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Digital Camera World
Digital Camera World
Hillary K. Grigonis

I just looked at the prices of memory cards – and I’m terrified. The AI-driven memory crisis could not have come at a worse time for photographers

Close up of the Sony A7 V camera memory card slots.

I just looked at the price of memory cards on Amazon and well, that was a very fast way to ruin my day. Experts have previously forewarned that the rise of generative AI would increase demand for storage – and based on the prices of everything from external SSDs to memory cards, photographers are already beginning to see the effects.

When browsing through memory cards gave me a serious case of sticker shock, I turned to an Amazon price tracker to see just how much the price of several favorite memory card brands has changed over the past few months. A 256GB UHS-II SD card from SanDisk costs about $100 more right now than it did a year ago. Lexar’s 256GB UHS-I Silver is about twice its average cost right now.

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