32 GB SD card is coming!

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 07:56:55 -0800, aniramca wrote:

Toshiba announced it in August 2007 last year and they indicated that
it will be ready for January 2008. Panasonic has just introduced it
recently for market use in the latest CES convention. It heard that it
costs about $700 in Japan.

Considering that currently 1gb and 2gb cards are available for $10/gb or
less, I'd have expected it to be around $300.

Some questions to ponder:

1. I wonder about a physical limit in storage for the current size of
an SD card. How far do you thing that they can squeeze in the amount
of memory in that size of card? Could it become a 50, 100, 200 GB SD
card in the future. Why do they multiply in the order of
1,2,4,8,16,32, etc. Why not in nice number like 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50
GB, etc (metric)?

What's unnice about powers of two?


2. On the back of my regular SD card, there are approx. 9 contact
areas which connect into the terminal. Are all those 9 contacts
currently utilized for a typical usage in a digital camera? Or perhaps
that they only use 2-3 contacts and the others are just reserves for
future use? I noticed similar thing for a telephone jack. There are
those phone cables with only 2 connection wires inside (cheaper), and
there are with more wires (which is perhaps capable for faster
connection or other accessories in a phone - just guessing). Is there
a technical discussion in the internet about these contacts and/or the
details inside an SD card?

3. They said about 32GB SD card. What about the Compact Flash card?
What is the largest size available currently for CF? Is CF, xD and
Sony stick will eventually be abandoned in favour of SD cards? (just
like the wars of betamax vs VHS, and recently between blue ray and HD
DVD). I believe that SD card was pioneered by Toshiba.

4. For an average usage in a digital camera, how useful is a 32 GB
card? Would you prefer to carry 4x8 GB SD card or one 32GB card? Is
an 8GB card more than enough for a digital camera? Is the increase of
GB in storage will be matched with higher and higher MP cameras? Will
the future commercial digital cameras in the market ever reach, say 32
or 64 MP cameras? I assume current RAW files are now about the size of
25MB each. Do professional cameras produce larger size RAW files? I
know that there are 30 MP or perhaps even more MP in current
professional cameras ( 6x4.5 of 6x7 size cameras).

5. Is the new 32 GB SD card compatible for all current digital
cameras, regardless of features and prices? It was mentioned
something about High density SDHC usage, and I wonder if my cheap $100
camera, or my 4 years old camera (3MP) can handle it. Or is this for
high end cost, latest model, and high MP cameras' usage only?

Thanks for the input and discussion

If your cheap $100 camera is limited to FAT16, then it won't handle
anything over 2gb (though the potential is there for 4gb).