Started by andyp_1974, 20 Jan 2026. 13 replies, 311 views
went to get a second 128gb card for the R7 before spring, same one I bought last march, and its nearly double the price, thought I was looking at the wrong listing, then checked CFexpress for a mate with a Z8 and that's even worse, is this the AI data centre thing everyones on about or is someone taking the mick
andyp_1974 said:is this the AI data centre thing everyones on about
Yes, it is the memory chip prices. The same flash memory goes into servers, and the AI companies are buying everything the factories can make, so there is less left for cards, SSDs, even the RAM in laptops. Manufacturers are building for the customer who pays most, and that is not us.
I bought two CFexpress A cards for the A7 V in December and they were already more than in summer. I checked the same cards yesterday for a friend and they are higher again. I do not expect it to come down this year. If you need a card for spring, I would buy it now and not wait for a sale.
FWIW I bought two 256GB CFexpress B cards for the Z8 in 2024 and I'm treating them like the family silver now. Never thought I'd look at a memory card as an investment... The D850 still takes the old XQD and SD so at least that one isn't costing me anything new. My advice, same as I'd give for film: buy one good card you trust instead of three cheap ones, and stop filling them with 20fps bursts of a heron standing still. Which I say as a man who does exactly that. - Walt
WaltK_AZ said:treating them like the family silver
ha tbf thats where im at, the old 64gb ones from the 90D are back in the bag
Honestly this is the first thing in years thats stopped me buying something. Not a lens, a memory card. What a world. I had a CFexpress card in my basket for the A7R V and closed the tab when I saw the total, then went and bought lunch to cheer myself up which cost about the same as the card used to
Buy what you need, not what you might need. Same as lenses.
OneMoreLens said:Not a lens, a memory card.
The bit that'll hurt more is storage. Cards you buy once, drives you keep buying. Every year of raws needs somewhere to live, and then it needs to live there twice if you're doing backups properly. If you've been meaning to expand your backup drives, do it before it gets worse, not after. And maybe this is the year people finally learn to delete the 40 near-identical frames of the same heron.
I've raised my rates for the first time in three years and this is part of the reason. Cards, drives, cloud storage, it all adds up across a year of jobs, and every client shoot lives in at least three places for a minimum of a year in my contract. Nobody complained about the increase, for what it's worth. Most clients have no idea what any of this costs and don't care as long as the files turn up.
cdalton_photo said:I've raised my rates
wish I could raise my rates, my rate is 0 lol
Same. Can I invoice the birds
this is why i shoot jpeg tbh. 128gb lasts me like a month
f8andbethere said:128gb lasts me like a month
With 33MP raws at 30fps, 128GB lasts me one football match.
update for anyone still watching this, same card is now more than double what I paid last year, gave up and bought a used one off a mate at the hide for twenty quid and a bacon roll, works fine, cheers anyway lads