Don’t buy the wrong SD card (Memory Card Tutorial)
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- Опубликовано: 4 фев 2020
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Tony Northrup tells you everything you need to know about SD cards for your cameras. He tells you what the MB/s really means (hint: it’s often meaningless), the truth about memory card failures, whether expensive brands fail more often than cheap brands, and much more! 
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Outstanding! I film with up to 30 vid cams simultaneously (non stop all day) & the micro SD cards do fail. Sticking with one personally tested brand, with identical specs for all the cards, yields consistent professional results.
My personal tip on memory cards is to use them, take photos, having empty memory cards for a long time is worse than a failing memory card
I'm trying to apply this attitude to my new, costly camera: Use use it and take tons of pictures, and stop cradling it like a gentle infant. Because having no pictures is worse than having a broken/worn-out camera.
This is right on time, I can attest to this. Once I landed a exceptionally good interview, only to have card fill up and fail. Now I backup and carry extra cards.
I am always learning from your videos Tony. Thanks so much. I am a bird photographer and I like to use the Extreme Sankdisk SD cards, 64GB @ 90MB/s. I find one card lasts the whole day and I don't have trouble with buffering when shooting high speed flight shots. They are often on special too, which means I can buy lots of them. I like to limit the size to 64GB just in case one fails, then at least I have the other cards.
Same here, but using 170MB/s cards this season, clears buffer faster.
I use that exact card too. You are right, it really opens the camera up to its real performance and they are honest about their numbers. For me its been trouble finding cards that are up front with their Write speeds. And it turns out that the 'Class 10' rating means nothing. There's 15 mbps write speeds on class 10 cards out there. My camera wants to spit out 64mbps on video and never gave good speeds with JPEG & RAW. I remember when 64 GB wasn't even available. When it popped up, it was just too expensive. Now, it's like $9 a card. The 32 GB size is more than enough for a 2-3 hour studio shoot with JPEG and RAW. The people getting their photos taken usually run out of interest after 2 hrs anyway. The 64 GB size is gigantic. The 128 GB and beyond offer very little in benefit compared to their jump in price. There's no way I'd buy 3 back up cards per camera at $500 - $1,000 a card. Great, great card, you are so very right.
It's also a generally good idea not to totally fill SD cards (or SSDs for that matter) due to the wear-leveling where it spreads the writes over the card as much as possible. SD cards in general have relatively low endurance since it is just a single flash IC vs an SSD which uses several and generally has more reserved space for endurance. In general the card brands aren't super important. What matters is write speed consistency, which some cheaper cards can't handle.
A great utility is the official SD card formatting utility made by the SD consortium. It's Windows/Mac and properly formats SD card and even secure erases them (choose overwrite format) - plus it's free to download!
A UHS-II card in an older UHS-I camera does have an advantage in offloading images with a UHS-II reader. It won't help the camera, but you can import quicker at least. :D
also a pretty important mention: reading from a memory cell doesn't hurt it, writing to it does, though
secure erase writes some data (random, FFs or 00s) to all cells, therefore decreasing their lifetime significantly, whereas regular unsecure formatting only deletes the table of contents (or file allocation tables, actually), as was said in the video, and that file allocation table constitutes a small portion of the sd card's memory, so it's safer to do and hurts the card less
@@Kitulous the definition of safer obviously changes with context...in this video, the person was talking about giving your card to someone, so overwriting it is in fact safer.
Nice one ! Love the channel , keep up the great work Tony.
What we’re once my high end cards are now the cheap ones I stash for spares.
Growth!
What's your best bang for buck memory card of choice? I always go with SanDisk Extreme UHS ii
@@aight365 Currently using the Sandisk Extreme Pro. Also a fan of Sandisk products.
@@aight365 I use the PNY Elite Performance U3, and Transcend R285 U3. The latter is much faster and needed for video
@J O its not a matter of brand , but a matter of frequency.
Great information Tony! One little asterisk though. As you mentioned, the Sony is significantly handicapped while writing pictures to the card, but other cameras such as a D750 are not. They allow you to switch to video and record while your pictures are buffering. As a Sony user myself, I hate this and wish they'd take a page out of Nikon's book!
Thanks. I’ve been shooting for many years and have never heard all these specs for cards. Very helpful.
Chelsea and Tony are like the memory card fairies. 1) Keep one on you at all times 2) Stash them EVERYWHERE 3) Buy the right one(s)
How would I find the space to stash Chelsea and Tony everywhere?!? And where can I buy them?
Or memory fairie godparents.
Memory-doola carda-ca-doola, bibbety bobbety boo!
Stash them everywhere? That’s some supremely bad advice you’re propagating there. How can you ever know if one card, or even several, go missing? Always carry a known number of hard plastic card cases (usually only one) that HAVE EVERY AVAILABLE SPACE FILLED AT ALL TIMES. A model that’s solid, safe and secure. Yet small enough to be convenient, BUT AT THE SAME TIME BIG ENOUGH NOT TO EVER GO UNNOTICED IN A POCKET OR FABRIC FOLD OF THE CAMERA CASE. Better yet, always stored in the transparent zippered pocket found under the lid INSIDE many soft cases. That way, it’s almost impossible to misplace a card. Two cards in the camera, eight cards always fill the wallet.
If you ever spy an empty space in the wallet while on assignment..........a major red flag......and time to immediately retrace your steps to locate and secure the missing card!
Good video about SD cards Tony! Here’s a funny scenario I’ve ran into a couple of years ago: I was using the Canon 80D in combination with 2 SD cards: a 64GB Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS I (Read 95MB/s, Write 90MB/s according to Sandisk) and an 128GB Lexar Pro UHS II (Read 150MB/s according to Lexar). The Canon 80D having a UHS I reader, it was writing at almost half the speed on the Lexar, at about 70~75MB/s and at about 80+ MB/s on the Sandisk. Here’s the funny thing: I was using JPEGmini to compress my JPEGs when I was using RAW+JPEG and when I was doing that directly on the card, the new files would start physically on the same spots as the old uncompressed ones but since they were occupying less space, there would be gaps of free space in the card. For some reason, only the Lexar out of the two cards, and only inside the camera would take about 1 minute to save a new picture while the Sandisk would not slowdown at all! On the computer I didn’t notice any difference in performance and later on, doing the same with a 5D Mark IV I had the same results! Now with the 90D which has a UHS II card reader, I can still see a significant slowdown on the Lexar if I do the same but nothing compared to my experience with the 80D. It seems that file system fragmentation is also handled differently from manufacturer to manufacturer of SD cards. While I was testing this to see if for any reason it was the JPEGs themselves that the camera had any issues with and it was slowing down, I copied them all to the computer, I formatted the card and then copied them back to the card and the camera would not slow down at all this time which also backs up the statement for avoiding file system fragmentation, at least for certain manufacturers/models of SD cards.
2:13: Have *_ALL_* the bokeh!
Only when you shoot wide open.
Nice and clear and frank as usual. Thanks Tony.
My understanding is, if you have a single slot camera, it's better to use a collection of smaller cards like rolls of film so that if one gets corrupted, your whole trip isn't gone. If I'm planning to shoot high quality video, I'll keep a high capacity high speed card on hand for that purpose. In a pinch, it can also be my overflow card for when everything else fills up.
Two 128gb cards are better than one 256gb. Basically, I couldn't agree more with your comment.
I love the Tough cards, and while they were stiff to go in to slots at the beginning, they seem to go in a lot easier after a few days of use. I do recommend the SF-M tough cards over the SF-G, though...they are still very fast (150MB/s write vs 200 for the G), but are like 1/3 the cost.
Same. No regrets with my Tough card.
Same, got the cheaper but still fast Sony tough cards. No regrets. I once had a card fall apart from pulling it out of a camera. Never buying cheap cards again.
I've never had any issues either with the Tough Cards, especially with the fitting
Jeff Sereno me too. Tough cards are great. I have 2x 64GB.
I went with the SF-M cards too. They were tight on the first few inserts, but quickly normalized.
You two are the best photographers I learnt so much from you guys Matt from England 👍👍👍😄😄keep up good work
7:10 is the most helpful section.
Great video Tony, Thank you !
One benefit of the "Tough" Sony UHS II cards is the absence of ribs between the contacts. I have had a standard 256GB UHS II card fail after a 2-week trip when one of the ribs became detached. I could not download a single file from the card and would have had no images from this trip. Fortunately, I was shooting simultaneously with two cards, as per your suggestion. Thank you very much for that advise! After that card failure, I now invest in the expensive "Tough" cards.
Very useful and informative video Tony. Thank you.
I used to have the old macbooks where you can stick the SD card in there and it sticks out halfway. I was uploading some pictures and my macbook battery was getting low so I put on the magsafe charger and laid it on it's side to keep the fan from blowing too hard and the laptop overheating. I didn't realize that I laid it on the SD card side and it snapped in half and I lost a good chunk of my files. The Tough SD is NOT a gimmick and you can never be too careful IMO
Good point.
2.8.... oooh so much more pleasing! thanks Tony!! and good advice
Thanks for the VERY informative video!!
I love how he called parts of this video nerdy, but I follow perfectly
When I got my D610, I borrowed the backup card from my D500, which had the UHS-II 299mb/s speed. It was overkill for the D610. So I bought dual UHS-I cards that are 95mb/s; which is the maximum speed supported by the D610. Thus far, I haven't had a single issue writing to either camera at instantaneous speeds. Although, the D610 is slow to bring up pictures on the viewfinder.
Nice easy to follow video. Great work.
Yeah any card can fail. I had a supposedly reliable (and seriously expensive) XQD that crapped out. Was able to get the shots of with some special software
Thanks for the helpful info and tips.
Not reformatting (along with never deleting single images) *until the card is full* reduces the write function stress on your memory card. Writing to the card is what causes it to degrade. If you don't reformat until the card no longer has enough space for your next shoot, then the software will write to each-and-every sector, thereby ensuring it is stressed in an even manner. Whereas, if you continually format a card, there is a higher usage of fewer sectors, because the software's pseudo-random choice of which sectors to write to will, invariably, write to certain sectors more often than others; and, with a large GB card, some sectors may never get used. So, Tony's strategy is good for extending the life of his cards.
Formatting your cards does have a positive bonus, in that the formatting software checks for bad sectors, which it marks as unusable, so giving a kind of health check. Keep an eye of the reported available storage of a newly formatted card. It will always be slightly less than the manufacturer's stated storage, even when new, but what you're looking for is a degradation over time. This is a warning indicator that tells you when the card is nearing end of life. A small degradation is ok, but when you see a sharper decrease in available storage, it's time to retire the card to less stressful duties; such as storing your music playlist.
Rick
Professional photographer & technology consultant
This is such a helpful tip! Does this apply even if writing to different folders on the card?
So I should never delete photos off my card?
@@nikitat5687 I am assuming that you keep the card in your camera, but transfer any valued images to your laptop and some online safe backup website. If that's what you're doing, and you only ever shoot enough pictures to use up a small amount of the storage on your card, I'm saying that it's probably not a good idea to routinely delete/reformat the card until you have to.
Any time you write something to a sector of the card, that's when that sector is most likely to fail. Of course, today's cards are designed to be reused over-and-over, so a sector or the whole card failing is unlikely. What I'm really warning about is the practice that some photographers have of always reformatting the card every time they use it.
Always worth the watch! Thanks Tony.
Thank you Tony and Chelsea. I'm learning so much from you both.
Very very very important topic. we use 3x sony a7iii for photography and video. we use always use the two sd card slots for extra back up. 128gb 150mbs cards. sandisk. looking to get faster ones.
My only tip: *On Workflow* I got burned once by failing to do this, so... never again. The very first thing I do with an SD card now when returning from shooting is *back it up* . It should be STEP ONE. Don't review your images, don't "move" your images off the card. I have a large network attached storage but if you don't just copy the files to a spot where you won't mess them up - preferably a storage location that is independent (hard drive-wise) from your normal workspace. The backup location you choose should not be the same hard drive as your normal workspace for images - a cheap external USB drive will serve in a pinch if you have nothing else. Then you can move the files off to your normal workspace and begin working with the images.
Thanks Tony, you confirm my limited experience. I’d say; look for professional reviews before deciding what card suits you best.
a7III user here. I just recently bought two 64GB UHS-II cards from ProGrade. V90 rated. Replaced the 32GB and 64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I cards I was using, which are now spares in my bag. The buffer clears over twice as fast (when shooting to one card), and now I can transfer the files to my computer at about 130 MB/s instead of 88 MB/s. (I'm limited by drive speed at this point, not the card's read speed.) It may have cost me $140 on sale for the two of them and slot 2 may only be UHS-I, but that $140 was worth the speed otherwise and it didn't cost $220 like two equally fast Sony Tough cards would have.
Also there's this website called CameraMemorySpeed that's done some tests on a fair few cameras and SD cards to see how fast they write. That's what helped a bit in my decision to use the SanDisk cards at first.
I was hoping you'd let us know your experience with different brands of various cards. Regardless I appreciate your report. Thank you for sharing this basic information about memory cards. 👍
The V30/V60/V90 ratings aren't just good for video, but also for knowing that your camera will be able to write it's entire buffer at a semi-reasonable speed without dipping below the rating. I think V30 is the minimum you want, with V60 being the sweet spot and V90 being overkill
I’ve had cards, multiple, physically break. It’s usually those plastic ridge/rails at the top. The tough cards don’t have them and seem to work well.
Maybe you mentioned it and I missed it, but the "V" rating is the most useful spec for write performance, it tells you the guaranteed minimum sustained write speed in MB/s. It's most applicable for video where you would write continuously for many minutes, but also for sustained photo bursts.
I have had SD cards fail a few times, no compact flash failures and no XQD cards fail yet. But the best thing is to always have backups as long as the cards are those you personally trust
How do you recover the files?
@@gabrielto4990 I don't have any real way to recover files. Unfortunately if they get corrupted you just have to hope you can reinterpret the files into a readable format. Sometimes it's possible using 3rd party programs and sometimes it's not
AWESOME VIDEO. VERY HELPFUL. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the video and explanation of sd cards. I have two Sony Tough v90 cards and I was really worried with the difficulty I had inserting and ejecting them from my Sony a7s iii. I really thought that there was a problem with my camera.
I have the tough cards in all my cameras now, for some reason they were all “tough” to put in and take out the first couple times, now they all go in and out great. I got really tired of that lock switch getting flipped and having to take the card out and get it in just right. I don’t really get my cards dirty or wet but not having that little switch is nice, I’ve had some of the normal cards that are squishy or pop apart after heavy use and then they are useless. Hopefully these Sony cards last a lot longer. The worst ones I’ve used are the Lexar cards from a durability stand point, they almost fall apart opening the package, the ones I’ve had fail are the San Disk cards.
Good helpful article. If you hit 4K video, and I do all the time, you need 95 or 100MB / sec. I can only use my slow cards on the old Sony Nex. About stiff thick cards > About half of my Sony batteries have expanded with recharging and will completely lock into the battery compartment. They then need minor violence to remove. It's true as Tony mentioned elsewhere that the non-Sony batteries fad quicker and expand to useless soon enough.
I can't stop thinking about bokeh cause "camera conspiracy"
I buy only scandisk microsd for 4K and use them with adapter in most of my equipment and never have issues
Great video idea ..! What about XQD cards & the CF Express Tony ...? Which cards are best for burst wildlife (birding) shots ...!?!? Thanks 🙏
XQD and CFexpress can also break. Physically they are more robust, similar to the Sony TOUGH Cards. But the electronics inside, the Flash and the Controller chip are as vulnerable as any other Card if electrically goes wrong.
I have a three 32 GB and two 64 GB SD cards in my camera bag at all times. Never failed me, yet
What sd card models do you recommend?
Also, as cards usually fail with insertion and removal, it’s safer to leave 1 big card in your camera at all times and just plug it into your computer to transfer the files. In my case that’s because on my Z6 which just has 1x XQD I’m terrified of corrupting it.
Very good observation. I'm going to think about that. If what you say is correct, I wonder why Tony didn't mention it. Seems reasonable, though.
THANK YOU THIS HELPED ME SO MUCH
Thank you!!! So glad you cleared up the urban legend of deleting!!!
Thanks Tony. Very good. A lot of people don't understand what you just explained. A while ago I had a support call to my ISP, the support person did not know the difference between MB/s and Mbps.....
PS Background visible, must call Kasey!
What sd card do you personally use in the a7riv? Any experience comparing the speeds between the sandisk extreme pro 300mb/s and the sony tough g series?
I use almost exclusively the sandisk 100mbs 128gb that come in the swappable housings. I like these for most purposes. I am looking for some faster writing cards soon though.
Hi Tony, are you going to release your new "which camera should i buy?" any time soon? thanks for the hard work! :)
You could test the speed by plugging it in your computer and using the black magic speed test software where it writes to the drive. At least I think there would be some consistency when testing a card against different cards.
I’ve had a few plastic SD cards split down the sides revealing the chip inside, I haphazardly click the shell back together but I don’t trust them very much. I can see the appeal of the ‘tough’ cards, really I’d just like a metal or carbon fibre unibody card without weak seams.
I guess I'd replace those cards at the first possible opportunity. Not worth the risk or the concern that they might not function properly.
thank you for your knowledge about cameras.
From my experience, if you're not shooting hardcore action or video, go with Cheap.
About the failures: I once had a card feck up during a wedding once, the camera would show "corrupted file" for every picture I took that day. I was terrified. Luckily the files were just fine on the computer but damn that was scary for a second.
@Red Nexican ;)
Were you looking for a quick getaway from the bride's mother? The scariest animal in the forest!
I have bought a cheap off brand 16 GB class 4 card and for years, no problems or anything but after a day's shoot I just copy them to an external 2tb portable drive and reformat the card. No problems since 2017
*DON'T DELETE SINGLE IMAGES from your memory card* because you are putting unnecessary stress (or wear) onto the weakest part of the card. SD-Cards are generally pretty tough and long lasting. What causes them to wear out is whenever you write data to a particular sector of the card. In normal use, if you keep writing images to the card until it's full, the software will pseudo-randomly choose a sector to write your image to. Therefore, if you completely fill a large GB storage data card, all of the sectors will get used equally, and what we might describe as wear is even across the card. This is good, as it'll maximize the life of your card. Whereas, if you routinely re-format a card that's only partially full, the randomisation of which sectors to write to isn't really random; it's what we term "pseudo" random, which means that some sectors will be written to again-and-again, while other sectors are never written to. You avoid this problem if you mostly fill the card before re-formatting it.
Ok, so *why you shouldn't delete single images:* the weaknesses of any digital storage media is the sectors where the Index is stored. This is where the software records where each of your images are randomly stored in the rest of the card's sectors. Unfortunately, because the Index sectors are written to every time you store (or delete) an image, the Index sectors are put under a very high stress. If writing to a sector causes wear, then the Index sectors are where card failures most commonly occur. It makes sense, therefore, to avoid asking the software to write a note saying a certain image is "deleted" when you don't have to. I know that in the scheme of things this is only a single write operation that deletes the pointer to a stored image, and that your card is capable of withstanding many hundreds of thousands of such write operations, but why do it when you don't have to? Each and every write operation degrades the Index sectors, so you're only shortening the life of the card by deleting single files. In any case, you can easily afford the minuscule storage taken by one or ten or even forty images on your high GB capacity card. It's a small thing, but it all adds up.
Finally, don't forget what I said about the storage algorithm being "pseudo" random. If you regularly only use a small portion of a large GB card, and you then routinely delete the images you don't want when you get home, you'll be exasperating that problem of not evenly wearing the whole card. It is probable that the pseudo-random storage algorithm will re-use the sector you just freed up before it moves on to using other sectors. Your best practice is to keep adding images until the card is full, then do a complete format. That way the card's life is maximized and you are also performing a bad sectors check on a routine basis.
And, don't forget to download and securely store your images after every shoot. If the card isn't full, do not reformat or delete anything. It's an additional backup as well as the best preventative maintenance for your SD-Cards.
Rick
Professional photographer and technology consultant
Thanks, Rick. Would this apply to any storage device? Spinning hard drive, SSD, floppy discs, etc.?
Awesome video. Thank you sir. With my A7R4, I use Tough 128gb because someone else was paying for it…! But I agree with your comments. Love from Auckland, NZ.
ive actually physically broken 4 sd cards, dont ask me how, they just come apart.
i recently got this tough one and imo they're great
Essentially for video if you shoot 4K you need a card that has 3 inside the U. If you shoot Full HD then 1 is enough (or just 10 inside a circle). I have only the latter so my EOS M50 stops after 10-20 seconds on 4K.
tough card isn't a marketing gimmick. I use trough card in dash cams, when I used regular cards they fail almost always within a year, after switching to tough card, they are 2 years at least and still going, no errors no bad footage.
A dash cam is subjected to extremes in temperature, where a camera usually isn't. You are comparing two separate uses and devices.
@@mikezupancic2182 true. But Tony here labeled as gimmick. While it made little sense for an average shooter to use tough card in digital camera, the card itself is useful in other applications such as dash cam. So it shouldn't be called a gimmick. Also, I think the card is useful if the shooting is under extreme conditions such as high heat or extreme low temperatures.
@@sweetpoison5341 even that is incorrect. The temperatures in your car in the windshield will always far exceed any temperature you will be shooting in for 99.99% of the people. For photographers, it is a gimmick.
@@mikezupancic2182 i agree with you that most (I would say less than 99.99% but still more than 80%) photographers don't need tough cards in their camera. but here is the thing, it's still maybe 1% less likely to fail due to external reasons ( temperature, blunt force, x-ray?). Let say you accidentally leave your memory card in a hot car in the middle of summer, or in icy water, it just gave you that much protection against those accidents. Think of it as a little insurance policy, since price wise it's not much difference,(maybe ~$20 diff. for a 64Gb card?), I know what Tony said about the chance of even the cheap card failing is small but from my personal experience, I have had cards fail with less than 100 cards that I've ever had from multiple card brands. Once the card fail there is no other means to revive them, you just have to throw them out along with your content is some cases, so if a tough card can give you any extra protection for not a lot of money, I would say it's worth it. besides, it's choice not a mandate. If you don't want to pay extra, it's your choice.
@@sweetpoison5341
Some replies are confusing physically tough cards, built well and unlikely to be harmed by even the most ham-fisted careless of users, like the Sony Tough range, with 'high endurance' cards which have a greatly increased capacity to be overwritten again and again.
These high endurance cards are more likely to be average-performance micro-SD cards which are the suitable alternative to ordinary micro-SD cards especially designed for continuous video loupe shooting, being overwritten hundreds of times, such as in dashcams and surveillance cameras.
I currently use a Lexar professional 64GB UHS3 card in my Nikon D5600 and also it has 2 numbers written on it 1000x and 150mb/s and as far as burst shots go, it 's writing speed can stay ahead of the buffer i shoot at full 24,2MP so files of about 15mb but it keeps up with the camera and i can shoot 3,6k photo's with the card, and that is plenty, i always transfer the photo's to my computer after every day of shooting
Very informative. Thanks.
Re deleting images from your card while in your camera, I watched a RUclips video about SD card manufacturing and a rep from the card manufacturer specifically stated you should not do it. No idea what he based that statement on.
when my a7riii fills the memory card it can no longer access anything on it. Heart sinks when the camera reports cannot read card. I have to then wait until i can off load on a computer then reformat
Better instead to look up your camera's max read/write speed if you're worry about buffer clearing speed. Most cameras can't utilize the extra speed from top end cards, but they do save time when file transferring.
Thanks for saying that about formatting. Everything is still there until it's written over.
Thanks for cards and brown case for camera, love it ;-)
I’m going to assume the depth of field in this video is a direct response to Camera Conspiracies.
Prove me wrong 😏
f2.8 or so...highly palatable:)
Tony finally got the message.
carl porter It’s going to be different when showing objects at a macro distance as he did several times.
Well yeah but it abruptly changes at 2:13 and then back again later. ;) no hate tho, nice looking video
Y'all know that with video there is very little leeway on shutter speed, right? This shot is using natural light. The only way to maintain proper exposure is to adjust aperture. Y'all know this, right?
For me personally, the Sony Tough Cards provide peace of mind that’s well worth the extra money. We all get in a hurry at times and end up jamming a card in our cameras at the wrong angle. Standard SD cards have that nasty little switch on the side which can dislodge after a lot of handling and potentially drop inside the camera. And there’s a similar problem with the little ribs on the back of the card which run between the contacts. At times those wear and I have had them break off, and the last thing I need is a sliver of plastic getting caught in my camera or card reader when I’m under the gun for a deadline. The Tough Cards eliminate these potential sources of workflow disruption. As for shooting multiple days on a card, that’s I suppose a personal preference thing, and certainly acceptable for non-commercial shooting; but when I absolutely can’t afford to lose work, then I get the shots off the card and onto multiple hard drives as immediately as possible. I don’t trust cards or cameras to be bullet proof enough, nor do I necessarily trust myself to keep the equipment perfectly safe, cameras get wet or dropped (or both) cards get dropped, stepped on, cracked etc.
Agree, my biggest card issue is the little ribs on back of the card break off and then get stuck in the card slot. It is just a little extra money for a tough card of equal speed.
Absolutely agreed. Everyone's use-case is different. There are plenty of "rough" shooters out there compared to the rest of us who baby our gear.
I’ve had one Sandisk Extreme break, not only the ribs but a chunk came off the side as well. That said, not only does it still work, though it is now just a backup, it was also my fault as I shoved it in my front pocket without a plastic case at a concert.
Working in news I go through plenty of memory cards daily, they travel a lot and exchange hands a lot. I've mostly used the traditional highspeed sandisks cards but time and time again they fail structurally. Either they split open at the seam or the little switch brakes off. This happens probably at least to 3-4 cards a year. Which may not sound like a lot but when every job is a day turn it is very crucial to have reliable cards. As a result i've found that tough cards are a great value for me. Also I find the lock switch completely useless and annoying when it locks the card unintentionally. If you need to lock a card just put it back in the individual case that it came with and tape a "Do not use" on it.
one good suggestion i learned is dont buy the giant memory cards so you dont need multiple cards. Say you go on vacation and bring a 256gb card with you, plenty of room for the vacation. However if that card dies you lose EVERYTHING. Better to buy 4 64gb cards and just swap out so that if you do lose a card you dont lose the whole trip, same goes for a lot of shooting scenarios.
I also think that is the best way to do it. I would never trust one big card to do the job.
I usually buy my SD Card's in pairs, even though my camera only has one slot. This just gives me an extra in case of card failure or if a card fills up in the field, then I can swap it for a secondary until I get the files dumped to the laptop for processing & storage.
I'll pick up a new SD Card pair normally when I pick up a new camera battery for my rotation. That's been working well for me.
This year I'm using SanDisk Exterme Pro 170MB/s cards for burst shooting, and not bothering with UHS-II since mines a 2016 Canon that uses UHS-I. The very spendy 300MB/s cards likely won't benefit a Canon 80D in any impactful way. So I'll just stick to the 64GB card capacities I've been using for wildlife.
One thing does confuse me, and I suspect it's just a marketing tactic is two exact brand and capacity cards with identical write speeds, but one is being sold at a much higher price featuring a "lifetime warranty". Aren't they all the same or is SanDisk actually providing a *special limited edition serial numbered* copies just for the lifetime warranty benefit?
i buy sony tough because they have low failure rate and dont became loose and has no loose parts...
TL:DW
Sports, wedding, video shooters or high MP camera? Buy fast brand name V90 cards.
Casual shooter? Old camera? Can get away with off brand stuff.
You will know yourself if you need backup cards. Duh.
DO format your card if it’s an old or very cheap card. It causes less fragmentation. Newer cards have much better wear leveling firmware on board.
thank you so much, it helped me a lot
Tony,
Where did you find the half camera case and wrist strap you have on your Sony ? Looks nice. Plan to buy one with the money you saved us in buying memory cards. Thank you!
Hi, I'm also trying to not waste money with my sd card. For when recording movie internally on the Z6 ii, what is the maximum read and write speed that I need?
"Lighting Optimizer" on Canon and "Shading Comp" on Sony. I shoot all SIGMA lenses and if you keep those settings on you'll get a strange reverse vignette.
Backup solution we use for video and stills: We have 2t
7200rpm portable hard drives (WD) wireless that we take in the field. When we
finish shooting we just insert the sd cards in the side of the drive everything
is automatically copied on the wd drive and it does it very fast. The drive is wireless
so weather video or stills we can then look at all the footage on any device in
the field. Then once back in the studio we simply usb the 2t drive to the main
PC editor and copy the files over. All very fast and at this point we have 3 copies
of everything. Then we delete/reformat the sd card for the next shoot. I never
see anyone else really doing this on UTube but it works flawless and it is very
handy to walk around with a 2t or 4t drives. The battery life is like 12 hours
or so. We have never had a problem in the field or studio with this system.
This is super handy because on of our underwater cameras we can loose at
anytime due to the fact we put it in some risky situations to get the shots we
want. So when the cameras surfaces we immediately take the card insert into the
wd drive and it copies it automatically. So if we loose the camera on the next
drop, we have not lost the footage that was shot previously. The drive also
will take thumb drives and copy as well. Not sure why more people don’t do this
but working this way is great, easy, and we never have lost any footage EXCEPT
once we lost the camera underwater on a first drop, so we could not retrieve
the footage. Thanks for putting out great content. Cheers. Jim Baugh JBOTV
What's the best for Canon 5D MK IV?
I got Sandisk 128GB 95Mbit speed and I still got buffer problem...
5/29/2024
Great tutorial, Tony, and as usual, one designed and delivered at the right pace…along with pitch-perfect reiterations and helpful emphasis in order to meet the cognitive needs of the average viewer, i.e., hobbyists, non-engineers. Thank you!
One question about the Sony camera featured in this old video: Where did you find such a beautiful, leather case and strap?
I recently purchased a Sony a7IV and would like to protect it from occasional dings, dents and scratches that are an unfortunate possibility even with treating this beautiful “tool” with the loving care it deserves.
Hope you can help.
Best,
Will
Let's see what the crowd (and Tony) has to say about this:
I'm an enthusiast and only shooting for myself. When I bought my camera I looked around at what other equipment I had (drone, action camera, digital audio recorder...) and all uses micro SD* form factor. I decided on standardizing on that. I don't share the cards between devices normally but just in case. I do have some extra card spread around too as per Tony's suggestion.
The only things that only accept full size cards are my laptop (not doing editing or ingesting on it) and the camera. Workstation uses a cardreader (USB3) with both full size and micro slot.
I put a bit of tape around the adapter so I normally don't remove the micro card - just in case of some emergency for another device.
Is there any actual problems with this? I've battled people telling me the adapter is slowing things down (adapters are straight-through electrical lines), that the card will get too hot because it's slower (how does a micro-sd then survive in a hot drone or action camera?...) etc.
I also have the added benefit that if the adapter breaks, somehow, in it's contacts I can switch adapter and still have a functioning card.
I use micros for other things that require them, but I don't think I would use them in my camera with an adapter. I'm just thinking that because they are so much smaller, they are more delicate and more prone to failure. Just a hunch -- not anything I know to be true.
I had my first card fail last week. But I think it was my fault. I touched it with static on my hands and when i put it into my camera, it could not be formatted. Luckily i had already uploaded to my PC. Had to order new ones from Amazon. Do you recommend downloading directly from the camera or memory card reader? Thanks!
The only card failures I've had have been physical failures: The ribs between the contacts have broken or the write lock has broken. So I have been buying slow Sony Tough cards, which remove both points of failure I've actually suffered.
Excellent as usual. Thanks
Any thoughts on shooting 4K on a 277R 150W vs 300R 299W? Has anyone boughten the less expensive Sony Tough cards for their Canon R? I'm preparing for the R5 and weighing the cost between the two cards.
If you try to use a UHS one card to record In canon log it won’t be usable. I’m having this problem right now with the canon R6. I used a UHS one instead of the UHS II And I cannot transfer the footage into Vegas pro 17 to edit because he doesn’t understand it because I think information is missing. So I have to buy a UHS2 card to prove that I’m right. Something to look into. Thank you Tony and Chelsea.
Just store the pics of a previous shoot on your pc and an external hd, no need to cram your card with pics of 10 shoots. If you read the memory card in the reader of your computer, it takes a lot of time to download
Tony do you have recommendation for a Wild life G master Lens for Sony?
Still hoping that Tony & Chelsea will review a Canon 90D. You guys seem quite methodical when you do reviews, and I have read some many conflicting "facts" about this camera ( from Great camera to defective in design and manufacture) that I would really love to hear your opinion; both pros and cons. Compare it to an 80D? To a 5 D and/or a 7 D? Compare it to a ....? Please?
Resisting a cheap deal is very difficult for many people. They will go for the price hoping they will end up with something better than others. That's why so many lousy products bring in as much or more that the quality ones that are way way way better in every way. I usually agree with 99% of what you say and recommend. Why, you ask? It's because you are smart, not as smart as I am, but close enough. Seriously, thanks for so much good advice. And very good video and sound quality. It blows my mind when I watch a decent video with lousy sound. I think the sound is just as important as the video. Many youtubers seem to think it's only about the visuals. WRONG! It's about the senses. It's about the entire experience.
Secure formatting, usually called something else, overwrites the entire contents with nothing and then zaps the table of contents(layman term). If that is what you said then sorry for repeating.
Hi, I’m am not into video so much, so what card do you recommend for taking PHOTOS ONLY in Raw and maybe video in HD ? Thx. This is for the R5 and R6 and I don’t want to buy cards that are several hundred dollars but want a fast card
When I first got my D850, I immediately discovered your youtube channel and GREAT instructional videos. I Will be using my D850 primarily for underwater shooting... and guess what; changing cards underwater is not recommended! Every time I have to open the underwater housing, I take a careful fresh water rinse, dry thoroughly before opening. On re-closing I have to take my time making certain that all O-ring seals have NO fuzz, hairs or other stuff that will make it leak. I sucked it up and got the 256 GB SD card and 512 GB CFExpress Type B. Once I got over the "sticker shock" I find that I'm loving the big capacity... now if I could only fit more battery into my underwater housing!!
My "google education" for cards led me to choose:
Sony 256GB SF-E Series UHS-II SDXC
Delkin Devices 512GB BLACK CFexpress Type B
So far, so good.
Keep this great content coming!
When you did that survey on card failure did you happen to find out which brand had the most failures?
Lexar. Don't buy.
VIDJACK haha, Tony had a video with their SDP link to the lexar cards a while back. I have a couple because of the price and so far they work but they are backup cards. They feel flimsy.
@@VIDJACK i thought they were the best brand, sandisk is good?
Our Camera club did one for a year. We have eighty members who all bought through the club as control for that year and we all agreed to try as many brands as possible. The photographers all had their own cameras and their own interests in what they were taking pictures of and there were some noticeable trends. Anyway every brand we tried had at least one failure except one which was Samsung and we tried Sony, Integral, Kingston, Sandisk, Toshiba, Lexar, PNY, Advent, Kodak, Fuji, Transcend, E memory and Memzi to name a few. We all had to have used at least five brands in that year and the brands were evenly distributed between members. Then any failures were noted on what cameras were used and what they were photographing at the time and things like the weather and how many pictures the memory cards had through them and how they were stored. We found no discerning patterns with any of the controls we had entered except one. This was people using the drive options for bursts of pictures to capture Motorcycle racing and birds in flight. This accounted for 80% of the failures on the subjects that were being covered. All on upper level cameras with Canon being way out in front as the brand of camera but this is no surprise as 60% of the members own Canon Cameras. Failures of cards only happened to 30% of the members and two camera brands had no failures Nikon and Olympus. To be fair though outside of this I own two Nikon Cameras which have had cards fail so it is pot luck. But most important to anyone that reads this the Cards that failed more than once were all off them with the highest three fails being PNY, Integral and Sandisk all with three each. Again I have used Sandisk for a number of years and have had just one failure so I think what we generally learned from the whole experience which we entered into because of there being so much Brand loyalty displayed was exactly what Tony has just said and that is all Memory Cards can fail no matter what brand and our test suggest some uses may have a bearing on a cards failure ( sports wildlife ) but it really is pot luck.
Paul Wood Very useful. Thanks, Paul.
Good video for the average-none tech people however, it is important to talk about the ratings (c10, u1, u3, v10, v30) for instance that u3 promises the card can handle a minimum writing speed of 30MB/s ...or V30 that is almost the same but specifically tested for writing videos at 30MB/s (video from camera comes in a chunked stream and is more intensive since the result average is 30MB/s but the camera compresses on the fly and actually writes in peaks of higher rates)
Hello, I just received my Canon R6. I will certainly be using you great information videos to set it up, thank you !
Watching this video, re ; memory cards, I see you ( very cool ) camera case ! Where may i find one like it ? Thanks, Steve