Small or Large Memory Cards

Gary.D

Gary.D

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Gary Derbridge
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Hi guys

I am currently looking at as many ways to improve my workflow on a wedding as possible, and one way I have recently been exploring is what size cards to use to save workflow when getting home and uploading cards etc.

At the moment, I shoot accross 4 & 8gb cards, as my opinion was always, "don't put all your eggs in 1 basket".

However, this also introduces risks when changing cards/carrying multiple cards throughout the day/ and the fact that a lot of problems happen when a card is changed.

Therefore naturally I then went onto thinking about introducing a 64gb CF & SD writing to both cards at the same time. I have however been warned off about this, as I have heard it can dramatically slow the camera down.

Do any of you, especially wedding photographers, have an opinion on this matter, or could share your method!

Many thanks in advance
Gary
 
Gary.D said:
Therefore naturally I then went onto thinking about introducing a 64gb CF & SD writing to both cards at the same time. I have however been warned off about this, as I have heard it can dramatically slow the camera down.
Click to expand...

If you can compose and shoot at a wedding faster than your camera's clearing its buffer then you're a better man than I am, Gary.

Bob
 
I guess that it depends on your style, Gary, along with the buffer capacity of the body. Although I'm not a wedding tog, I have done a few and never given write speeds a second thought with the 1Dx (nor have I needed to).

Bob
 
Dual slot camera? Than I'd be tempted to say shoot RAWs to a huge CF, and backup JPEGs to a not so huge SD (just doesn't need to be as huge as the CF). That way your eggs are always in two baskets.

Though part of me is tempted to say stick to shooting to multiple CF cards, so if the camera goes missing you've not lost that single basket…

NB I don't shoot pro, just coming from my advise everyone to backup head
 
I used to play the cautious smaller cards game, but went to minimum of 32Gb some years ago and would now recommend the larger card situation, for much the same reasons as you have highlighted. How fast does your camera write? Like the above posts, I never find slow buffer situations these days although it was in the past. Depends on cards/camera.
 
I'm not a wedding tog but as I posted on another thread I did wedding at the weekend and one of my CF cards would not download. It's a 32GB Sandisk but I think it is the card reader. I have twon slots in my 1DX, one for RAW and one for Jpg, I lost the RAW files.

I have now sorted all images for the couple and everything is fine, could have been a lot worse had I not used both cards.
 
Todays large card is tomorrows small card.... I use 7 x 32Gb Lexar cards with SD as backup Jpegs - wouldn't think twice about moving to a 64Gb...
 
I use a 32 or 64 in slot 2 and use smaller 8 or 16 and change em and write raw to both!
 
I used to use a 32gb in one slot and 4x 8gb in the other slot in a d7100 for the same reasons you have said (4x cards in case one or two cards failed and the 32gb card so it stayed in camera and was never removed as card failure or mechanism failed is more likely when you remove/reinsert cards). Since moving to a d800 i have 32gb in both slots the 8gb only held around 200 images which would mean more frequent card changing. I also have 2x 64gb cards (the price was good at the time of purchase) for when I dont want to change cards (on a beach, going out in rain/snow). I always write RAWS to both cards at the same time so I have backup straight away.
 
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I have 2 x 64Gb cards in my D750s. However, thinking back I perhaps should have gone for 128Gb in slot 2 as a permanent backup card that just sits there and 64Gb in slot 1.
 
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