You might be getting a bit confused by all the claims from memory manufacturers these days. On my desk I have a stack of memory cards labelled anything from “40X” to “150X”. These refer to theoretical maximum speeds of transfer and
generally the higher the number the better. You have to be a little bit cautious because lots of factors come into play - especially that some manufacturers are not above being slightly generous with the numbers. So I was a little sceptical when a press release crossed my desk claiming that a manufacturer had come up with “300X” cards.
I was about to delete it when I noticed it was from Lexar. Lexar currently make some of the fastest memory you can buy and they rate it at 133X. It's on a par with SanDisk Extreme IV cards - which of them is faster depends on your camera, firmware version etc. Now Lexar are saying that they have a card that's 3 times as quick as their current fastest - all of a sudden I'm interested. Reading further into the details and as expected the numbers start to come down a little. They are using UDMA technology - as long as you have a compatible device you can expect them to perform 125% better than their current best.
So what does all that mean? For a lot of people, not very much. For pro news and sports photographers, a lot. Pixel counts are going up, motor drives are getting faster and manufacturers are having to get very clever with camera buffers to keep up. The worst thing for a pro photographer is to watch the camera lock as it writes the last files to a card from the buffer. You can't shoot any more because the card will be full when the buffer is written and you can't change the card because you'll lose the pictures in the buffer. A 125% performance upgrade is pretty good if you find yourself in this situation. Even nicer if you come in with a ton of snaps and need to download them quickly for a deadline/so you can sleep.
Lexar have also announced some new ultra fast readers including a very cool looking one with dual slots for CF and SD cards. They can also be daisy chained on high performance Firewire 800 for the ultimate in speed.
But the real reason this is interesting is that every time a new faster card gets announced two things happen.
1. The budget brands up their game and deliver better cards
2. The premier brands unload all their old technology at bargain basement prices. SanDisk Extreme IVs are now in the shops and the prices of Extreme IIIs are crazy (one retailer has 4GB Extreme IIIs at under 45 quid - an 8GB is less than I paid for 512MB cards a while ago). I'd expect prices on Lexar 133X cards to plummet.
Lexar 300X UDMA cards should be available in April. You get Paint Shop Pro, Image Rescue and Backup n Sync free with them. There are no clues on pricing. UDMA Firewire ultra high speed readers will be available in April for a recommended price of $80 (or £80 probably in the UK!) and the cute dual slot reader will be out in June for $50.
