Sd or Compact Flash

Karen

Karen

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HI. Ive just picked up a D810 body. I'm used to just using the SD cards in my D750 so have no compact flash cards. I know it has one of each slots. Just about to order some more memory. Should I stick with SD and just order another one or get a compact flash card to use as overflow. Any thoughts appreciated from any users. Thanks
 
In my D800 I have a CF32 gb card as the main to take Raw files and the SD 32gb card to take same pictures simultaniously in Jpeg and also videos to SD card, Seems ot work well for me, But would possibly prefer to go up to 64 gb in both. The SD card is 95MB/s so it doesn't have problems with any video work
 
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steve_lyt said:
But put the compact flash in first always.
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??? :confused: Why first?

I always use them both; the CF as #1 card —because a
CF is bigger and easy to manipulate with my big paws
and the SD as RAW backup of the CF.

The SD has never seen daylight yet because the CF has
not failed once yet.
 
The memory card speed is printed on the cards. With both as the same MB/s rating , I can't see how one can be faster than the other, or am I missing something .The only reason I can conclude is the CF card is in the first slot of the camera therefore captures the picture a fraction of a second earlier irrespective of which is designated as the prime Card.. That is something not mentioned in the link given above
 
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realspeed said:
The memory card speed is printed on the cards. With both as the same MB/s rating , I can't see how one can be faster than the other, or am I missing something .The only reason I can conclude is the CF card is in the first slot of the camera therefore captures the picture a fraction of a second earlier irrespective of which is designated as the prime Card.. That is something not mentioned in the link given above
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Maximum write speed is defined by the camera not the card.
 
The speeds printed on the cards is usually the maximum read speads, not what the card is capable of writing, especially with sustained writing. I ran a micro-SD in a SD slot in a camera to test burst speeds and it struggled to clear the buffer writing to the micro SD card that was rated to 60mb/s compared to the usual CF card at 30mb/s because the write speed was not up to the job. A SD card would do better than a micro-SD, but I wouldn't want to be buffering raw files if I only had SD as an option. If you have CF slots then I'd invest in those cards.
 
MatBin said:
Maximum write speed is defined by the camera not the card.
Click to expand...
My very first card for my first digital camers a Nikon D70s was a CF card rated at such a slow speed it kept hitting the buffer, when I put in a faster card it didn't, so a card can dictatate transfer rate sorry
 
MatBin said:
Maximum write speed is defined by the camera not the card.
Click to expand...

Yes BUT only if the card will accept the faster writes as
they both should work together not slowed down by lousy
card write rates
 
A useful feature of my 7DII and other Canon (and most probably Nikon too) bodies that have both CF and SD slots, is that it's possible to shoot RAW onto one card and JPG onto the other simultaneously.
 
GeeJay57 said:
A useful feature of my 7DII and other Canon (and most probably Nikon too) bodies that have both CF and SD slots, is that it's possible to shoot RAW onto one card and JPG onto the other simultaneously.
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That is what I said in my first post
 
GeeJay57 said:
A useful feature of my 7DII and other Canon (and most probably Nikon too) bodies that have both CF and SD slots, is that it's possible to shoot RAW onto one card and JPG onto the other simultaneously.
Click to expand...
But writing to the SD card at the same time as the CF card on a 5D3 slows down the write speed to the CF card and hence buffer clearing.
 
MatBin said:
But writing to the SD card at the same time as the CF card on a 5D3 slows down the write speed to the CF card and hence buffer clearing.
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For sure it's not the fastest configuration, but it can be useful.
 
I prefer to use the 2nd card (SD) either for overflow (in an emergency) or copying before taking to the computer for downloading, they make a good backup option when away from the computer for a few days.
 
realspeed said:
The memory card speed is printed on the cards. With both as the same MB/s rating , I can't see how one can be faster than the other, or am I missing something .The only reason I can conclude is the CF card is in the first slot of the camera therefore captures the picture a fraction of a second earlier irrespective of which is designated as the prime Card.. That is something not mentioned in the link given above
Click to expand...
Well, what matters is the real world performance rather than the manufacturer's claimed maximum. This will be determined by both the card and the camera in situations where the buffer is filled, as in the test conditions. The same card may perform better in the D810 than in the D800, while cards with similar numbers printed on them can perform differently in the same camera (even if they are the same type of card and therefore use the same slot). Whether this is an issue depends on your shooting style. I've used a cheap 64Gb Sandisk Ultra SD in the D800 for more considered shooting in single shot mode, and not really noticed it's a relatively slow card. For Continuous High you probably want the fastest CF you can get.
 
GeeJay57 said:
A useful feature of my 7DII and other Canon (and most probably Nikon too) bodies that have both CF and SD slots, is that it's possible to shoot RAW onto one card and JPG onto the other simultaneously.
Click to expand...
Yep that's what I do
The jpegs saved to the sd card are just for back up in case the CF card fails never happened tho
 
have to say the D810 is the camera I would love to own, but with a D300 - D800 - small compact and a camcorder I don't think "er indoors" would let me get one. Now the D850 is about to come on the market that should send down price of the D810 as retailers will be looking to off load stock
 
realspeed said:
The memory card speed is printed on the cards. With both as the same MB/s rating , I can't see how one can be faster than the other, or am I missing something .
Click to expand...

Sometimes the labeled speed can be a tad optimistic.

MatBin said:
Maximum write speed is defined by the camera not the card.
Click to expand...

realspeed said:
My very first card for my first digital camers a Nikon D70s was a CF card rated at such a slow speed it kept hitting the buffer, when I put in a faster card it didn't, so a card can dictatate transfer rate sorry
Click to expand...

I think what he has suggesting was that the camera will write to the card at its own fastest rate. Putting in a card that is capable of faster speeds than the camera can write to it is pretty pointless.
 
realspeed said:
have to say the D810 is the camera I would love to own, but with a D300 - D800 - small compact and a camcorder I don't think "er indoors" would let me get one. Now the D850 is about to come on the market that should send down price of the D810 as retailers will be looking to off load stock
Click to expand...
When I changed to Nikon last year from being a Canon user for years in business and pleasure I fancied the D810 but went for the less expensive D750 as thought would be a learning curve and I may not enjoy it. However I loved it andIve never regretted changing so got opportunity to get this D810 body and jumped at it.
 
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Just something to bear in mind with the D810 and compact flash cards, it seems to be very fussy over brand and size. Thus far, mine will only work with cards bigger than 8GB if they are lexar or san disk. I've tried both 32GB & 64GB kingston/samsung and neither would work in the D810, but they work perfectly find in the older D800. Thus far lexar professional 800x and san disk extreme 32GB cards are the only ones I've had no trouble with.

The camera doesn't seem to be quite a fussy with SD cards.
 
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I have only ever used Sandisk memory cards, if your happy with one make then no need to change
 
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When I was shooting British Superbikes with a D810 I used the fastest SD card as a main card and the C.F. as a back up. Mainly because my laptop had a SD card reader built in and I just found that easiest.
Never had a problem with the buffer.
 
MatBin said:
Maximum write speed is defined by the camera not the card.
Click to expand...
Not quite... Maximum speed is dictated as the slower of the two maximum speeds of camera and card. I.e. a slow card will slow down a camera that supports a faster card, but a superfast card won’t speed up a camera which only supports a fast card.
 
Eloise said:
Not quite... Maximum speed is dictated as the slower of the two maximum speeds of camera and card. I.e. a slow card will slow down a camera that supports a faster card, but a superfast card won’t speed up a camera which only supports a fast card.
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See my post #15
:-)

Matt
 
MatBin said:
But writing to the SD card at the same time as the CF card on a 5D3 slows down the write speed to the CF card and hence buffer clearing.
Click to expand...
Thats because Canon stuck with slow SD Card technology. In the Nikon D810 the SD card supports UHS-1 so the differential is not so great - the D810 maxes out at around 95MB/s with a CF card while the SD card maxes out at around 72MB/s.

So for security and backup by all means write to both CF and SD card ... but it will limit the write speed and so will reduce the buffer size* and reduce the max number of continuous shots possible.

Note * the buffer size isn't actually reduced of course, but the limit on the number of continuous shots is a product of both the buffer size and the write speed of the cards; the images are written to the card while the buffer is fulling so by the time the buffer would be full, the first images are already on the card so you can shoot more. Its like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom - while some water drips out, if the tap filling the bucket is running quick enough, eventually the bucket still gets full.
 
Eloise said:
Thats because Canon stuck with slow SD Card technology. In the Nikon D810 the SD card supports UHS-1 so the differential is not so great - the D810 maxes out at around 95MB/s with a CF card while the SD card maxes out at around 72MB/s.

So for security and backup by all means write to both CF and SD card ... but it will limit the write speed and so will reduce the buffer size* and reduce the max number of continuous shots possible.

Note * the buffer size isn't actually reduced of course, but the limit on the number of continuous shots is a product of both the buffer size and the write speed of the cards; the images are written to the card while the buffer is fulling so by the time the buffer would be full, the first images are already on the card so you can shoot more. Its like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom - while some water drips out, if the tap filling the bucket is running quick enough, eventually the bucket still gets full.
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I dont write simultaneously, I write to SD after a days shooting or during the day if appropriate. I had already tested simultaneous or individual writing and decided simultaneous was useless (in my case) but dual cards is something I hadnt had before so it was a useful addition to be able to backup post shoot prior to uploading to PC.
Matt
 
Retune said:
...If you want the highest capacity storage for your money, SD may win.
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Probably not an issue, especially if one uses a Windows computer, but be aware that SDXC cards use Microsoft's exFAT file system only - so if for any reason you don't want to or can't use exFAT file system, you will be limited to SDHC (or its precedents), which have a maximum capacity of 32GB.
 
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