Compact Flash cards, why so expensive?

dougan

dougan

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I love my Canon 7D apart from its use of CF over SD memory cards.
When you can now buy 8GB class 10 SD cards for under £5, why haven't CF cards reduced in price?
 
dougan said:
I love my Canon 7D apart from its use of CF over SD memory cards.
When you can now buy 8GB class 10 SD cards for under £5, why haven't CF cards reduced in price?
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Supply and demand.

SD cards in almost all compacts and low to mid level DSLRs, and CF cards only in mid/high end cameras. The more you make, the cheaper you can produce and sell them as the economies of scale comes into effect.
 
Used to be the other way around, but way more cameras take SD these days, so economies of scale.

I guess a smaller reason is there's much more circuitry in a CF card as well.
 
Im guessing its because the supply and demand for SD cards is much, much higher than those for CF cards. I dont own a single device that uses CF but own quite a few things which (can) use SD cards. Its also probably because of the devices which use CF cards; high end DSLRs which leaves the people who buy them no choice but to spend a lot on a high capacity one.
 
cant you get a sd to cf adapter?
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Yes you can, I had one, but not overly expressed.

Transfer speed was ok, but couldn't shut the compartment door when it was in use
 
dougan said:
I love my Canon 7D apart from its use of CF over SD memory cards.
When you can now buy 8GB class 10 SD cards for under £5, why haven't CF cards reduced in price?
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In 2003 a 1GB CF card was £299.

They have reduced in price.
 
meonshore said:
In 2003 a 1GB CF card was £299.

They have reduced in price.
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This^

CF cards are ridiculously cheap from my perspective, they've come down massively in price :cool: - but SD cards have come down more due to the reasons stated above.
 
When I started using digital cards were basically $1 (Australian) per megabyte. A 256 megabyte card cost around $250. The highest capacity was 512 megabyte for about $500 and when 1gigabyte cards hit the market, they were about a thousand dollars.

So, given that 16 gig cards are closer to $16 than $16,000, I think things are pretty sweet!
 
I know it doesn't always add up but just looking at a SD card and a CF card and comparing them physically would suggest there is more to a CF card and it just looks like it would cost more to produce.
 
The plus point of the CF cards is that if you want a high speed card, CF cards are the fastest. And for me they are more robust cards. SD cards can be very flimsy. I've had someone's SD disintegrate in my fingers getting it out of their camera. :eek: Whilst problems with pins is always a possibility, (never had any probs myself) CF cards are just a stranger design.

You do pay for all that though. ;)
 
artyman said:
So you spend about £1,000 on camera then quibble over £30 for a card!!!
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ernesto said:
I believe it is known as "sweating the small stuff" :)
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After a while all those little things start to add-up :)

If you add up everything to bought for photography, then exclude the body and lenses , I bet it'll surprise most at how much they have actually spent.


How as other, considering what I sent on previous cards new ones are cheap.
 
tijuana taxi said:
Yes you can, I had one, but not overly expressed.

Transfer speed was ok, but couldn't shut the compartment door when it was in use
Click to expand...

There are differences in quality for the adapters as well, I bought one some time ago which has worked perfectly in a number of Canon bodies (other than one error message with a cheap PNY card once).

It also fits properly and the door shuts fine with it inserted.

It was about £14 on eBay, and looks like this

dd73b30a64aa6b5bf986ec1897d8dd0a_zpsf22ab6b3.jpg
 
Dave1 said:
There are differences in quality for the adapters as well, I bought one some time ago which has worked perfectly in a number of Canon bodies (other than one error message with a cheap PNY card once).
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Wow! I bet it's super-high speed as well. What 10? 20 MB/s?
 
hollis_f said:
Wow! I bet it's super-high speed as well. What 10? 20 MB/s?
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Never bothered to test it as its pretty academic to me, it works fine for both RAW + L images and HD video, so plenty fast enough.

I suppose that doesn't please all the gear heads, but just like a car, being able to go at twice the speed actually allowed does nothing but cost money.
 
I've got a 1GB IBM Microdrive that I just cannot bear to part with. It is of no use to me whatsoever yet there it is with all my SD cards.
 
I use one of those adapters to and have never had a problem.....the main reason I use it is that although the CF cards are not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, I had a number of SD cards laying around that I could get more use out of rather than letting them go to waste.
 
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