“Sports photographers, photojournalists and adventure photographers often lack the time and ability to change memory cards, as doing so might mean missing the action or actually putting themselves in physical danger,” said John Omvik, Director of Professional Products Marketing, Lexar Media. “8 gigabytes of space allows these photographers to shoot continuously, even in remote, extreme or hectic situations, where it is difficult to change memory cards.”

“Just as new digital SLR cameras come to market with both larger image sensors and capability of faster throughput to storage devices, Lexar’s new 40X 8 gigabyte card is perfectly timed for today’s shooting demands,” said Denis Reggie, renowned wedding photojournalism pioneer. “With this new card, I can quickly and reliably store one thousand or more full-resolution RAW images -- and that’s welcome news for me and many other pro photographers who don’t want to miss key moments while changing cards.”

In addition to delivering the world’s highest memory card capacity, Lexar’s new 8GB CompactFlash cards deliver high-speed performance, and incorporate Lexar’s new Write Acceleration (WA) technology to provide increased in-camera speed performance in high-resolution CF cameras on the market. The new Write Acceleration includes optimized firmware to reduce overhead associated with transferring data, and provides a larger controller buffer to accommodate transferring up to 32 sectors of data in one command, in cameras supporting this feature. Lexar Media’s 8GB CF cards will also include a free copy of the company’s award-winning Image Rescue 2.0ä image recovery software.

Like Lexar’s 4GB CompactFlash card, the 8GB card is CompactFlash Type II and requires the host camera to support the FAT 32 file system.

The new 8GB CompactFlash cards will be available at many photo specialty stores in May of this year. The cards include a lifetime warranty, unlimited access to Lexar Media’s dedicated technical support team for professional photographers, and a free trial version of Photo Mechanicä image management software. Pricing for the 8GB card will be released at time of shipment.