SanDisk, Sony pitch über CompactFlash spec

Nikon, SanDisk and Sony want to revive the CompactFlash card as the default memory card technology for pro users. CompactFlash, once found on almost every high-end camera, has faded from the scene somewhat, primarily thanks to the more convenient - read 'smaller' - SD card standard, which is now ubiquitous. CF lives on in some …

[Anonymous Coward]

Waste of time - Again

Why do they bother? nuff said.

Format wars all over again.

Paris, cos I like her format still.

[Anton Ivanov]

CF speed means nothing

CF speed means nothing as it is highly inconsistent over different access methods. The list of compatibility options is waaaaaaaay to long.

I have CF from PNY somewhere around my spare parts locker which is rated at 10MB/s and achieves 10MB/s on read both in DMA and PIO mode. Its write speed is also kind'a tolerable at a few MB/s using PIO (natively or via USB card reader). If you try DMA write however it drops to sub-40k/s. Unusable.

So it works perfectly fine in one device and is completely unusable in another and it is not the only one like that.

I'd rather take SD any day over CF. The likelihood that it does not work exactly as expected by the devices is much less.

[Steven Jones]

CF and form-factor

It seems to me it would be a bright idea to separate the form factor from the electrical interface. Certainly this sounds nothing like CF and, if it's completely incompatible, then why bother with the current form factor? I can quite see that higher capacity units require more cubic millimetres, but just allow for a range of different form factors with adapters (as with SD).

To be honest, I would have thought eSATA would be a better interface than PCIe. At 300MBps it's plenty fast enough for anything around at the moment and it has the great advantage of being hot-pluggable (on sensible operating systems) and supported by current operating systems straight out of the box. Indeed quite a lot of PCs have eSATA already, and those that don't can be readily equipped.

[caerphoto]

"at the moment"

"At 300MBps it's plenty fast enough for anything around at the moment"

Yes, but this is for a storage card to be used years from now, where 300MB/s might seem a bit slow - recording 4K raw video, for instance.

[Anonymous Coward]

pcie

I suspect they chose PCIe for the same reason that CF was PATA - this is the interface on the side of laptops and is already a standard. Old laptops had pcmcia which effectively is a longer CF slot, or PATA interface. newer latops have the thinner PCIe slot and I would imagine the form factor will follow this thinner but still larger than SD interface.

[Ammaross Danan]

Agreed

"Certainly this sounds nothing like CF and, if it's completely incompatible, then why bother with the current form factor?"

Agreed! Just use the PCIe bus spec and call it CompactFlashHD (CFHD) and move on with life.

[MJI]

Too many formats

CF SD at least 3 MS

Too confusing

I replaced my MiniDV camera (with full size MS) and the replacement HDV uses the min MS, the one in my daughters phone is a micro MS

[Stuart Halliday]

Futrure Photography

I can easily see that in a future not far away new still cameras will no longer 'technically exist' as it'll actually take 10fps of 25MB per frame with one shutter press and the camera simply selects which of the resultant photos is the best one.

Already they have cameras that you don't need to focus, you select the focal length after the photo is taken.

Our kids will be baffled by our old ways don't you think?