Recently Lexar, maker of memory products, announced the first 128GB SD card. When I saw this I couldn't help thinking about my first computer in the early 1990's with its 100MB hard drive.
Lexar's new card is currently retailing for no less than $249 on Amazonhttp://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seriocompa00-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. While this may put it beyond the reach of most of us, there are still plenty of other high capacity cards out there. There are plenty of 64GB cards available and 32GB cards are now commonplace and selling in some cases for less than $50.
The question is, do we really need this much memory? In their press release Lexar say that they are aiming their new high capacity cards at photographers 'shooting continuous, rapid-fire images and extended lengths of 1080p high-definition (HD) video'. That's something of a niche market.
But even for us less demanding shooters there may be a growing need for bigger cards. Shoot RAW and JPEG, as I do, with increasingly high MP cameras and cards can fill up surprisingly quickly. My first SD card had a capacity of 1GB. My next cards were 4GB and my current cards are 8GB.
With Sony currently sporting 16MP, Panasonic 18MP and with rumours of Samsung delivering an 18MP sensor in the next generation of NX cameras and Sony claimed to to aiming for 24MP, higher capacity cards might come to be viewed as a necessity rather than a luxury. This without even considering the implications of HD video shooting.
Personally I can envisage going to 16GB to cope with bigger files but do I really need to be able to hold more files? One of the arguments against higher capacity cards to hold more images is that if the card goes wrong you stand to lose more of your potentially irreplaceable images. I'm not overly concerned by this argument. Buy from a reliable manufacturer and cards will rarely fail. Even when they do there are many software solutions available that can recover most of your data.
My bigger concern is that high capacity cards could - and almost certainly would - make me lazy. If I still have lots of space on my card, I might be tempted to put off the task of transferring, checking, organising and tagging my images. So instead of having to deal with 100 images at a time I might end up working with 500 images and I know I'm not going to do as thorough a job.
How big are files going to get? Sony's full frame DSLR's with their 24MP sensors generate close to 50MB of data for each image when shooting at full resolution and saving as both RAW and JPEG. Even at that a 16GB card will hold around 320 images. I think that's big enough for me for now. Since most 16GB cards are priced at somewhere between $20-$30 they are a lot easier on the pocket too.
Did someone mention card speed? That's a post for another time.
[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=16GB%20SD%20card&tag=seriocompa00-20&index=electronics&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325]16GB SD Cards[/url][img]http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seriocompa00-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> at Amazon
Lexar's new card is currently retailing for no less than $249 on Amazonhttp://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seriocompa00-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. While this may put it beyond the reach of most of us, there are still plenty of other high capacity cards out there. There are plenty of 64GB cards available and 32GB cards are now commonplace and selling in some cases for less than $50.
The question is, do we really need this much memory? In their press release Lexar say that they are aiming their new high capacity cards at photographers 'shooting continuous, rapid-fire images and extended lengths of 1080p high-definition (HD) video'. That's something of a niche market.
But even for us less demanding shooters there may be a growing need for bigger cards. Shoot RAW and JPEG, as I do, with increasingly high MP cameras and cards can fill up surprisingly quickly. My first SD card had a capacity of 1GB. My next cards were 4GB and my current cards are 8GB.
With Sony currently sporting 16MP, Panasonic 18MP and with rumours of Samsung delivering an 18MP sensor in the next generation of NX cameras and Sony claimed to to aiming for 24MP, higher capacity cards might come to be viewed as a necessity rather than a luxury. This without even considering the implications of HD video shooting.
Personally I can envisage going to 16GB to cope with bigger files but do I really need to be able to hold more files? One of the arguments against higher capacity cards to hold more images is that if the card goes wrong you stand to lose more of your potentially irreplaceable images. I'm not overly concerned by this argument. Buy from a reliable manufacturer and cards will rarely fail. Even when they do there are many software solutions available that can recover most of your data.
My bigger concern is that high capacity cards could - and almost certainly would - make me lazy. If I still have lots of space on my card, I might be tempted to put off the task of transferring, checking, organising and tagging my images. So instead of having to deal with 100 images at a time I might end up working with 500 images and I know I'm not going to do as thorough a job.
How big are files going to get? Sony's full frame DSLR's with their 24MP sensors generate close to 50MB of data for each image when shooting at full resolution and saving as both RAW and JPEG. Even at that a 16GB card will hold around 320 images. I think that's big enough for me for now. Since most 16GB cards are priced at somewhere between $20-$30 they are a lot easier on the pocket too.
Did someone mention card speed? That's a post for another time.
[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=16GB%20SD%20card&tag=seriocompa00-20&index=electronics&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325]16GB SD Cards[/url][img]http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=seriocompa00-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> at Amazon