As the R5/R6 are locked to only one card type per card slot and one of them i CF Express there is no choice but to buy CF Express card. Everyone has their standards for judging pricing and relative value. Secondly, what if the SSD dies? ProGrade appears to be the model where they first offered a premium product and then wanted to expand their potential market downward. Hey look at that, our first agreement;)I did mention that SD are fine for professional use scenarios, and fully agree with you. CFexpress cards look like a pocket-drainer at first glance, starting at $199.99 / 210 for 80GB. But, every once in a while, I need to go longer. ProGrade has announced a new CFexpress Type A Memory card. Tony you meet with Sony staff all the time. Build in memory for phones is fast because it's natively integrated into the chipset data lanes and SD cards were historically pretty slow, with old interface. It depends on the feature set. Sony is the only company making CFexpress Type A cards at the time of writing, and these are, sadly, even more expensive than the Type B kind, at $199 / 209 for 80GB, rising to $649 for 512GB. Besides, they're also offering as Sony nand storage health check to give you a premature warning if the card might be considered less reliable (ie better do dual slot recording after that*) and another warning when its close to end of life, meaning when you can expect card failure to happen at any time. "because when your camera costs 6500 the 590 you spend on the cards shouldnt matter. Why!? CFexpress uses the NVMe standard, they just change the form factor and price going on bottom of the barrel controllers and NAND.If they wanted, they could make a passive m.2 carrier that acts as a heat spreader and pin adapter to something more rugged. Theres still a question mark over Type C cards in general, before we even think about the next CFexpress standard. Those longer bursts is where CFE-A cards will help me. @Alam12 "why use 2 if 1 never fail? CFExpress Type B is vastly faster. A Sony Tough card costs $219 / 299 (128GB), $399 / 483 (256GB) or $649 / 999 (512GB). So it seems Sandisk (Western Digital) have found a way to sell different grades of products, consumer, enthusiasts, pro, etc. The m.2 can be harder to replace and need much less complications. The card is resistant to temperature extremes, shock, vibration, and X-rays. There will likely be more card vendors doing CF Express A onwards. I agree that A7C is too small to house m.2. You can rent the Sony A7S III or Sony A1 from Lensrentals and find out if they're a good fit for your workflow. Cool but if you're shooting raw on a Sony a1 you really need 512GB - 1TB Type A and they literally don't exist. NY 10036. CFexpress raises that to 4GB/s for the fastest, Type C variant, in line with the speed of the main storage drive of a high-end laptop. The other A7 cameras I am not sure. Lexar, yes, solid heritage. Given the standard of current CFexpress being NVMe over PCIe 3.0, a 1TB WD Black SN750 goes for $119 with a read speed of 3.47GB/s and write speeds of 3GB/s (drops to 1.4 to 1.5GB/s after the 36GB SLC cache fills but since the cache can be written to while it is being emptied, writes below 3.47GB/s will take longer for the cache to fill, and birsty activities will likely never run into a cache issues. Key Features. ProGrade has announced a new CFexpress Type A Memory card. Because SD is only interesting because it's cheap and the newer standards aren't. Even most of the A1 users I know or read use the SD cards. With its Tough branding, Sony's card boasts some impressive durability. The Prograde brand will likely be what they will move forward in the future, but for now they are positioning it as the premium to the other product they offer which they consider their lower tier product now. That kinda makes me wonder: why don't more cameras have internal SSDs? Seriously Gannon? @Sup YallIf you are shooting with camera like A1, cost of a memory card probably shouldn't be even a concern? And its just not true. Add an m.2 slot in camera and call it a day. Especially huge camera like this new R3. But things are about to get a little more complicated. I am sure more people will post the same "proprietary card" nonsense. Using these half baked technologies just makes no sense at all. CFexpress Type A is still a relatively new recording medium and there are very few cards available on the market, mainly due to the fact that not many cameras currently support or use them. Someone should think hard. https://progradedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ProGrade_DS_CFexpress_Final_E.pdf. The 160GB ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type A Cobalt card (the only capacity available at this time) is available to pre-order on ProGrades website for $330. You can offload to any external storage when done. Its a better solution than forcing users into using mismatched cards. SandiskSandisk UltraSandisk ExtremeSandisk Extreme Pro. So I do not buy the argument that the cameras cannot use them. Also, you can use KIOXIA BG4 Series NVME drives in any USB-C enclosures and they will work with any camera that supports USB recording like BMPCC. All but the shortest m.2 devices are too long and generate heat which isn't problem in ventilated PC case or with external heatsink. Designed to speed up your workflow, eliminate obstacles that may limit your creativity, and give you peace of mind. If you push 30 fps 50Mpxl RAW then CF Express Type is useful :-). You only need 512GB - 1TB cards when shooting RAW if you're holding the shutter button non stop, but I've seen that happening only to amateurs. Agree. so how do you feel about Sandisk and their EXTREME to the max lines? Gold cards cost $179 / 193.99 (128GB), $399 / 279 (256GB), $399 / 499 (512GB), and $899 / 819 (1TB). While ProGrade cant exactly address the former of those problems, its doing what it can to address the latter with its latest lineup. The funny thing is, the "express" in SD Express and CFexpress is the same - they both talk PCI Express, more specifically SD 7.0 and CF-A both speak PCIe 3.0 x1 in marginally different physical form factors. That's an absurd claim. So when the largest mirrorless brand use CF Express A not only in the top level cameras but also in the volume sales camera then there is good business for the card manufacturers. Indeed adapters to m.2 SSD from USB are tiny. The last thing we should want is for cameras to be sealed up like iPhones. ProGrade -- a company founded by executives of the now-defunct Lexar -- has announced its own 160GB CFexpress 2.0 Type A memory card and it costs $330, a full $70 less than Sony's card. Because they can make money being (so far) the only manufacturer of them on the market. MikeRan - those XQD slots in the initial Z have been made 100% compatible with CFexpress. Some SSDs such as ones from WD, have a mode for lower read latency that they label as a gaming mode which disable the idle power state, thus causing the SSD to pull 1 watt at idle if that mode is enabled. Or rather offered it as an option in dual SD/CF-A card slots, nothing wrong with sticking to your old SD cards. We're excited to announce the ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type A card - a small yet powerful memory card capable of sustaining a read rate of 800MB/s and write speed of 700MB/s. Why are not cameras using m.2 SSDs? I've seen every sort of brand marketing in technology over the past 30 years. Most action I shoot is short bursts for a second, plus or minus. We can get the normal UDMA7 CF 256GB for less than $200, which itself is crazy expensive. You would only "need" more than 160GB per slot if you were going to shoot more than 2,500 images in *uncompressed* raw without being able to pause long enough to hot swap a CF-E card. Either put in two fast slots or two slow slots. It's not really a good argument to say the high price of a camera body somehow justifies larger than usual pricing on the media cards. I am not aware of any cameras that are currently on the market that use CFexpress Type A cards that can internally record ProRes. @kelpdiver -Sandisk Extreme is fine, that's the way it's typically done. Most stills shooters should be fine with V90 unless for professional sports or wildlife. available to pre-order on ProGrades website, https://progradedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ProGrade_DS_CFexpress_Final_E.pdf, ProGrade's new 320GB, 640GB CFast 2.0 cards are its fastest yet, but still fall short to CFexpress, Pergears new 1TB, 2TB CFexpress Type B cards offer 1400MB/s write speeds at reasonable prices, Nikon announces $730 660GB CFexpress Type B memory card, Micron ships its 232-layer 3D NAND flash with more storage, better performance and a smaller package size, Leica Summicron-SL 35mm F2 ASPH sample gallery, The best cameras for family and friends photos in 2022, Best affordable cameras for sports and action in 2022. Proprietary storage isn't anything new nor unique, RED, Arri all do it but for consumer markets, I believe the more universal format would win if it matches the proprietary medium in performance. You have made the logical choice that most do. These appear to be the fastest CFexpress Type B cards money can buy at the moment. ProGrade's new offering doesn't give specific protection details, but ProGrade states that the card is shock, vibration and X-ray proof. Then there's the fact that this type of card tops out at 160GB. Better yet, you can get the new ProGrade card in a two-pack for $590, increasing your savings to $210. But more people need to buy them in order to drive the cost down. Theres a significant difference in the prices of cards from these different brands. Amazon.com: Lexar Professional 80GB CFexpress Type A Gold Series Memory Card, Up to 900MB/s Read, Cinema-Quality 8K Video, Rated VPG 400 (LCAGOLD080G-RNENG) : Everything Else Electronics Computers & Accessories Computer Accessories & Peripherals Memory Cards SD Cards I think that's a fair summation: that right now CFE-A is for a very narrow niche. First, Sony is the only camera manufacturer that currently has cameras with the slot and support to use the media. I shoot action with a Sony a1 and fast SD cards. Because Sony probably realised that the majority of users would just use their cameras with Dual SD cards almost all of the time. Several support Type B, including the Nikon Z6 and Z7. It's presumptuous and not their call to make. But they're important if you want to take advantage of the latest camera features, including 8K. Does Sony just have a blind spot for storage? And then you lose ALL your data, even though the card never failed. - A weekly roundup of our favorite tech deals. You can shoot most video modes, even 8k on an SD v60 Card and (unlike Canon) you can even use two SD cards and still have redundancy for important or professional use. @Thoughts R Us - Right now I use SD cards with my Sony a1 and they work fine most of the time. CFExpress is the future. You're stuck, if you want to take more photos, you'll have to quickly transfer the images to a computer, which you might not have brought with you.With the cards, if one is full, no problem, you can just put another one. It is not until recently that Sony CF Express Type A is available most of the time in store. I mostly do still photography like most people. @ trungtran: You have to save money somewhere after buying a Sony A1. This quick performance benefits recording a variety of video resolutions, bit-rates, and compressions, as well as high-resolution continuous raw photo shooting. So why didnt Sony use it in their consumer cameras. According to ProGrade, the Cobalts minimum write speed is guaranteed not to drop below 400 MB/s, which they claim allows for the uninterrupted recording of a wide variety of codecs, including 4K RAW, 4K and 6K ProRes 4444, 4K, 6K, and 8K ProRes 422 HQ, and more. ProGrade Digital61Amazon.co.jp62964Amazon Send it in to the service center? They are effectively PCI Express SSDs but with a different connecter and an astronomically higher price while offering lower IOPs than many budget m.2 NVMe offerings. I don't think there's a controversy here. This is usually a celebration sequence that goes on longer than a normal play. Before you process the images and make backup copies. CFexpress cards are faster and thats the big takeaway, if its all your brain has space for. They both use NVMe and PCIe. I just am glad my Canon R5 uses the Type B cards, which are way faster. Whats the takeaway here? The 160GB CFexpress Type A Cobalt Memory Card from ProGrade Digital provides read speeds of up to 800 MB/s, and write speeds of up to 700 MB/s. If you knew the history of this company you would know why they legitimately call it ProGrade. Never tried it, but the 8K IPB "Light" option might write to a fast V30 considering the bit rate is close to 1080 All-I (230Mbp/s). I guess I should have been more specific that I was mostly thinking about a "Why not both?". Although I would add that many very skilled photographers above the level of "everyday Joe's" are using the SD card rather than CFE-A in the A1 and A7SIII. Its been a year where they mostly were out of stock, especially the 160Gb version. And they still support UHS-II SD. Though it would not benefit a camera use case, since the SSD can have writes cached to the SSDs RAM while it is transitioning to a higher power state. If they could go with M.2 SSDs in passive carriers to give a more robust connector, then users can have more future ready cards, for example, if a camera maker decides to take a slot from 2 PCIe lanes, to 4 lanes, current SSDs will be ready to take advantage of that added bandwidth. You can also get it in a 2-pack for $589.99 USD. It's a really weird corporate blind spot. SD cards use a different interface. There has been undersupply of the Type A cards so far. Much better deal. Yeah, those 24mp cameras are too low-res for the CFX/XQD to make any sense. Integral CFexpress cards are among the cheapest around, but make no ruggedisation claims, and only appear to cite burst speed figures. At 400MB/s, the card can record video across a wide range of codecs and resolutions, including 6K ProRes 4444, 8K ProRes 422 HQ and more. So maybe Canon will switch to Type A as well in the future, to redce their overheating problems. If it does then you made a mistake at the 6500 part, not the 590 part.". How is power consumtion for such SSD disks at idle and workload? In looking up some of the prograde cf express cards, the power consumption range is similar to that of an NVMe SSD. It's expensive so people don't buy them. The key is how many of each type of photographer is out there. This doesn't appear to be a money thing - CF Express is an open standard, and every camera not sold wipes out margins for how many cards? That's the bottom line. That seems odd. But my point is that many respected photographers using the A1 are using SD and will not go to CFE-A due to the cost. Yes, it may offer the lowest performance of the lot, but these cards can fit into a combi slot that will also take SD cards. The answer is that we need to build a SSD into these cameras instead of paying outrageous amounts for flash memory. Not perfect, but better than just one port. Magnar - Tell me which companies make part of the Compact Flash Association. Because only those are affordable? The move started a few years back, and just like SD killed off CF, CFExpress is about to return the favor to SD. In order to replace the camera when the ssd dies?Please no:). @RubberDials, How come Type B cards were announced in 2016, but Type A and C cards were announced in February 2019? 50mp spray and pray photography awesomeness. I respect it and I promise I won't bite you :). And now they have CF Type A.