Didn't have time the last days for posting new stuff. Here is a quick one:
Got my two 2933X 128GB Lexar XQD cards last friday. (The D5 can write between 3000 and 7000 photos per battery charge, which translates to between 80 and 190 GB data per charge) - in case you don't want to travel with a card reader/PC and battery charger.
The 128 GB cards are fast, really fast. Did I say fast?
To check the write speed, I set the camera to 12 frames/s. Saving to 14bit lossless NEF and large/fine JPEG simultaneously. Let it run at CH as long as it start to "stutter".
With this file setting, the camera bursts for 9 seconds to write 110 files (actually 220 files). Immediately after this burst, there was no green write lamp lighting up on the card door. Somehow irritated, I put the card in the PC and here we go: 220 files, 3 GB are there. Written in 9 seconds.
The card was able to write to the card as fast as the camera could produce data at 12 frames /sec. As I still had some doubts, I did it a second time. Again. 110 images in 9 second. This time, the light was 1 second on after I released the shutter. Kind of "slow" this time
With the G-series 32GB Sony card, which came with the D5, write speed is still an impressive 285 MB/sec (the camera got 80 images until it "stuttered"). Same here. No write light after the burst.
Wow. This is very impressive.
I've never seen any camera being able to write between 285-330 MB/sec on its storage card. Some SSDs in notebooks are slower than this write rate.
Might be another area where the D500 might share some components with the D5. W'll see soon.
rgds,
Andy