Several years ago, the camera manufacturers stated that XQD cards are what they were using for the moment. And that in the future, CF Express Type B cards are what they were going to use instead. Further, they told us not to fear and that XQD cards would still work in the same slots as CF Express Type B. Fast forward ahead in time, and we can tell you that the manufacturers lied to us all.
I keep a memory card wallet on my desk. And in it, I’ve got two XQD cards from that era. Not a single one works in any camera that will take CF Express Type B cards.
So what happened? It makes zero sense. Newer cameras can use older SD cards often with little to no trouble. And Sony, for probably the first time in their history, made it easier for us to actually want to use the CF Express Type A cards they keep exclusively to their own cameras. They did this by making their SD card slots compatible with both types of cards.
Why didn’t the other manufacturers ever do this too?
This issue is a lot more annoying than just, “buying the CF Express Type B card.” If you had and owned a camera that used XQD then your cards were rendered useless.
More importantly, it’s one of the reasons why I love the idea of so many camera manufacturers sticking a single card slot into their cameras and then either using a Micro SD card slot or internal memory to store images. This is essentially how I think it should be these days. On top of that, the cameras have content credentials built into them more and more because otherwise, photographers are much more susceptible to being replaced by AI.
At this point, they probably won’t even care either about this complaint. But they should.