XQD G 64GB cards included with the almost 10K clicks 2nd hand D850 I recently bought

Also included were an extra EN EL15a and a QQD card reader, pricetag was Eur 3300 for the whole package (original purchase price Eur 4400),

which left after deduction of the MRSP price of the 'extras' basically left a purchase price of around Eur 2800 Eur for the body.

As I was able to very soon after that sell my old 2nd hand bought 120K clicks D800 for Eur 650, it actually cost me Eur 2150, so not complaining :)

 

For my first outing, shot a speed cycle race in my local town, to put the AF and buffer to the test (together with the improved High ISO those were

the main reasons why I bought the camera; coming from the 36 Mp D800, I'm not that impressed with the step up to 45Mp's)

 

Found the AF setting I got the best results with was good old 153 Dynamic AF with 1 manually selected AF point

3D and Group AF couldn't keep up with the moving fast (45 to 50 kmph) toward me cyclist (admittedly lighting wasn't ideal, late in the afternoon,

overcast after rainshowers)

 

The buffer clearing (and writing speed) due to the XQD G cards was a noticeable huge step up from the D800, even despite that I was shooting Medium sized TIFF's

As I am a die hard NX2 user - which doesn't work with eg Mac OS Sierra -, my computer runs on OS 10.8.x, and consequently can't run the latest edition

of NX D required for D850 NEF's either (don't have/use any other 3rd party RAW processing software like CS or Capture One etc)

The 77 Mb Tiff's are size wise roughly in the middle between a Medium and a Large format 14 bit NEF, and can be processed on my I7 Mac Pro (with a SSD)

without any problems/slow down compared to processing eg my 45 to 50 MB 14 bit lossless compressed D800 NEF's

Only option I 'lose' is the ability to change the WB in Capture, but fortunately as I found out the Auto WB of the D850 has very much improved and can be relied on (stayed far away from it in the past on eg my D800's, DF and D3)

 

I did run out of buffer at certain moments, but that was only when shooting high fps (with a clone MB-D18 with the 2nd EN EL15a, so at least 7 fps) series of

cyclists coming toward me, usually after around 35-ish shots

Based on that, I don't expect any 'buffer' problems for the real life shooting I intend to use the D850 for, like catwalk, outside location fashion etc. (shot

a large vent catwalk show last Saturday and as expected didn't)

 

I'm not using the SD slot as I'm not shooting JPG's (with the D800 I shoot NEF + Basic JPG, and store the NEF's on the CF, and JPG's on the SD card)

although I found a use for it to hold my Eye Fi card

I can use that card to, after reformatting a TIFF in camera to a (smaller sized) JPG which I then store on the Eye Fi Card, be able to send a JPG to my tablet

without running into the well known and much discussed (and complained about) problems with the Nikon Bluetooth and Snapbridge options

Edited June 21, 2018 by paul_k

Certainly a good deal, Paul, since buying a couple of 128GB cards (XQD and UHS-II) cost me over £500.

 

I have to ask though, TIFF? Really? They're only capturing 8-bit data, so you're losing a lot of ability to perform retrospective edits - to white balance as you suggest, but also for highlight and shadow recovery. Well, not "losing" as such, just not having very much information to do it with. Is it not worth at least using Adobe's DNG converter to get raw files to a standard format for your older software to use? If your main reason for using NX2 is the U-point interface (and I've never used it at all, so I appreciate it may not be), it's available with current raw conversion in DxO's software.

As far as I know, neither Canon nor Sony make any still camera which supports two fast cards at the same time; the 1DX II has one CF and one CFast slot, and the A9 one uhs-i and one uhs-ii slot. So if you want in-camera backup, you're stuck with the limitations of the slower card. (In Nikon's case the slower card slot in the D500/D850 is still UHS-II so quite fast even if not as fast as XQD). And the D5 of course supports two XQD cards.

Concerning SD cards, their advantage is their small size, and at least IMO one of their disadvantages is also their small size. For something like a Micro 4/3 camera, perhaps using an XQD card is going to have a major impact on the camera's size so that the likes of Panasonic and Olympus have no choice but to stick with SD, but I am puzzled that Sony is sticking with SD for the A9, and worse yet, as Ilkka mentioned above, only one of the two SD slots is UHS II. I am further puzzled that while the A9 can shoot 20 fps, it can only do so with lossy compressed RAW.

 

My first DSLR that uses SD cards was the D7000, and initially I lost like 4 or 5 SD cards in 2, 3 years. Back then, a 64G SD card was like $120 and it hurt. After that, I would never leave any SD card by itself on the table or chair, as they can easily slip into gaps. I always put an SD card back into its plastic case. The larger size makes it much harder to lose. To date I have never lost any CF card or XQD card.

 

Meanwhile, I have had total card failures on CF and SD. Last week for the first time I had a few image corruption on an XQD card, but I was using a D5 with dual XQD and the second copy saved the day. I have since tested that card several times with a couple hundred frames. So far the problem hasn't recurred.

 

Somehow the 2933x Lexar cards are not compatible with certain Sony camcorders. Therefore, their only customer are Nikon DSLR users. Clearly the D850 and D500 are selling like hotcakes, so there is still a very decent market for them. Lexar announced like 7, 8 months ago that they would resume XQD production. I just don't know what their issue is.

since it's got a low-res JPEG embedded in it

Nikon's embedded-in-the-RAW-file JPEG is full size but medium quality the last time I checked. Which is why I never bother shooting RAW + JPEG - extracting the embedded JPEG suffices for most uses where a JPEG might be required. And at least with BreezeBrowser Pro that I use to sort through my images, extracting the JPEG from the RAW file is a breeze.

Ah, sorry - I failed to pay attention to the JPEG information. It's there mostly for in-camera preview as far as I can tell.

 

I write JPEG to a second card mostly because the second card is something I can then stick in a computer in a hurry without needing dedicated software - it's not uncommon that I'll take some photos at an event that I later intend to process, but someone asks if they can have draft versions now. As such, needing anything at all to pull the image out of the raw file is a no-no. By the same argument, having the second slot be anything but SD (with the possible exception of a USB-C socket) would be detrimental to me, at least unless I really wanted to shoot backup. I'm glad the D850 didn't go with a CF/XQD pair, even though I have a lot of CF cards in the house.

 

I thought the theory was that "Lexar" are no longer the same people who had the previous factory? Scaling up a new pipeline would take a while, on top of which getting legal to sort everything out (including IP) can't be fast.

I have to ask though, TIFF? Really? They're only capturing 8-bit data, so you're losing a lot of ability to perform retrospective edits - to white balance as you suggest, but also for highlight and shadow recovery. Well, not "losing" as such, just not having very much information to do it with. Is it not worth at least using Adobe's DNG converter to get raw files to a standard format for your older software to use? If your main reason for using NX2 is the U-point interface (and I've never used it at all, so I appreciate it may not be), it's available with current raw conversion in DxO's software.

 

Must admit I was concerned for the possible loss in IQ and room for corrective processing using TIFF instead of NEF's

But admittedly I'm a bit of a sloppy photographer more cooncerned with capturing the mood/moment of a picture and less (far too little :p)

concerned to get the ultimate IQ out of every pixel

Also I'm a bit of a cheapskate and despite laying down several thousands of Euro's for a new body, if possible prefer not to

spend too much extra cash for a piece of software (eg reason why I never went full scale into Photoshop, and only grudgingly bought Nikon NX2 long time ago)

 

But as they say 'The proof is in the eating' so as my first ''real world' shoot I last weekend went to shoot a catwalk show

Catwalk shows are my preferred subject to put a new camera to a serious test : fast moving subjects, often gad/dodgy lighting,

constant, in a split second (re)framing and consequently refocusing on the subject (perfect to find out how fast/responsive the AF really is)

 

Here are links to two original pictures (apart from converting to a smaller JPG untouched) and their processed versions

(for some unknown reason I can't upload all ofthem)

KABK_0610_20180616_Orig.jpg by Paul K

KABK_0610_20180616_Processed.jpg by Paul K

KABK_0633_20180616_Orig.jpg by Paul K

KABK_0633_20180616_Processed.jpg by Paul K

Coud have done worse I think

 

Just received notification that my Sony 64GB XQD cards will be shipped today.

...Must admit I was concerned for the possible loss in IQ and room for corrective processing using TIFF instead of NEF's...[ATTACH=full]1250885[/ATTACH]

 

The use of whatever memory card (subject in discussion) should not affect the quality of the image. Or am I wrong?

The use of whatever memory card (subject in discussion) should not affect the quality of the image. Or am I wrong?

It depends on what you mean by quality. For example, if you are using a slow memory card but capture sports or wildlife "machine-gun" style such that the card cannot keep up with the rate images are captured, your camera will slow down or even freeze for a while. The end result is that you may miss images. Would you consider that "affecting the quality"?

 

I typically have one XQD and one UHS II SD card (300MB/sec SanDisk) inside my D500. A few times I have run into a situation that the SD card cannot keep up and the D500 slows way down.

if you are using a slow memory card but capture sports or wildlife "machine-gun" style such that the card cannot keep up with the rate images are captured, your camera will slow down or even freeze for a while. The end result is that you may miss images. Would you consider that "affecting the quality"?

I was thinking more toward post-capture quality. Say, if I use an ancient 32MB CF card (remember those? :eek:), I would imagine the post-capture quality would be identical to today's super-fast xqd card. I am thinking there is no difference in the quality of image being saved into the card - if cameras and file types are equal. I think there is no change in the way a file, pixels and all, is saved into the card.