XQD - the replacement for the CF card format.

[arthurking83]

So it seems this new XQD card format is the new replacement for the CF format.

Don't really care to be honest, and there's always going to be a massive increase in read write speeds in every new card type format.

Doesn't really matter that it wont' fit into your older generation camera, as the camera wont' be needing it, but your newer gen camera of the future will need dedicated card types.

Got to say CF has had a good run for it;s money in technological terms.
It seems to have been around for literally .... 'yonks'.
Just goes to show how good it was to begin with.

The new format is probably just about right in terms of size too, judging by the comparisons to CF and SD on some of the websites that have reported it.
One thing I hate is 'minisculeness'.
SD is bordeline for me in terms of ease of insertion/removal. I sometimes find that I fumble the SD card into and out of my daughters lil compact.
the larger and chunkier physical format of CF was always easy to use.
One I lost a '$100' micro SD card from my son's little console device thingy.
I went to remove it and as it was under spring loaded pressure, it popped out unexpectedly, and being so small I lost sight of where it landed.
Being black and having landed on dark carpet, it was close to impossible to find. I eventually found it after frantic searching .. I reckon a good half to one hour on hands feeling my way through pretty cruddy carpet. High powered LED torch eventually found it tho.

Anyhow .. good to see Nikon finally got their baby on the ground, and now we'll probably see some new pro level cameras from them in the new year

[ameerat42]

(I suppose it's always been on the cards.)

[Roosta]

One I lost a '$100' micro SD card from my son's little console device thingy.
I went to remove it and as it was under spring loaded pressure, it popped out unexpectedly, and being so small I lost sight of where it landed.
Being black and having landed on dark carpet, it was close to impossible to find. I eventually found it after frantic searching .. I reckon a good half to one hour on hands feeling my way through pretty cruddy carpet. High powered LED torch eventually found it tho.

Love this AK, you always never stop amazing me with your technical breakdown of things, but that line is golden from you. That's probally the best description for them anyway.

[Bennymiata]

Well, fo rone thing, I hope they do something to fix the problems with bent pins in CF cards.
Personally, I prefer SD cards as they don't suffer anywhere near as much from the bent pins problems.

Having an office camera that used a CF card, and having 10 different people using it, I've had to fix the camera and pull out CF cards many many times in the past and try to straighten the pins inside the camera.

[Bax]

Interesting, I've always been a fan of CF, never really had any troubles with bent pins, mind you I think I've only ever taken the card out a dozen or so times over the 4-5 years that I've owned the camera.

Speaking about losing cards, I can say that my gf has lost an SD card before, simply due to the cheap Kodak camera deciding to jam. For the price, it's just not worth removing.

I guess we will wait and see - I really hope it's nothing like Micro SD's. There's enough room in an SLR to have some bulk.

[kanesmadness]

Some of the testing and comparison notes ive seen online are looking pretty good towards XQD.

For someone like my self who is upgrading from a D7000 to a D4 a decision will need to be made about which card to use and going on testing alone i would say XQD is well in the lead (the closest in transfer speed is about 30MB's slower). However with the price of the XQD cards i would say many people who have a draw full of CF cards wont be moving for a while yet.

(also sorry for reviving an ancient post)

[Wayne]

I have the D4 & D800, and I have had CF bodies (D3s-D3-D700-D300) for a while, so I have plenty of CF cards. Whilst I use the CF in the D800 of course, I always use the 16GB 'H' series XQD in the D4 and use a CF as well for backup. The XQD is considerably faster than the Sandisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s cards, especially when shooting, and still noticeably quicker when getting images off the card using Thunderbolt or the ExpressCard34 reader. Does it make a huge difference? No, because the buffer in the D4 is massive!

What I find a pain in the arse is the multiple card form factors, CF for both bodies, and XQD for the D4 while SDHC for the D800. Normally I shoot 1 card only in each body because it is such a pain, and only for paid work, or things I can't shoot again will I use the dual card features.
This inconsistency in the card form factors is the number one annoying thing about the 2 flagship Nikon's, and even more annoying is the D4/s/5/D900 etc will probably (hopefully) have dual XQD (most likely in the D4 successor) or perhaps for the D800 dual CF, which still means 2 form factors for many who own the 2 flagship bodies.