Introduction

Digital photography is entering a new phase of rapid growth as consumers discover the benefits and ease of use of digital cameras and as these cameras attain excellent image quality at a reasonable price. Market studies estimate that 3.1 million digital cameras were sold in 1998, and that number is forecasted to grow to 28 million in 2002.

Most digital cameras use a tiny flash memory card to replace the 35 millimeter film of ordinary cameras. There are today two types of such digital film cards -- CompactFlash™ (CF™), invented by SanDisk Corporation, and SmartMedia, invented by Toshiba.

This report focuses solely on CompactFlash cards and is intended to assist consumers in making an educated decision when they purchase their CF cards.

Historical Background

From the time CF was invented, SanDisk sought to establish it as an open global standard for digital film, akin to the 35 millimeter film standard. Towards that end, the CompactFlash Association (CFA) was founded in 1995. From an initial membership consisting of Kodak, Canon, SanDisk, Apple and Polaroid, the CFA grew to more than 125 members including more than a dozen suppliers of CF cards and 28 manufacturers of digital cameras shipping over 70 models of digital cameras -- all of them using the basic CF card for storing digital images. CF cards also are used in numerous non-camera devices such as the majority of Windows CE platforms as well as all major models of PDAs including the HP 620LX, Psion Series 5, Sharp Zaurus, NEC MobilePro, Philips Nino and the Casio Cassiopeia.

SanDisk agreed to provide a royalty free license for the CompactFlash trademark and form factor to all CFA members who adhere to the CF specification.

Brief Primer On CF Cards

Each CF card includes flash memory chips (typically between one and six chips, depending on the card capacity) and a microcontroller chip which manages the storage of digital information (images, data, voice or music) and also the electronic interfacing with the digital camera. Flash memory is a non volatile silicon memory, meaning that no battery power is required to keep the digital images stored on the card literally for hundreds of years without any deterioration of image quality.

Which Is The "Best" CF Card

Since CF cards from different manufacturers should in principle work in all CF digital cameras, it is somewhat difficult for the consumer to determine which brand of CF cards is "better" than other brands on the same shelf. This task is made even more difficult because some manufacturers of CF cards have reverted to promoting their products with misleading and sometimes false claims. Not all CF cards are the same, and some are definitely better than others. The following sections discuss the key considerations and attempt to separate the hype from the reality.

Key Purchase Considerations

Detailed focus group studies of consumers have shown that consumers make their CF purchase decision based primarily on the following three criteria:

1. Quality and Reliability – Can I trust the digital pictures from my family reunion to be stored faithfully on the CF card, and will the manufacturer provide good after sales support if needed even 10 years after the card was purchased.

1. Price – More specifically, price per megabyte.

1. Performance – In particular, the "click to click" minimum time.

Let’s review each of these.

Quality And Reliability Of CF

The average consumer lacks the resources to perform detailed tests of CF cards from different card suppliers. However, all major OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) perform exhaustive tests on hundreds of cards purchased from the leading suppliers before they decide which card to use in their cameras. Each digital camera is typically sold bundled with one CF card bearing the brand name of the camera manufacturer. If the card fails to perform to specification, the customer blames the camera manufacturer, not the CF card supplier.

Today, SanDisk supplies the vast majority of CF cards that are bundled with all the digital camera models that are shipped by Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Konica, HP, Casio and most other CF digital cameras. These CF cards are all identical except for the different brand name of the camera vendor. This assures that SanDisk’s CF cards are guaranteed to work flawlessly in all makes of CF digital cameras.

The reason why the major digital camera OEMs selected SanDisk as their primary CF supplier is simple: SanDisk not only invented CF and holds the key patents, but also SanDisk has worked for the past 10 years with the leading digital imaging market leaders to perfect the technology and achieve the highest level of quality and reliability.

For example, SanDisk is the only company that offers the "ten million picture guarantee" for each CF card sold. This is not a gimmick – the SanDisk microcontroller chip actually monitors the writes to each card even after numerous pictures are taken, and that count information is used with highly sophisticated on-card algorithms to assure an extremely high level of data protection, which is patented by SanDisk and is not available on competitor’s CF cards.

Price

The price per megabyte for CF cards has been coming down dramatically in the last two years, driven by free market competition. This trend is expected to continue, unabated, and is supported by technological advances in flash memory. SanDisk is the highest volume supplier of CF and therefore benefits from the best economies of scale. SanDisk has invariably also been the first company to introduce the highest capacity CF cards, most recently the 96MB CF card.

One word of caution. Beware of CF cards from no-name brands that may be sold unusually cheap. They may use outdated components -- the CF analogy of a 35 millimeter role of film being sold three years after the original expiration date.

"Click To Click" Time

This is one area ripe with hype from certain CF card suppliers who claim that their cards are 4X or 8X faster than the "standard" CF card (by "standard" they usually refer to a SanDisk card of three generations ago).

Just as flash memory cost is coming down, microcontroller performance in successive generations of CF cards is constantly getting faster and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The reality is that today’s consumer digital cameras sold for under $1,000 are all much slower during the internal electronic processing and compressing of an image than during the time it takes to download and store the processed image in the CF card. Typically, the time to process and compress a digital image is between 5 and 10 seconds, while the time to store the image on the card is less than 1 second. Even if the CF card was infinitely fast, the "click to click" time will be almost the same. Therefore claims of "4X faster" or "8X faster" are truly misleading. It is like a car manufacturer claiming you can get home 4X times or 8X times faster if you buy his car, neglecting to mention the road and traffic conditions or the local speed limit.

Furthermore, some CF cards can be fast when empty, but slow down dramatically as more and more images fill the card’s storage space. SanDisk’s CF cards are uniquely designed to maintain essentially the same write speed whether empty or completely full, guaranteeing no surprises.

In the next 12 - 18 months, new consumer digital cameras will be introduced that will reduce the internal processing time to well under one second even for a two megapixel resolution camera. At that time, the CF card write performance will need to be two to three times faster than today’s cards. SanDisk is working closely with the major manufacturers of digital cameras to ensure that its future CF cards will match the faster write requirements of these faster cameras.

SanDisk recently completed a study of actual "click to click" performance with several leading digital cameras, featuring commercially available CF cards from Lexar Media and SanDisk. The results are reproduced in the attached table. They show that Lexar’s claim of 8X faster performance is not borne out in these leading cameras. Quite the contrary. A similar conclusion was reached by two recent independent studies by PC Magazine and Digital Camera Magazine.

Conclusion

SanDisk has been working with major camera manufacturers for many years. These companies have shared their product plans with SanDisk and told SanDisk what CF card performance and capacities will be required in their future digital cameras. SanDisk will be able to meet and exceed those CF card criteria because SanDisk’s product performance is staying ahead of improving camera performance.

April, 1999