Sony Announces 320GB & 640GB CFexpress Type A Memory Cards

[Tim Mayo]

Alongside the announcement of the FX30 Sony also announced two new high capacity Tough CFexpress Type A Memory Cards: the CEA-G320T (320GB) and the CEA-G640T (640GB).

The 320GB card will cost $648.00 in the US, around £600 in the UK and €710 in Europe. The 640GB card will cost a whopping $1,248 in the US, £1,200 in the UK and €1,350 in Europe.

Both memory cards will be available to order from B&H Photo (affiliate link) from 10pm ET, Wed Sep 28, 2022.

The new CFexpress Type A TOUGH memory cards provide fast read speeds up to 800 MB/s along with write speeds up to 700 MB/s. So they offer the same speeds as their 80GB and 160GB siblings.

Personally I found the price of their 160GB cards hard to swallow, so I probably won’t be picking one of these up anytime soon!

 

[AlphaWorld]

I imagine the first users of these cards are likely to be people using cameras like the FX30 to shoot large amounts of video, but I am a bit tempted to get a 320, maybe even a 640 - on a single shoot last year I managed to almost fill four 160GB cards with over half a terabyte of RAW images.

Then the question becomes "eggs in one basket" - if all my images are on a single card, and I lose it, or it fails, I lose everything. Then again, I haven't seen the slightest sign of image loss on a memory card in at least a decade. I think the last card that failed on me may have been an old old CF card (the youngsters probably haven't seen one of those!), and the failure was something CF cards could do - they had a myriad of tiny holes that pins in the card socket slid into - one of the holes got blocked with something I couldn't get out, so the card could slide into a reader.

I guess I'll see what price those cards come to in my local dealer.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I just got local pricing of these cards, and I can summarise it as OUCH!

320GB RRP is A$1300
640GB RRP is A$2500

but, wow, I can get 10% off that price if I order before the end of October (Strangely, they do not appear to be offering mortgages on them…)

You will probably not be surprised to hear that I won’t be one of the first to order these cards…

 

[AlphaWorld]

What was the shoot? Holy smokes!

I went to a shoot at a Birds of Prey free-flight centre. A bit over 4 hours shooting, doing lossless compressed RAW files at the A1’s top speed (20fps), long bursts. Well over 8000 images at 50-70MB each.

Got some good shots of birds like owls, and found out how much I still have to learn about photographing birds like a peregrine falcon (so fast!).

 

[Tim Mayo]

Prograde have just launched a 2TB CFexpress 2.0 Type B card for $799.99, which puts it at around $0.40 per GB vs $1.95 per GB for Sony's Type A cards. So around 5x more per GB for Type A.

Is this massive price difference simply because the Type A cards are physically smaller? Or is Sony just taking the piss?

There is a little more competition now with 5 manufactures producing Type-A cards but the prices aren't really tumbling. That said, Exascend have just released a 120GB Type-A card for $190, although I don't know a great deal about their performance or reliability.

 

[Tim Mayo]

How long before we reach step 4 and cameras are no longer produced with SD slots?

An interesting thought! Having to decide whether to purchase a camera with 64GB, 128GB or whatever internal storage on purchase. That would probably rustle some feathers, especially those who like to backup to a second card. But then you might be able to backup straight to the cloud if you purchase the even more expensive model with mobile 4g/5g connectivity, and that will probably be restricted to Sony's Cloud Storage to maximise profits. You are probably right, it's a matter of when not if.

 

[AlphaWorld]

An interesting thought! Having to decide whether to purchase a camera with 64GB, 128GB or whatever internal storage on purchase. That would probably rustle some feathers, especially those who like to backup to a second card. But then you might be able to backup straight to the cloud if you purchase the even more expensive model with mobile 4g/5g connectivity, and that will probably be restricted to Sony's Cloud Storage to maximise profits. You are probably right, it's a matter of when not if.

Except when you are too far from a cell tower...

64 or 128GB? I walk around with 320GB (2 x 160GB) in the camera already, and sometimes change cards, too.

I'm hoping to see more cameras using CFeA, and the price dropping significantly, any day now (probably the day after I buy a pair of 640GB cards, right?)

If Sony were to offer a CFeB option, how about they build it into the vertical grip? Keep those hot cards away from the sensor! You could probably build twin CFeB slots into the grip, and have two batteries to power the monster...

BTW: I think it's more likely to ruffle feathers than rustle them

 

[Tim Mayo]

BTW: I think it's more likely to ruffle feathers than rustle them

LOL. I don't think I can even blame autocorrect for that one!

 

[AlphaWorld]

LOL. I don't think I can even blame autocorrect for that one!

Oh, I blame auto-corrupt for worse than that!