What is the difference between a camera’s CF card and an SD card?

Many photography friends are confused by the dual card slot design of the camera that has both CF card and SD card. Below is the difference between CF card and SD card that I carefully recommend to you. I hope it can be helpful to you. Helps.

CF card

CF card (Compact Flash) was first developed and launched by SanDisk in 1994. Today, the CF card standard organization, which is composed of the initiator SanDisk and imaging giants such as Kodak, Canon, Nikon, and Olympus, currently has about 250 members, covering almost all digital camera manufacturers. The CF card is not only a storage device, but also has a built-in controller. Its biggest feature is its good compatibility. No matter what capacity flash memory chipset is used, its external interface is the standard ATA/IDE interface, and 3.3V and 5V external Voltage universal. At the recent CES show in the United States, Lexar launched a new large-capacity CF memory card using UDMA7 technology with a read transfer speed of up to 1066x (160MB/s). Of course, the price is as jaw-dropping as its speed. SD card

SD card is the abbreviation of Secure Digital Card. Literally translated into Chinese, it is "Secure Digital Card". It is a new storage jointly developed by Panasonic Corporation of Japan, Toshiba Corporation of Japan and SanDisk Corporation of the United States. card products. The SD card has 9 pins, and the purpose is to increase the transmission speed by changing the transmission mode from serial to parallel. SD cards on the market now mostly refer to SDHC cards, that is, "high-capacity SD memory cards". The biggest feature is high capacity (2GB-32GB). All SD cards with a capacity larger than 2G must comply with SDHC specifications. The specification states that SDHC must comply with at least Class 2 speed grade, and the card must have the SDHC logo and speed grade logo. SDXC released in 2009 supports a maximum capacity of 2TB (2048GB). SDXC is the abbreviation of SD eXtended Capacity. It is a newly proposed standard. In addition to the capacity being upgraded to a maximum of 2T, it can also support a transmission speed of 300M/s. It can be said that it is a A high-speed SD memory card. Differences

The CF card looks thicker and is larger than the SD card. The built-in controller and ATA/IDE interface of the CF card increase the size and cost, but the data is more secure.

SD cards are cheap and compact. Most laptops and all-in-one machines such as iMacs are equipped with SD sockets. Therefore, SD cards are more convenient and easier to use than CF cards. Advantages of CF Cards

In any case, CF cards will continue to be supported by many devices and remain the mainstream standard for professional digital cameras. Among consumer-grade digital cameras produced in 2005, a certain number still support CF cards. The main feature of CF is still the maximum MB at the minimum price, and has the highest capacity compared to small memory cards. CF II can use MicroDrive and use a variety of smaller memory cards through adapters. At the same time, the CF card interface of the memory card adapter is flatter than other types, all because it does not have a chipset.