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What size is your memory card?
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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I find 32GB SDs plenty for my needs and with 64GB for the XQD card - I find it is just right for price/performance and I rotate through maybe a dozen of them between my cameras. If I am going to lose a card, rather it was 32GB of content rather than 128GB or heaven forbid more. Also, Sandisk cards only had too many issues with others over the years.
EDIT: I usually get what is current “Extreme” model I think most of my cards are under 80mb/s speed - don’t need any faster. For spray and pray I use the Z6 with the XQD or my RX100 my 7 with a fast uHS 2 card in it.
EDIT: I usually get what is current “Extreme” model I think most of my cards are under 80mb/s speed - don’t need any faster. For spray and pray I use the Z6 with the XQD or my RX100 my 7 with a fast uHS 2 card in it.
My Sandisk cards seem to work fine. But then again I am not a pro.
my camcorder is set to high HD or full HD for video and my camera is set to shoot at 10M.
Yep not a pro either, just a nerd hobbyist. I would urge you to get a couple spare cards and rotate them. SD cards don’t last forever. 10,000 writes to each block is what the specs say the MTBF is so best not to have a few weeks worth of shots/footage on a card that goes bye bye.
Never had a problem with a memory card. However floppy disks back in the day plenty of times.
32 and 64. One nuisance failure you can get is having the write protect nub fall out, which makes writing to the card impossible. Fixing one of those is real pain. I've heard of folks gluing them in place so it doesn't happen.
My primary camera uses SD cards and since it has a large sensor, I use 32, 64, 128 GB Sony "Tough" cards. I choose them according to what I'm shooting or planning to shoot. If I'm at home shooting a tabletop scene or a macro it is likely that I'm not going to be shooting that many images, so 32 GB suffices. If I'm walking around the neighborhood, where it is likely I'll shoot some wildlife (possibly needing to use Continuous High for rapid capture of action such as BIF or squirrels scampering up a tree, which quickly eats up the card's memory) I stick a 64GB card in the camera. Although I usually check battery level before leaving the house and already have cleared and formatted the memory card so that it is ready for fresh action, even when just walking around the neighborhood I tuck a small pouch with an extra battery and an extra memory card in my pocket, just to be sure I'm not going to run out of either battery power or memory. This has paid off more than once!
On occasions when I'm going out for an excursion, say to a local botanical gardens or some other place where I will be shooting for hours and bringing home many images, I put a 128 GB in there. My camera has two card slots so I sometimes put two 64 GB cards in there rather than just one 128 GB, with one of the cards picking up where the other leaves off as I shoot. This has the advantage of not having to stop and swap out cards at an inconvenient time as well as also not putting all my images on just one card in case there is some kind of failure. It's been a while since I've done many all-day photo excursion trips, though, but I can anticipate future situations where two 128 GB cards would be the best solution. I haven't purchased or used a 256 GB, but that is always an option, too, especially for photo excursions over a few days. Obviously for all-day or longer photo excursions I carry extra batteries and extra memory cards in the camera bag.
On occasions when I'm going out for an excursion, say to a local botanical gardens or some other place where I will be shooting for hours and bringing home many images, I put a 128 GB in there. My camera has two card slots so I sometimes put two 64 GB cards in there rather than just one 128 GB, with one of the cards picking up where the other leaves off as I shoot. This has the advantage of not having to stop and swap out cards at an inconvenient time as well as also not putting all my images on just one card in case there is some kind of failure. It's been a while since I've done many all-day photo excursion trips, though, but I can anticipate future situations where two 128 GB cards would be the best solution. I haven't purchased or used a 256 GB, but that is always an option, too, especially for photo excursions over a few days. Obviously for all-day or longer photo excursions I carry extra batteries and extra memory cards in the camera bag.
They do, that that is incredible to get so much on something so small. Meanwhile I will stick with my card strategy. Until I go back to a hi-res sensor, I don’t need anything bigger YMMV.
It's personal and not really interesting as to size, but for me the sweet spot is 128GB. This gives me the "Goldilocks" amount of storage for the particular bodies (sensor / file sizes) and styles I shoot. And I carry backup cards of course. Even that size is much larger than I generally need. It just "feels better" 
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First of all, I HATE SD cards with a passion. They are way too small and fragile. CF is a much better format aside from the pesky pins in the camera, and now XQD/CFExpress shrinks them down to an, IMO, just right size and shape plus gets rid of the pins.
I don't have any choice but to use SD in my Df, an otherwise great camera that's ruined by only having a single SD slot.
My main cameras these days are a D800 and D810 pair. Each has a Sandisk 64gb SD card that stays more or less permanently parked until I get so inclined to dump it and gets full res JPEGs. The main cards rotated in and out are the CFs. I tend to use 32gbs as to me it's an ideal size of holding a decent number of RAW files from those cameras(which are ~80mb) but without putting "all my eggs in one basket" in case of failure or loss of card. I do have some 64gb cards.
The only exception to that is my D3s, which almost always has a pair of 16gb cards. At 12mp, that's still a lot of images, and it's old enough that even a lower end current card is faster than the camera can write.
When I still had a D500, I had two XQDs, a 64?gb and a 120gb. That was an uncomfortably small number of cards for me, and honestly 120gb was too big for me. I'm hoping to buy a D850 in the next few months, and I'll be back on the XQD train.
I'm picky about the cards I use. I tend to buy high end Sandisk and Lexar cards. I've had exactly two failures over the years of CF cards. Both were Sandisk XTreme Pro, one 32gb and one 64gb. They failed probably 2 years apart, but exactly the same-they worked fine for one shot and then gave an error on the next. Fortunately, since I always carry spare cards, I was able to pop in another and go on with my day. Both cards mounted and read fine on my computer, and were fine after a format. With that said, in both cases Sandisk warranteed them and sent me an exchange of the equivalent card. The first hint of trouble kills all of my trust in a card.
On backups-you can never have enough. Most good cameras have two card slots for a reason, so backups start the moment you press the shutter. I dump my RAWs and processed JPEGs into Dropbox, plus keep local copies on an external. I have an additional "deep backup" external that has straight card dumps on it-copy a card to it, then format the card and cycle it back through.
I don't have any choice but to use SD in my Df, an otherwise great camera that's ruined by only having a single SD slot.
My main cameras these days are a D800 and D810 pair. Each has a Sandisk 64gb SD card that stays more or less permanently parked until I get so inclined to dump it and gets full res JPEGs. The main cards rotated in and out are the CFs. I tend to use 32gbs as to me it's an ideal size of holding a decent number of RAW files from those cameras(which are ~80mb) but without putting "all my eggs in one basket" in case of failure or loss of card. I do have some 64gb cards.
The only exception to that is my D3s, which almost always has a pair of 16gb cards. At 12mp, that's still a lot of images, and it's old enough that even a lower end current card is faster than the camera can write.
When I still had a D500, I had two XQDs, a 64?gb and a 120gb. That was an uncomfortably small number of cards for me, and honestly 120gb was too big for me. I'm hoping to buy a D850 in the next few months, and I'll be back on the XQD train.
I'm picky about the cards I use. I tend to buy high end Sandisk and Lexar cards. I've had exactly two failures over the years of CF cards. Both were Sandisk XTreme Pro, one 32gb and one 64gb. They failed probably 2 years apart, but exactly the same-they worked fine for one shot and then gave an error on the next. Fortunately, since I always carry spare cards, I was able to pop in another and go on with my day. Both cards mounted and read fine on my computer, and were fine after a format. With that said, in both cases Sandisk warranteed them and sent me an exchange of the equivalent card. The first hint of trouble kills all of my trust in a card.
On backups-you can never have enough. Most good cameras have two card slots for a reason, so backups start the moment you press the shutter. I dump my RAWs and processed JPEGs into Dropbox, plus keep local copies on an external. I have an additional "deep backup" external that has straight card dumps on it-copy a card to it, then format the card and cycle it back through.
I know I don’t look old enough and thank you but I remember back to 1KB (yes Kilo) of storage on embedded systems so anything Giga feels vast.
I remember the 5 inch floppy disks 700KB per disk back when I was in elementary school.
Oh you have no idea how much that comment hurt.... 5 inch floppy disks are hi-tech. My first encounter with floppy disks was 8 inch floppy disks that held 144KB and were an absolute pig to not crumple when inserting into the drives.
Happy days....
You must not use UHS-II V90 cards. Memory is not cheap kind sir.