Zitay CFexpress type-a to NVMe adapter on Sony A1 and FX6

I've read about this adapter and found lots of contradicting information about it. Let me mention first that the manufacturer himself officially tells you that this adapter is not CFexpress VPG200 or SDXC V90 compatible. Which makes sense, it is just a "dumb" adapter cable from the Type-A pins to the NVMe pins. I guess the firmware of the SSD would have to react to the inquiries of compatibility - but the SSDs are made for computers so that obviously is not part of their firmware code.

Reasoning of why I bought it anyways and my approach to it: I wanted to be able to record long videos without being scared that my 160GB CFexpress cards are too small. Example would be a full theater show that goes on for almost 2 hours or filming my friends on their mountainbikes somewhere remote, this ends up being lots of footage albeit they're mostly short clips of action.

When researching which SSD to get I found a youtube video where somebody used a CFexpress type B to NVMe adapter (useful in e.g. Canon cameras) and he put a small SSD in there. Which at first didn't really work to satisfaction until he found a SSD that had less power consumption. He suggested that any SSD below 5W power-draw should be fine. Now my quest began to find a drive with that power spec that uses TLC tech for guaranteed sustained write speed.

Hardware Used:

• Zitay CFexpress Type-A to NVME Adapter CS-306
• Western Digital WD Blue SN 550 1TB

you can see that the WD Blue is not the newest model, reason is the new one uses QLC with a SLC write-buffer, I was scared to run into issues with that and opted for the "older" one with TLC.

Next I wrote a disk write benchmark that samples the write speed every second and plots the result. It would find dips in write-speed rendering the whole idea obsolete before even trying it in my cameras. However using the USB-C to CFexpress type A cardreader attached to the Zitay adapter which holds the WD drive, the benchmark wrote 850MB/s sustained without the slightest hickup (full 1TB disk filled).

Attached to the Sony A1 which was hooked up to my computer via USB-C (like a card-reader therefore) the performance was much worse, only about 220MB/s sustained no hickups. However more than enough speed for even the most demanding codecs on the A1, theoretically, please see results below.

Sony A1 Allowed Formats 10bit

Firmware: 1.20

• XAVC HS 8K 200M 4:2:0 25p
• XAVC HS 4K 150M 4:2:0 50p (100fps not supported)
• XAVC S 4K 200M 4:2:2 50p (100fps not supported)
• XAVC S HD any fps
• XAVC S-I 4K not supported
• XAVC S-I HD not supported

Sony ILME-FX6

Firmware: 2.0

Camera flashes shortly "Not guaranteed media (B)" when switching slots but lets me record:

• XAVC-I 10 bit 4:2:2 up to 120fps
• XAVC-L not tested, I don't care because 8bit only

For testing I ran a S&Q 120fps recording of 90 minutes, that should have the highest data-rate that can happen on the FX6. MXF Filesize 830GiB (estimated 150MB/s). I filmed the TV screen, so indoors at 20°C the housing of the Zitay only became warm definitely not too hot to touch, seems like the cooling works and WD doesn't lie about the power consumption.

Conclusion

It works great and is very cheap. I find it weird why on the FX6 it is just a warning about the media and on the A1 it simply forbids you to choose a high bitrate codec? It's sad that the cameras firmware doesn't allow us to use this alternative.

Downsides:

• not all codecs allowed on Sony A1, A7S3, FX3, ...
• memory card door has to stay open (therefore not practical for my mountainbike filming)
• cable can get in the way, haven't found a clever way yet to attach it nicer
• blue LED flashing when writing, in the theater I'll have to put some tape on it

upsides:

• cheap price
• storage size up to 2TB possible (haven't found bigger low wattage TLC ones)
• can be screwed to a camera cage / camera body

Illustration of how I attached it to my FX6, you can see the blue LED flashing, the cable and open door problem