Kingston releases high-capacity high-speed SDXC memory card Discussion

[David Barbosa]

Kingston Digital has introduced an ultra-fast and ultra-high-capacity memory card that incorporates the latest SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) standard, capable of supporting up to two terabytes of storage.

Read the full content of this Article: Kingston releases high-capacity high-speed SDXC memory card

[Jamison Cush]

I'm weary of these 64GB cards. Is it really safe to stuff 64GB of photos and footage in a card the size of a postage stamp? I lose SD cards all the time... I can only imagine the stress of losing that many files.

It's going to get worse too. I covered SDXC on Brighthand.com when the cards first started coming out, and the tech promises SD cards with up to 2TB of storage.

[Andy Stanton]

The most I've ever stored on my 8GB card was about 4GB, and that was only on one occasion. I don't think it's safe to rely on them for long term storage.

[Jerry Jackson]

These are intended for upcoming cameras that shoot HD video and pro-level still cameras of the future.

SDXC promises two things for the future that SDHC doesn't: higher capacities and significantly faster write speeds.

Right now even the cameras that shoot HD video have to compress the color data in video before the cameras write the video to the card in order to match the write speed of the SDHC card.

This isn't much of a problem for consumers, but professional film makers care because if you shoot someone or something in front of a green screen for special effects and the green channel is compressed you end up with detail loss around the edges of the subject.

Additionally, pro-level still cameras like the high-end DSLRs from Canon and Nikon care about SDXC because still camera manufacturers are caught with the problem of always having to shoot faster and at higher resolutions.

Right now the fastest flash cards offer around 90MB/sec write speeds if I recall correctly. Imagine pro-level DSLRs of the future than have to shoot 20 megapixel (or higher) resolution image files at 9+ frames per second until the card is full?

If you do the math on the file sizes and the speed of image capture for continuous burst shooting you'll see that flash cards have to get faster and faster to meet the needs of these pro-level cameras.

Sure, this card is insanely expensive now and of little interest to the current camera market, but this product is all about what we're going to see on the market in the coming years.