While I'm not old enough to have been a holdout in the digital photography revolution, clinging to my film cameras and unprocessed negatives like a misting rain clings to your windshield no matter how good your wipers are, I am old enough to have made my biggest camera investment in a Nikon D700. I will argue to this day that its 12 megapixel sensor will outperform anything else on the market.
The big problem with the D700, though, is that it–and any big body Nikon or Canon made before it–only writes to compact flash cards. As far as I know, photography is the only industry that still uses compact flash, and as more and more of our writing transfers to SD and micro SD, card readers that can fit a compact flash card will go the way of the dinosaurs.
The USB-C to SD Card Reader transfers high-resolution photos and videos at UHS-II speeds to your Mac, 11-inch iPad Pro or 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation). Designed so it won’t block your other ports, it works with UHS-II SD cards and is backwards-compatible with other SD cards and adapters.
For now, there are still card readers available with slots for compact flash, and you can even see some of them here on our list. Those card readers, as well as Apple's decision to continue including SD card slots on their computer bodies, are pieces of tech we can't expect to last, especially as port connections slowly but surely consolidate around USB standards.
Whether or not you have an SD card slot on your computer, these card readers are life savers for anyone with media to transfer. In some cases you'll use them to grab photos, videos, or other files off of your SD and micro SD cards, as they'll work as intermediaries between the card and your computer without any additional software needed.
In other cases, you can use some of these card readers as USB extenders, multiplying the number of available USB ports open to your computer. This will particularly come in handy as computers reduce the number and variety of their ports in favor of less expensive, more streamlined circuitry.
What'll I do when the industry stops making compact flash card readers and my D700 is still shooting like a newborn? I'll weep for a moment, then I'll do what everybody who invested in Betamax had to do: I'll adapt.
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The MacBook Pro comes with a built-in SD card reader, so you can insert compatible SD cards and view their contents using the Media Reader. The cards must conform to SD 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x standards. MacBook Pro's SD card reader can read standard SD (up to 2GB), SDHC (up to 32GB) and SDXC (up to 2TB) cards. The card reader won't recognize any SD card that doesn't have the standard size, 32 mm by 24 mm by 2.1 mm.
1.Insert the SD card into the SD card reader, on the left side of the MacBook Pro. Mac OS X immediately recognizes the card and assigns a new drive to it.
2.Click the blue two-faced icon to launch the Finder app.
3.Click the drive that Mac OS X assigned to your SD card in the left pane and view the contents of the SD card in the right pane.
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About the Author
Kirk Bennet started writing for websites and online publications in 2005. He covers topics in nutrition, health, gardening, home improvement and information technology.
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Apple Cac Card Reader
- Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
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