Sony launched a new generation of flash cards called “XQD”! The same day as the first camera that will support those cards, the Nikon D4 (Click here). When using those cards the D4 can record approximately up to 100 frames in RAW format in continuous shooting mode. The cards are abviousely much faster than any current [shoplink 11034]Compact Flash card[/shoplink]. You can read specs and watch the rpesentation video at Sony.net (Click here).
A short SR5 rumor I got from my soruces. Not the NEX but the Sony A99 fullframe will be the first camera to support those cards. w it next week (
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Any news at all about “a88” 24mpx FF?
Hopfully it will support XDQ cards to.
You mean A99?
My thought: “a88” 24mpx FF, “a99” 36mpx FF whith built in batterygrip.
Let’s see next week what Rumor Has It…
Why didn’t the a77 get it? So SD cards are not for the future?
Nothing is.
LMAO
such is the cycle of technology.
it is funny of Sony to use a Canon Silhouette Dslr on the advertizing page 🙂
Well done Sony
Once another supreme innovation
WOW . . any new about FF 24m
Yippie, a new type of memory cards!
Seriously, isn’t that just another way of convincing people to buy new memory? Sandisk’s SDHC cards can do 95(read)/90(write) MB/s, so I don’t see the HUGE leap forward. OK, UHS-I maxes out at 104 MB/s and therefore no such cards will ever be as fast as these new ones, but UHS-II (max 312 MB/s) will support even higher speeds than PCIe.
SD-Cards have been around for along time, this is near the maximum of what they can do. This is the first xdq-card, imagine how far they will be in 4-5 years.
UHS-I SD cards (Ultra High Speed bus first level) just start apearing in the last 6 months , and A77 was the first camera to support it ( now you have a Nikon also). This is hardly a long time.
UHS-II cards (max speed 312 MB/s so more than double of XQD are not even out there but the specs are defined.They all share the same physical size and can be use in older devices which do not support the new bus, but will run at slower speeds of course.
XQD is tottaly new so require new connectors , only new devices can support it. It is easy to implement however as electricaly is using the PCIe bus. Easy for Electronic companies, but pain in the ass for customers, because is yet another new format.
I really do not see it’s advantage over SD UHS, as is also a serial bus which depends of the bus clock. I think the main idea is to sell flash more expensive at least for a while until everybody start making it, and also to force consumers to buy new memory.
It has also to do with the “political” fight between Compact Card Association and SD Card Associations (long time rivals).
CF card has reached it’s limits, beiing left behind by SD UHS specs, so they had no choice but to come with something new. As the old CF format connector is horrible (worst possible) they decided it’s time to revise it (anyway it would not be compatible as they switch from an parrallel bus to a serial one), so they came with this new format (if you check the Sony page you see they just compare it with older CF no mention of current SD specs).
These are the current defined bus speeds for SD:
https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/speed/bus_speed/
As you see current UHS-I are prety close to the XQD 104 versus 125 MB/s (which is a maximum for current bus -they also need to come with yet another revision and yet new device if they want to increase the bus speed in the future, same as for UHS-II so no advantage there).
You know that PCIe will in the future support 5 GB/s write and read speeds??? So I think there isn’t another I/O tech that supports this speeds except for usb 3 or Thunderbolt (which aren’t build-in any camera at the moment)
But anyways, I also vouch and cheer with you, because of the new memory cards that were announced.
A little bit sad for now that only really pro-camera’s support this, but hopefully, we can rock a 20 fps framerate on a mirrorless system cam in the future.;D
I just thought of something… If the next FF is the A99, what is the future naming convention for A99+v1? A9, maybe? A7 for the A77 replacement?
3 digit is for dSLR, 2 digit is for translucent, 1 digit is for mirrorless. A7, A9, etc will arrive when PDAF on sensor matures and A-mount go mirrorless. 😀
I’ll be looking forward to when Hoodman makes their version of this new format. No doubt the rumored A950(?) will have this so let the new toys roll.
Ain’t this a bit slow for e.g A77.
A77 shoots 12 fps 24 MP, that is near 288 MB/s.
Future cameras should handle more easily that amount of information. Maybe with more buffer capacity or with dual slot on a Sony SLT while using this new format. For sure, they learned something with the A77.
The large amount of information is written to the memory buffer, then re-witten more slowly to the memory card. The size of the buffer is why the A77 can do about 1 second in its highest speed mode, and the D4 can do 15 seconds. Those thousands of dollars can pay for a bigger buffer. The speed the buffer clears is more related to the card speed, and the Nikon with smaller files can clear the same number of images faster than the A77 for the same card speed. The A77 would be a better sports camera if the buffer had been made larger, but maybe that is being saved for the A9X.
Dual slot for a99?
Nikon launches the D4 and Sony launch an XDQ card. LOL!
Anything that is an universal standard and would replace the memory stick is fine by me. 😉
Wonder will the coming Sony full frame be anywhere near D4. Can’t wait to see.
My Sandisk 95mbps clears the A77 buffer in 6 seconds, that’s fine for me.
100 RAW files for the Nikon, yeahhh … And A77 ? Yes indeed, 13 RAW files.
But at what cost?
Almost 60US per additional file 🙂
LOL, interesting way of putting it. 😀
If Sony doesn’t price the A99 out of the ballpark (the 1DX and D4 are too rich for my blood) and the lowlight performance is good I may jump ship from Nikon for my ballet work.
Any word on pricing?
I was told once that Sony SxS cards for XDCAM have a built in memory redundancy feature to protect data corruption. I wonder if these cards do as well.
Hopefully its not in the Sony SxS price range for $ per megabyte.
Let’s just hope they don’t make the idiotic choice of XQD + MemoryStick DUO. Sony: do it for the sake of God, XQD + SD (since I know you wouldn’t do XQD + CF – it would sound too professional for what we usually get here)!!
More here: (including prices and a Nikon dual slot photo) for whoever is interested:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57353565-264/sony-launches-first-xqd-cards-step-aside-compactflash/
So it went like this (my story) 🙂
Nikon went to Sony ( as a bigger electronic company) to ask for a better card than CF for their high end cameras (because pros do not like SD and Nikon can not make their best customers unhappy). Sony engineers looked for the simplest and fastest way ( as they probably got like a month to come with the design) to make an interface so got the good old PCIe (nothing wrong here !), hopefuly got a new and better connector, called at the end SanDisk to get a second oppinion and ask if they can do it, and went back to Nikon, which was happy as anything is better than CF ! When CF Association (already desperate about CF) heard about it, just jumped in and decided to proudly declare it a standard. And in this way a new flash format was born.End of storry.
PS.
As the prices look reasonable, it looks like Sony does not really hope to make much money with the cards (which most likely are made by SanDisk with a Sony label). As long as Sony does not try to force this on lower level cameras, and keeps it for the expensive FF and other pro equipment ( whoever pays 6K for a camera does not care of the flash price, compatibility or reusability) everybody will be happy and bussines as usual.In fact CF cards are use now only in a few PRO FF cameras so probably this is the target for XQD also in another words very limited.
And plese don’t blame Sony for yet another flash format, it was Nikon’s idea, Sony just did the work.
Now all that’s needed is a photographer who can compose 100 quality photos per second. Otherwise running that fast will just lead to less quality in photos.
This is just another scam to force folks to buy a new set of memory cards, and is unnecessary.
Taking 100 photos per second is like shooting a machine gun, hoping that one bullet will hit somebody( sometimes will do but most of the time not). Taking one photo at the time is like a sniper waiting hours for the moment, but when the trigger is pushed, usually it does the job 🙂
Fight the power, Walt! :o)
Well, I guess my Hoodman CF UDMA-6 RAW @ 675X 100 MB/second with 15 seconds per GB downloads are now yesterdays’ news. The 8gb cards cost me 159-bucks each! Oh well, maybe the A950(?) will support both formats. Otherwise I won’t be upgrading my Alpha 900 for quite a while. Hmmm, I wonder if collecting stamps would have been a cheaper hobby.
Any News on the Rumored 3MOS Exmor sensor ???
100 RAW continuous? That really is pretty nifty.
Oh the D4 can do 24fps at 2 megapixels as well. Nice feature tere.
Guess what the resolution of full HD video is in the A77. 2MP at 60 fps ;). The only benefit in the D4 is that the compression is most likely lower and you don’t have to extract the frames yourself. But the downside being they you lose AF (and probably have AE locked), which Sony still offers.
Still far from Sony’s dream of 24p full resolution, so that you can just pull 1 frame from video and use it as high quality still. 😀
Andrea, regarding your last paragraphed, do you mean Sony will announce FF a-mount camera at CES?