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http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/201...-the-brand

[toni-a]

Seems crazy, one of the best brands of memory cards, my preferred and most trusted, I thought they were doing very well

[miro]

Lets put it on that way. Sdcard consumers ware smartphones 90..99%. Today phones has huge internal flash, and SDcard usage starts to disappear.

Technically speaking, the internal storage is type eMMC – it is faster reliable and longer lasting than SDcards. Engineers don’t want to use SDcards with crummy specs. Even the high end Lexar cannot compete with eMMC or UFS.

Apart from it I still wonder how slow and conservative is the photography sector.

<p style="margin-left:20.4pt;">-        Why camera does not have flash inside? It is reliable and faster. The SDslot still can be available option for backups.

<p style="margin-left:20.4pt;">-        Why high end still camera does not have articulated touch screens – My Sony video camera from 2001 have it. It took 15 years to see this “innovation???” in still cameras

[JJ_SO]

Cameras don't have flash memory inside, because it would never be enough, at first (why do have phone Micro SSD cards as extension?). And what you say about reliability is only one side of the medal.

 

You travel somewhere, take loads of pictures and the day before you fly home your camera gets stolen. Together with it's flash memory, with all pictures of course. Which, btw., makes the camera much more expensive if it's "big enough for most people". So, you loose even more money. SD cards on the other side are easy to buy on a lot of places. And, if they are not too big like 256 Gig, they can serve as backup although careful people will carry a backup device with. Cameras with two card slots always can store redundant, identical backups with no more effort.

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<i>Why camera does not have flash inside? It is reliable and faster.</i>
 

 

I admit I'm not an expert of smartphones, because I hate buying them. So I try to keep my latest buy alive as long as possible. So I went and check the spec of a random recent model and I saw that it sports 64GB of RAM. Much, much better than my old smartphone, but I wouldn't call it "huge". In fact in my smartphone I have about 40 GB of music and 12 GB of map data. The remaining 12 GB would fit the needs of the (few) remaining applications, but probably just for a while. And I don't record videos with the smartphone.

 

On my latest a6300 I tried for the first time some serious video shooting, at the max quality settings. I bought a 64 GB card for it, considering that it would be enough. Now, being a rookie in video, I'm probably shooting more than I'll do in future, because I have to learn and try a lot of things. But in the end I filled my card in a couple of days. Not by chance there are memory cards sporting 256 GB and 512 GB... That's why removable media still make sense for cameras. Not counting that embedding 64/128 GB of RAM into a camera would raise its price (clearly this is an apparent thing, because you have to separately buy the sdcard, but we know how marketing words). At last, putting a sdcard into a computer slot for transferring photos is still the faster way to do the job...

 

Given that, I understand your point about Lexar: being the smartphones the principal memory market rather than cameras, we're going to see an excess of offering, and some manufacturers have to shut down.

[JJ_SO]

no matter how big the memory, it's only a question of time to run out of it.

 

Coming back to the subject of Lexar giving up business: As a Sandisk user since a decade, I wouldn't have noticed. On the contrary, there are some people warning fo using Lexar (angry photographer "theoria apophasis" or whatever, about use of them in Fuji). Others will be as convinced of them as I am of Sandisk.

 

For serious videoshooting I would go for an external drive anyway - that can be used for editing.

 

I also heard of photographers who always buy a fresh card for a new commission. 

[popo]

Don't think I'd miss Lexar.

 

Personally I think we're overdue another format revolution. CF has dropped a lot in usage, and it is time for SD to go the same way. Price per capacity for the ok performing cards are poor compared to even mid-range SATA SSDs, and the performance is way lower. Of course the form factor will be interesting to bring it down to the smaller sizes. The 2280 form factor in PC space already can hold multiple-TB, and sacrificing some of that for a smaller form factor doesn't seem too challenging to overcome. For now this is more high end video camera territory, but I see no reason why high end consumer still cameras shouldn't benefit from this also. Compared to today, it would be effectively unlimited buffer capacity and burst rates/lengths will only be limited by the processing in camera.

[Guest]

What prevents ssd cards from using emmc technology ? Anyway can't comment on micron decision as I have no clue to how sales are going in sd card (or margins). I do expect ssd technology to take off - esp when they get cheap enough to permanently replace hdd so maybe micron is going to focus in that arena. 

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Personally I require my phone to have an sd (for the camera); but more than 1/2 people with smartphone never use sd (apple); so i'm not sure the smartphone had a big impact on sd sales (other than perhaps reduction in camera sales).

[stoppingdown]

Personally I require my phone to have an sd (for the camera); but more than 1/2 people with smartphone never use sd (apple); so i'm not sure the smartphone had a big impact on sd sales (other than perhaps reduction in camera sales).

 

I really don't know, but I'd be surprised. I'm sure I'm an under-user of the smartphone: I only use a few apps and I think I own a smaller music collection than the average user (also because, after a few years of going in a pure virtual approach, I've switched back to buying physical CDs). Still, I have 40 GB of music. Maybe most people use more aggressive compression rates...

 

PS I just spotted a new app that I'd use, it's the electronic edition of the Collins Birds field guide for Europe (I have the book). It would be useful on the smartphone. Uh-oh: 9GB, and where we go, I've run out of 64GB memory on the smartphone...

[toni-a]

Lexar were very innovative and their R&D department seems well performing, they have been often the first to break the speed limit or capacity  for a memory card.

Had twice issues with sandisk never with Lexar.