Sports photographers can rejoice this summer as Sony launch their new XQD™ S Series memory card, allowing the best-ever shooting performance so far. Offering a sustained read/write transfer speed of 168MB/s (actual speed), the XQD™ S Series actually outpaces the maximum interface speed limit of Compact Flash cards (167 MB/s), and is ideal for storing large volumes of data-heavy RAW files.
The blazing speed and large capacity, should make the card ideal for sports photographers who doesn’t want to be held back by eventual lag in the storage media, and at the same time might be triggering the camera’s shutter remotely and cannot conveniently change media cards in the middle of the action they are trying to capture.
Partnered with Nikon’s D4 professional DSLR, XQD™ S Series effortlessly captures a non-stop burst of 108 RAW frames3 (at 12-bit compressed RAW, approximately 10.5MB file size). At a shooting speed of 10fps, this lets photographers document the men’s 100m sprint final from start to finish in a single, sustained burst of RAW images. – according to Sony’s press release.
Not only is the speed of the new XQD™ S Series memory cards important out in the field, the fast transfer speeds can also improve PC backup times, and boost the workflow for busy journalists and creative professionals facing pressured deadlines. Photo professionals can take full advantage of the card’s unsurpassed transfer speeds, with back-up times, according to internal test by Sony, slashed by over 30% compared with the fastest CF cards.
A high-speed driver for the MRW-E80 XQD card reader is available now for free download at http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/mrw-e80 and free driver software that allows XQD™ memory cards to be used with the latest Thunderbolt™-enabled computers through a compatible card reader is also available.
Coming in August a new free version of File Rescue, Ver 3.2, software by Sony will be available for XQD™ S Series users. The software allows recovery of accidentally-deleted photos and videos, and is the world’s first file recovery utility that now supports latest AVCHD and 3D5 formats as well as RAW and MOV files.
The File Rescue software will also be available for XQD H Series users.
The new XQD™ S Series memory card is available with 64GB capacity from July 2012. A 32GB card will also be available later in 2012 (September/October).
