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The SDXC Cards are here, The SDXC Cards are here! If you're wondering why we're so excited, SDXC card specifications were announced more than a year ago now, but now they're beginning to hit the market in significant numbers. When SD cards maxed out at 2GB, SDHC cards came out. Now that SDHC cards have reached their maximum of 32GB and cameras shooting larger still images and video, the need for SDXC cards has brought them to market. Given that their current maximum capacity is 2TB, we wonder how long before they become too small.

The SDXC card specification has been announced for more than a year now. However, it's only now that we are starting to see products supporting this new specification. There are a few important things to note about SDXC cards and how they fit into photographers' gear bags.

The SDXC specification comes from the SD Association, which is an industry standards organization founded by Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba in 2000. If a manufacturer is going to use SD technology in product, they have to license the right to use that technology from the SD Association. Most, if not all, of the major camera manufacturers are members of the SD Association and license the patents and other intellectual property necessary for developing SD-compatible cameras and memory cards.

There are a number of different specifications that the SD Association has developed over the past decade, including SD, miniSD, microSD, SDHC, miniSDHC, microSDHC, and SDXC, among others. Each specification has its own limitations or capabilities. For instance, the original SD specification offered storage only up to 2GB. When SDHC came along, it took the capacity up to 32GB. The latest specification, SDXC, offers storage capacities up to 2TB.

We've certainly come a long way since the first SD card was offered at 8MB in 2000. Nowadays, a single file from a DSLR can reach 30+MB in size and SDHC capacities up to 16GB and 32GB are becoming more and more common in photographers' camera bags. It won't be long before we start seeing those 64GB and larger cards more frequently in our bags. As image sensor resolution and HD video options continue to grow, we are going to need more and more capacity to contain all of that content.

(Source: Photography Bay.com)