By Matthew Henry
MELBOURNE: Lexar Media has launched the photographic industry’s first UDMA Compact Flash cards for high-end digital SLR cameras at the PMA Show in Melbourne, which boast more than twice the write speed of the current crop of high-end CF cards.
Lexar’s UDMA Compact Flash memory cards write data at 45MB per second, attaining a 300x speed rating and eclipsing the brand’s current Professional line of CF cards which write data at around 20MB per second (133x).
“There are currently no digital SLR cameras which have a UDMA host drive in them, but they are coming. If you think of the current Canon EOS Mark 1Ds, it can capture about 10 frames per second. That could theoretically be doubled with UDMA because of the extra speed these cards have. And the other great thing is that unlike the new SDHC cards, UDMA Compact Flash cards are backwards compatible so they will work in non-UDMA host drives,” said Lexar USA director – marketing, Jeff Cable.
Lexar has released 2GB, 4GB and 8GB UDMA Compact Flash cards.
According to Cable, the international launch of the products was delayed a short time so that the Australian PMA Show would get the exclusive.
Lexar has also displayed its first Express Card SSD flash drives, which can add storage capacity to notebook computers equipped with an Express Card slot, such as Apple’s new notebooks.
Available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB, Lexar’s SSD flash drives also feature built-in backup software allowing the user to schedule automatic backup of their documents or other important files.
“These are not really designed for speed but more for the convenience of extra storage and automatic backup,” said Cable.