A few days ago I was literally on the verge of buying a Nikon D500. . .BUT just as I was about to go ahead with the purchase a friend (?) told me I better research the murky future of XQD cards before I buy. He says XQD cards are going away and a camera like the D500 is going to have problems when those cards are discontinued by everyone. I have to say, this has caused me to pause and reconsider. I'm wondering if there are any experienced D500 users here who are also concerned about this. He also said Nikon will have to come up with a firmware update to try to make the XQD card slot on the D500 work with the new cf-express cards. . .He says the cf-express cards are the future of card technology. He says there is no way to know if such a firmware update would actually work, or work very well. So now I'm thoroughly confused about whether to invest in this camera or not. It's the right price range for me and has the features I want, but I can't afford to spend this much money only to have an ongoing card problem to deal with. I was so excited to make this purchase but now I'm kinda depressed about the situation. Are there any D500 users who have any thoughts about this? And, of course, the thoughts of any shooters using a different camera model that also uses XQD's would be appreciated. Thanks for reading, and thanks for any ideas you might have about this!

You have gotten misinformation from your friend. I love using XQD cards with my D 500 as the read speed is very fast as is the write speed. These high (read) speeds (440 mbs) are necessary if you do burst shooting at max frame rate of 10 frames per second. If you do not need this feature, then perhaps you do not need a D 500 and another DX body might meet your needs like a D 7200 or D 7500.

The fast write speed (400mbs) is needed when you download the images to your computer.

When I use my D 500 for nature shooting I often take between 1000-3000 images in a day's shoot. You need the right cards for this and the right card reader too. Very fast SD cards cost a lot too but they do not come with speeds as fast as the XQD cards I have from Sony and Lexar. The fastest SD card that I know of is about 300mbs, a sd xc II. For a given size, like 64 MB, SD cards can range in price from $11 to $100 depending on the card's features.

A few days ago I was literally on the verge of buying a Nikon D500. . .BUT just as I was about to go ahead with the purchase a friend (?) told me I better research the murky future of XQD cards before I buy. He says XQD cards are going away and a camera like the D500 is going to have problems when those cards are discontinued by everyone. I have to say, this has caused me to pause and reconsider. I'm wondering if there are any experienced D500 users here who are also concerned about this. He also said Nikon will have to come up with a firmware update to try to make the XQD card slot on the D500 work with the new cf-express cards. . .He says the cf-express cards are the future of card technology. He says there is no way to know if such a firmware update would actually work, or work very well. So now I'm thoroughly confused about whether to invest in this camera or not. It's the right price range for me and has the features I want, but I can't afford to spend this much money only to have an ongoing card problem to deal with. I was so excited to make this purchase but now I'm kinda depressed about the situation. Are there any D500 users who have any thoughts about this? And, of course, the thoughts of any shooters using a different camera model that also uses XQD's would be appreciated. Thanks for reading, and thanks for any ideas you might have about this!