At today's PMA (Photo Marketing Association) show in Orlando Florida, Lexar released a clutch of new products and technologies: namely a new high-speed CompactFlash card, updates to its LockTight technology and a few new ActiveMemory System applications:
New 8GB high-speed CompactFlash card
Lexar have updated their popular 8GB CF card to be capable of speeds of 90x (or 13.5mb/sec), a speed that was previously only available in cards of up to 4GB. Aimed at professionals and amateurs alike who use RAW, the high-speed cards allow faster workflow whether taking photos or downloading them to computer. They will be available from April in the more widespread Type 1 format of CompactFlash cards, and will come bundled with Lexar Image Rescue 2.0 (for recovery of deleted or corrupt images), Corel's Paint Shop Pro 9 and CameraBits' Photo Mechanic, an image browser still in development. Prices are still to be confirmed.
Updates to LockTight technology
Lexar's LockTight technology, which ensures security for police photographers, has now been updated to be available in more memory cards - including CompactFlash and SecureDigital. LockTight technology works by locking the card against reading or writing, and can only be unlocked when authorised by a compatible camera or PC, and so is a valuable tool for police, military or media photographers who need to ensure the images (or data) on their card is completely secure. It is now to be available in two new CompactFlash cards, 512mb and 2GB at speeds of 80x to take advantage of burst modes, and the following language options are available - English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese.
New ActiveMemory applications
Lexar have been including their ActiveMemory System (AMS), in their high-end CompactFlash cards for quite a while now, and are now to include them in their SecureDigital flash line-up too. AMS itself is a technology that aims to improve workflow from card to computer, by storing information such as batch processing settings, download information or photo data on the card; saving the continual need by the photographer to input settings over and over, and in turn protecting that data from reformatting of the cards.
In addition they have drawn attention to some of the photo-imaging applications that are taking advantage of AMS: One application using AMS is CameraBits' Photo Mechanic, allowing users to save their download preferences and copyright information on the card. Corel's Paint Shop X allows AMS cards to store batch scripts for image processing, which can then be used to automatically process photos while they are being downloaded to computer and ProShooters' Digital Pro 4 can now use AMS to automatically launch its download wizard and attach captions and copyright.
Lexar “Smart Download” plug-in for Adobe Creative Suite
Lastly, Lexar have released a plug-in for Adobe Bridge that allows photographers using Adobe products to take advantage of AMS technology. By using AMS, the photographer can add caption information to photos which allows Adobe Bridge to automatically organize the photos, lessening the amount of work the photographer has to do himself. More interestingly, Smart Download can handle the download of images to multiple folders from multiple card readers, automating tasks on some photos if needed and how to organise them (by date for example). It will be available straight from the Lexar website as a stand-alone application at the end of March, for Mac or PC, and will be included on Lexar's Professional AMS cards.
For more information on Lexar click here.
