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When the going gets rough: the new Sony Tough SD card
Billed as the world’s toughest and fastest SD card, Sony’s new 32 - 128GB Tough range is 18x stronger than the SD standard.
Keeping your data safe is becoming an ever more pressing requirement, and keeping it safe out on a shoot is possibly even more so. And while it’s all very well to back up your hard won images onto cards, often they can be one drop or icy plunge away from disaster themselves.
Which is precisely where Sony’s new UHS-II Tough range of SD cards — or ‘SF-G series TOUGH specification’ to give them their full name — come in as if you suffer the sort of calamity that can destroy your data on these you’ll probably be worrying about a lot more than just where your images have got to.
The cards are bend-proof, drop-proof to 5 metres, water-proof to IPX8, and dust-proof to IPX6: an impressive degree of all-round proofing that Sony says is down to using the world’s first monolithic structure with a completely sealed one-piece moulding. Normal cards are made using a three part assembly, but thanks to the monolithic structure there is simply no empty space in the card for dust and debris to enter into in the first place. There’s not even a no-write protection switch to break.
The cards are X-ray proof, magnet-proof, anti-static, temperature-proof, and feature UV guard. They also have a bright yellow banding to make sure you can get your hands on them in low light.
What’s more, this all-over ruggedisation is balanced with a write speed of 299MB/s, which is more than enough to handle all manner of high-burst shooting; and read speeds of 300MB/s, which should ease the data wrangling process at the other end.
Unsurprisingly, none of this comes cheap. The cards are due to go on sale in October and when they do they will be at a suggested retail price of $72.99 for the 32GB card, $131.99 for the 64GB, and a slightly eye-watering $275.99 for the 128GB.
“Even if the card is used in dusty or dirty areas or dropped in mud, it can be washed in fresh water and wiped off to be used again…” says Sony.
All we need now to truly safeguard our images are cameras as tough as the memory cards…
Tags: Production
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