The Sports Photo Guy

Sony UDMA 300x

Sony couldn’t have wanted to make a CompactFlash card, so that must be why they didn’t put much effort into it.

One could hear Sony’s execs wailing all the way across the Pacific when they realized that they would have to adapt CompactFlash cards when they took over Minolta’s DSLR product line; after all, no other memory card standard is fast enough for top-of-the-line DSLRs and they didn’t have time to develop an entirely new proprietary format.

That’s because Sony has long used its dominance in consumer electronics to push its own proprietary formats and force you to buy Sony-branded accessories for your Sony-branded gizmos – even if those Sony standards are woefully inadequate (look at the ridiculous proliferation of “Memory Stick” sub formats for the weakness of some of Sony’s design specs).

So when it comes to their DSLRs, Sony only has brand snobbery to rely on for ensuring sales of its CompactFlash card line, and while Sony is to be commended for making their newest camera models UDMA-capable, their UDMA flash cards are only mediocre at best.  The 4GB 300x UDMA card I tested turned in only a score of 84 in the JPG test (lower than SanDisk’s 30 GB/sec Extreme III line), though it did manage a 5.5 fps, 24 MB/sec throughput on the RAW shooting test (putting it, barely, in the highly recommended range).

Buy Sony UDMA 300x CF cards from Adorama: 4GB, 8GB, 16GB