D5, D850, and D500 CFe Firmware Finally Coming!

One annoying issue is that most XQD and CFexpress readers are not compatible. However, so far I have never explicitly bought any such reader. I have three Sony XQD readers from 2016, all came at no additional cost with the three Sony XQD cards I bought that year. This year, I bought a 128G Lexar CFx card and at that time, it came with a free Lexar CFx reader. Unfortunately, those readers cannot be cross used.

 

At home, it is not a big deal. When my international travel resumes, I'll get one of those Sony dual readers for $100. Or perhaps cheaper options will be available later on:

Sony MRW-G1 CFexpress Type B/XQD Memory Card Reader

My understanding is that Sony makes a CFexpress / XQD reader which is compatible with both. I suppose the fact that other manufacturers make CFexpress readers which are incompatible with XQD suggests the possibility that readers may involve a license payment to Sony for XQD compatibility.

 

Anyway, over the long term there will probably be plenty of CFexpress readers around, but if the manufacturers continue to come up with new memory card types, then the cost of readers adds up.

Edited October 13, 2020 by ilkka_nissila

My understanding is that Sony makes a CFexpress / XQD reader which is compatible with both. I suppose the fact that other manufacturers make CFexpress readers which are incompatible with XQD suggests the possibility that readers may involve a license payment to Sony for XQD compatibility.

 

Anyway, over the long term there will probably be plenty of CFexpress readers around, but if the manufacturers continue to come up with new memory card types, then the cost of readers adds up.

Ilkka, in my post immediately before yours, I posted a link to the Sony dual reader on B&H's web site. Its cost is $100.

 

ProGrade also has a dual reader, but I checked some of the comments; it looks like that ProGrade reader causes serious problems on Macs.

ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type-B & XQD Single-Slot Thunderbolt 3 Workflow Reader

 

I wonder whether the Z7 II would be CFexpress Type A compatible, similar to the Sony A7S III, which can use either SD or CFx Type A in the same slot. That would great, but CFx A is still very expensive and that indeed means yet another reader.

Yes, I missed that link to the Sony reader at first. I seem to have a very narrow angle of sharp viewing with my current eyeglasses.

 

Sony A7S III's dual SD / CFexpress type A slots seems like an elegant solution for small cameras. However, if Nikon were to adopt that, it would introduce yet another new card type to Nikon users.

My understanding is that Sony makes a CFexpress / XQD reader which is compatible with both. I suppose the fact that other manufacturers make CFexpress readers which are incompatible with XQD suggests the possibility that readers may involve a license payment to Sony for XQD compatibility.

 

Anyway, over the long term there will probably be plenty of CFexpress readers around, but if the manufacturers continue to come up with new memory card types, then the cost of readers adds up.

Problem is that "in the long term" is useless right now.

 

That Sony reader also seems not to be usable for some other brands of CFexpress cards, maybe SOny builds some kind of "code"in those readers, just like not all brands of batteries wseem to work properly in some Nikon camera's ..

Japaneese companies just love protectionism to much i guess..

I think the readers will become more compatible with each other over time as CFexpress becomes more common. If a reader and the card both follow the CFexpress specification, they should work together. However, the cards haven't been available long and so there may be teething problems. I don't think the manufacturers purposefully make them only compatible with their own cards.

I was just checking prices and it seems for Sony type B CFexpress cards, the "sweet spot" in price / GB is ... 512 GB. Autsch. However, ProGrade Digital make a fairly priced 128 GB card for $155 at B&H. A 128 GB card is a bit large for 20-24 MP files but for Z7 / Z7 II / D850 after the promised firmware update, it would be a reasonable size. I still think these cards are a bit on the large size for me. Sandisk make a 64 GB CFexpress card but it has a higher price-to-GB ratio than the ProGrade Digital 128 GB. Edited October 16, 2020 by ilkka_nissila

wait for it... wait for it..

 

A "new" ( standard for SD Cards is on its way.. : SD 8.0 ..

Also speeds up to 4 GB/S they say..

 

By the time all those CFexpress readers and cards are compatible with each other the whole circus may have been started again with the much smaller , backward compatible, SD devices ?

(or am i misunderstanding something ?)

 

- Next-gen SD cards are blisteringly fast

- SD Express Delivers New Gigabyte Speeds for SD Memory Cards

Half of my SD cards died (either not being recognized by the camera or lost files) after a few years of occasional use. I want nothing to do with SD cards after those experiences. None of my CF or XQD cards have malfunctioned over the years even though I've used them a lot more than SD.

 

Fast SD cards are almost as expensive as the much faster XQD and CFexpress cards. It's the slow SD cards that are priced inexpensively.

Half of my SD cards died (either not being recognized by the camera or lost files) after a few years of occasional use. I want nothing to do with SD cards after those experiences. None of my CF or XQD cards have malfunctioned over the years even though I've used them a lot more than SD.

 

Interesting. What brand of SD card were you using? Both I and my wife use SanDisk SD. My wife has been using them for about 7-years in a Nikon 1V1 occasionally (meaning sometime no use for over a year) and has had no failures. I have been using them for almost 4-years in my D750 where they sometime go for a few months without use and (knock on wood) and have had no failures or lost data.

 

What do you mean by "occasional use"?

 

I have read articles relating lost data on SSD drives that have been stored without power for anywhere from a few months to a few years. Flash cells are Flash cells and will leak charge over time be they in an SSD or a SD card.

The SD cards that stopped being recognized by the camera were Sandisk Extreme Pro and the card with data corruption was Lexar. I currently have two Sandisk SD and one Prograde Digital SD card that still work. By occasional use I meant that they were not the primary cards that I used for photography but they did receive some use. Maybe 10-15% of my images were shot on SD.

The SD cards that stopped being recognized by the camera were Sandisk Extreme Pro and the card with data corruption was Lexar. I currently have two Sandisk SD and one Prograde Digital SD card that still work. By occasional use I meant that they were not the primary cards that I used for photography but they did receive some use. Maybe 10-15% of my images were shot on SD.

 

The two explanations that come to mind are.

 

1) Bad luck. This is the reason guarantees exist. Send the SanDisk card back to SanDisk for replacement.

 

2) Counterfeit cards. It depends where you got them, and even then, some sneak through to legitimate dealers.

 

My question for use was how long did they lay around in a drawer unpowered between uses? Unpowered cards will have charge leakage which produces errors.

The two explanations that come to mind are.

I wonder sometimes whether it's the very exposed brass connectors getting static shock from human contact.

 

Some people are way, way more static prone than others.

I didn't keep notes of which card belonged to which receipt so I don't really have the opition of asking for replacement, I suppose this would have been something to keep in mind but it leads to a lot of bookkeeping. But I don't really want a replacement of the same kind if the card fails, I want to use another product in the future. I couldn't know how long they have been lying without power, as I have many cards and I don't keep notes of which card was used at what date. In the case of the Lexar, I used it to transfer files between my laptop and my desktop computers and the files were attempted to be read soon after writing, but before this transfer, the card had been unused for months. In the case of the Sandisk cards I don't really know. Possibly weeks or at most months. Yes, bad luck, or bad card design. I am leaning towards the SD standard being not a very good design since the contacts are exposed and can be easily soiled accidentally and the chassis is thin flexible plastic so it can easily be bent slightly. I will use my experiences to guide future actions and basically almost only use XQD now. I still have an older camera which uses CF cards but those never gave me a hard time so it's not really a problem. And they can stay unused for months or years and still work every time. Edited October 18, 2020 by ilkka_nissila

I wonder sometimes whether it's the very exposed brass connectors getting static shock from human contact.

 

Some people are way, way more static prone than others.

 

I also think the contacts accidentally being touched by my fingers could be the problem.

I didn't keep notes of which card belonged to which receipt so I don't really have the opition of asking for replacement,

 

The card you have has a "Lifetime warranty". Any receipt for the product should do. Here is a link to the warranty page:

 

 

LINK https://shop.westerndigital.com/warranty\

 

BTW, I either download a copy of my receipts in PDF form (from BH, Adorama, or Amazon) or scan the receipt and keep them on my computer in subdirectories under a RECEIPT sub directory in Documents. After several years of doing this the entire RECEIPTS subdirectory is less then 17 MB - less than one D750 RAW image.