Memory Cards for Digital Cameras - xD Picture Card

xD Picture Card was developed by Olympus and Fujifilm in 2002 to replace the now defunct SmartMedia cards which had been in use for their cameras. xD original meant eXtreme Digital. The xD Picture Card memory cards for digital cameras are primarily used in Olympus and Fujifilm digital cameras but can also be used in any CompactFlash compatible camera with a CompactFlash adapter.

Original xD Picture cards provided memory storage from 16 MB to 512 MB. With increasing resolution of digital cameras, xD Picture cards, like its competitors have developed newer Type M and Type H xD Picture cards.

Type M xD Picture cards were available from 256 MB to 2 GB, while Type H cards offered storage similar storage of up to 2 GB, but with higher write speeds. However, Type H xD Picture card have been discontinued as of 2008 due to their high production costs.

xD Picture cards do not contain a controller chip to enable wear levelling in its flash memory. Therefore xD Picture cards may suffer from over use of certain portions of its flash memory resulting in failure.

Transfer Speed

xD Picture cards provided relatively slow transfer speeds compared to its competition. Original xD cards writes up to only 3 MB/s, the newer Type M writes even slower at only 2.5 MB/s. The more advance Type H writes at 9 MB/s but has been discontinued from production. In comparison, the average write speeds of its competition are between 10 to 20 MB/s - two to three times faster than xD Picture cards.

Compatibility

xD Picture Card are compatible with Olympus and Fujifilm digital cameras. However, Type M+ (a variant of Type M with higher write speed) and Type H xD Picture cards are required for cameras recording videos at a high rate. Original xD Picture cards do not have sufficient write speeds to support such recording.

Olympus also claims that its xD Picture cards support special picture effects in certain Olympus cameras. However, it is observed that that this effect is due to software rather than hardware differences. These special features are in fact disabled by the manufacturer when users do not use xD Picture cards.

Although xD Picture cards are smaller than other memory cards for digital cameras, their size have been since superseded by variants such as Micro SD. At the same time, xD Picture cards do not offer higher memory capacity (only up to 2 GB, as of 2009) than its competition. In terms of write speed, xD Picture cards lags even further behind.

xD Picture cards are also two to three times the price of an SD card due to the fact that it is produced on a much smaller scale. xD Picture cards are also limited to use in Olympus and Fujifilm cameras, but as if 2009, both manufacturers have begun moving away from xD Picture cards and are providing memory slots for other media.

It would appear that xD Picture cards will be made obsolete in due course. There is no real reason to invest in one unless you are a collector of defunct technology.