XQD VS. CFexpress Cards

[Frank Fremerey]

I am not sure if that is the right place, yet:

The dealer in town who has only black Zf-bodies in stock, told me that my Z6 only supports XQD and Not CFx cards even with the newest firmware update.

That is, he told me, the reason for the Z6 price dropping to next to nothing.

Yet I read somewhere on the net that the Z6 supports CFx as well as XQD with the new firmware.

No, the dealer says, that ios only true for the Z6II

Please help

Thank you

[Bent Hjarbo]

I just used my Lexar 128GB card in my Z6, so yes it works.
FW 3.60

[Ilkka Nissilä]

CFexpress type B should work fine with the latest FW.

https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z7_z6/en/14_technical_notes_09.html

Your store likely is just trying to justify a low trade-in price. Call their bluff by showing the above page of the online manual.

[Hugh_3170]

Frank, support for Compact Flash B cards came quite a while back -  around FW release  2.10 and 2.20, and we are now up to FW release 3.60 for the Z6(I).

See here:  https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/fw/497.html

CFexpress type B should work fine with the latest FW.

https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z7_z6/en/14_technical_notes_09.html

Your store likely is just trying to justify a low trade-in price. Call their bluff by showing the above page of the online manual.

[Frank Fremerey]

Thank you.

I told him right in the shop that I think he was not remembering well.

As I got 6 XQD cards and all of them are fast enough, it is not really my problem.

And yes, he tried to lower the trade in price to 400€

And no, I will not let go of the Z6 for that price in a shop I paid a premium for many cameras because I wanted to be and was the first in Germany to have one...

[Frank Fremerey]

Hi all!
same topic ... different camera ... My Z9 just arrived and I fed her with my two 128GB-Lexar-Gold-XQDs from 2016 ...
Will I have any trouble with these?
Will they slow down my camera when it comes to full speed shooting fast dance/acrobatics (that is what I want the camera for ... I will shoot bursts only, no continuuos waste of memory card)?
Thank you
Frank

[Ilkka Nissilä]

Hi all!
same topic ... different camera ... My Z9 just arrived and I fed her with my two 128GB-Lexar-Gold-XQDs from 2016 ...
Will I have any trouble with these?
Will they slow down my camera when it comes to full speed shooting fast dance/acrobatics (that is what I want the camera for ... I will shoot bursts only, no continuuos waste of memory card)?
Thank you
Frank

Use the HE* compression for minimal quality loss (some file size savings) or HE for slightly more quality loss with further reduction in file size. I think with the latter the camera will do fine with the XQD cards you have, especially if you are not used to shooting at max frame rate indiscriminantly.

If you want to shoot lossless compressed then you may run into some buffer issues if you shoot long bursts at high frame rates. If you use short bursts with short breaks then it probably doesn't become a limitation. I would personally recommend HE* for your situation.

CFexpress cards are very fast but tend to get hot and slow down in case the temperature gets too high, so to get the best extended performance you need to get specific types of CFexpress cards that run particularly cool (Delkin Black is one such example, Prograde Digital's Cobalt is also good, though discontinued / replaced by Iridium).

XQD cards typically don't get hot, so they're very steady. I have Sony XQD and not Lexar myself, but Micron/Lexar had a very good reputation (today's Lexar brand is owned by another company and may be different).

[golunvolo]

Use the HE* compression for minimal quality loss (some file size savings) or HE for slightly more quality loss with further reduction in file size. I think with the latter the camera will do fine with the XQD cards you have, especially if you are not used to shooting at max frame rate indiscriminantly.

If you want to shoot lossless compressed then you may run into some buffer issues if you shoot long bursts at high frame rates. If you use short bursts with short breaks then it probably doesn't become a limitation. I would personally recommend HE* for your situation.

CFexpress cards are very fast but tend to get hot and slow down in case the temperature gets too high, so to get the best extended performance you need to get specific types of CFexpress cards that run particularly cool (Delkin Black is one such example, Prograde Digital's Cobalt is also good, though discontinued / replaced by Iridium).

XQD cards typically don't get hot, so they're very steady. I have Sony XQD and not Lexar myself, but Micron/Lexar had a very good reputation (today's Lexar brand is owned by another company and may be different).

   Agree with every point above. I have gotten a prograde CFexpress because I do shot video here and there too but for dancers, with HE* and 10 fps I have never had a problem with the XQD.

   Another point is the downloading time with CFexpress are way faster if you care about that.

[Ilkka Nissilä]

   Agree with every point above. I have gotten a prograde CFexpress because I do shot video here and there too but for dancers, with HE* and 10 fps I have never had a problem with the XQD.

   Another point is the downloading time with CFexpress are way faster if you care about that.

True, but to get those fast downloading times you need the right kind of USB support on your computer. On my desktop (7 years old) for some reason the USB-C doesn't work with Sony's CFexpress card reader and so I've had to use the USB-A terminals which do make the CFexpress downloads faster than XQD but not by as much as I'd like. On my 2025 Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop I get around 800 MB/s copying from card to internal SSD while on my desktop only around 400 MB/s. Either is very fast though, compared to the SD cards I have to use on the Zf or the microSD on my drone... I don't know why my desktop's USB-C is incompatible with the Sony reader.