p.3 #2 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
Dustin Gent wrote:
Thanks for all the input. I just ordered a Lexar UHS-II 64GB card to see how it performs. If it does well, I will buy 128GB versions. Reviews on Amazon were very favorable.
V60 is the rating, am unsure if I will benefit from that speed, but oh well. I will have my older SanDisk cards with me as well
V60 should be fine for the UHS-II slot. You don't need that fast for a UHS-I slot but it is nice to have interchangeable cards if needed.
I have used San Disk cards for Nikon and Olympus forever and at first with my new A73 purchased 8 months ago. Never a problem until the A73, as it was having issues with the newer (late 2018) San Disk 128GB and 64GB cards. Contacted both Sony and San Disk and they pointed the finger at the other one. Anyway Sony finally fixed it in a FW update in Dec last year. But in the meantime I bought 2 sets of the Sony M 128GB and 64GB UHS-II cards, the 128 for raw in slot 1 and the 64 for jpeg in slot 2. Have worked flawlessly for 6 months and about 6,000 photos until last Saturday morning. I had updated the FW to V3.01 Friday night and Saturday I kept getting write errors that I had never seen before (I had not reformatted the cards before the FW update). Since I didn't want to lose the photos I had already taken, I put in the 2nd set of cards, formatted them and continued on with about 700 photos that day with no more warnings. When I got home I downloaded the original set and got the photos, then reformatted, and they now work fine. Sony is definitely picker about media cards than any of my 6 Nikons, 3 Olympus or Pany G9 bodies.
p.3 #3 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
If using SD cards, they are pretty weak structurally and will likely be more prone to damage the more times they are inserted and removed from the camera. So, maybe using smaller cards and swapping frequently isn't clearly straight cut better than using larger cards that stay in the camera longer with fewer swaps.
I wonder if Lens Rentals has any data about which might the be best method? Are the memory cards even a significant point of failure compared to other points of failure in the camera system? How often are cards bad because of just randomly frying some transistors or something, compared to actual physical damage to the internals from flexing/compressing the card?
p.3 #4 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
I am still using two cheap 32 GB SD cards with fairly low writing speeds compared to the latest standard. But it doesn't matter for me since I am not shooting video nor burst modes and still use my A7R from 2014. Ironically only my most expensive 32 GB Lexar card failed recently when one of the thin plastic separators on the lower back of the card broke.
p.3 #5 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
well amazon once again dropped the ball, and the driver "couldn't access the apartments", so I went up and bought the fastest Sandisk that Best Buy sells, which of course they don;'t carry any UHS-II cards.
Ended up with an Extreme Pro 64GB 170 MB/s card that has write speeds "up to 90 mb/s". At least I can return it if the card is not that much faster than what I have.
p.3 #6 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
Dustin Gent wrote:
well amazon once again dropped the ball, and the driver "couldn't access the apartments", so I went up and bought the fastest Sandisk that Best Buy sells, which of course they don;'t carry any UHS-II cards.
Ended up with an Extreme Pro 64GB 170 MB/s card that has write speeds "up to 90 mb/s". At least I can return it if the card is not that much faster than what I have.
At least Amazon gave me $10 credit I suppose
Does it work with Sony A7 cameras? I noticed some Amazon reviews on the 170MB/s model saying that it won't.
p.3 #8 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
For my A9 I figured 64GB was more than adequate for uncompressed RAW, and even that is probably overkill since I’ll probably never fill one up with a single project. I generally prefer smaller cards with frequent swaps since I assume (perhaps wrongly!) that failure is more likely to happen in camera. Having said that, I’ve never had an SD card fail on me in any gadget — from phones to music players to cameras.
Just bought a super fast v90 Transcend 64GB card for a decent price, not that I really need anything that fast (consider it future proofing). I also thought I’d try out the suspiciously-cheap Lexar UHS-II cards and bought a 64GB v60 (the 1000x) for about $17. I wonder if Lexar is undercutting everyone on price to win back market share after the change in ownership... or if the cards really are just junk. Needless to say, for now I’ll only use this card for non-critical projects (like photos of the cat
I also have a couple 32GB Sandisk Extreme 90MB/s cards I got free from B&H that I’ll probably use in slot 2 for jpegs
p.3 #9 · do you use larger or smaller capacity SD cards?
I think 64gb is the best balance.
I like the capacity and also quicker formatting times and I generally don't shoot more than 64gb worth over one day in uncompressed RAW. I have two 128GBs as long video backups but I rarely shoot long events so it's overkill.
It really depends on your type of indexing imo and also human habit/risk per card even with dual slots (for data redundancy). Also the importance of the event or job obviously.
