One huge CF card or lots of little ones

MrRiley

MrRiley

Messages
30
Edit My Images
No
A colleague mentioned how she was so worried about dropping or losing a memory card on a shoot that she went out and bought 2 of the biggest cards she could find. Her plan is to never take them out of her 2 camera bodies. The problem with her system is if the CF card goes wrong she loses everything.

In contrast...

My usual workflow is to spread each shoot over a number of smaller cards just in case a CF card goes wrong. The problem with my system is if I do happen to drop or lose one of the cards then I risk losing a potentially important part of the shoot but hopefully not all of it. Also I have the problem of having to change the cards out and maybe missing an important image.

I don't honestly think either way is right or wrong but it's been banging around in my head every since we had the conversation.

What do others do and what are your thoughts on this topic?

All the best

MrRiley

www.royriley.co.uk
 
The logical answer has to be several smaller cards, say 4gb, unless you're in a situation where you need to fire off hundreds of frames without changing cards, e.g. sports.

I've ended up with a selection of 2gb and 4gb cards, and one 8gb. (This is shooting on a 5D mk II, where a 2 gb card fills up are 40 or so RAW shots.) I always feel more comfortable shooting on smaller cards... as you say, less to lose if something goes wrong. Not that this has happened to me yet, touch wood :)

Oh and don't skimp on the cards... Sandisk or another trusted brand, and don't buy off eBay :nono:

A.
 
I think 16GB is the "sweet spot" of capacity vs price.

I mainly use Hama 200x @ about £24 per card and this will hold 600 raws which is about what I tend to shoot in a typical full day out.

It's then simply a case of packing x number of cards depending on the length of my trip.
 
Not to back up cards regularly...(on a shoot I do mine every day) is asking for trouble IMO.
So as long as your cards are big enough for a couple of days, it doesn't matter. Also obviously if u shoot in RAW your cards will fill up quicker.....
 
Hi

I prefer to use a smaller card and carry 2 or 3 rather than 1 very large capacity card.

Less to loose should something go wrong ...

And plus, I already have the smaller cards, so no more expense :D
 
Multiple cards ... If one corrupts or gets lost.. you havent lost everyhting...
 
Camera tethered to computer, with automatic backup running every 30 seconds to on-site raid hard drives, and dedicated line to off site raids, with constantly uploading to the cloud, better safe than sorry ;)



16GB cards in reality, as I cant be bothered with the safe route of a new card for every image shot.


If any one does want to go the safe route and can't find 512mb, 1GB, 2GB or 4GB cards then I have Sandisk ones I'll swap for one big card. :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Depending on what camera you have, if it's a camera with 2 card slots, you could do both, one large capacity card, and a series of smaller cards with the camera sending the same image to each. You only need to change the smaller cards when they fill. ;) And of course the larger ones when it eventually fills up. :lol: Backing up your images all the time as you go along of course. ;)

If you don't have a camera with two slots, then I would go for multiple smaller capacity cards. All eggs in one basket etc.

I think 300-400 images on a card is enough to lose in one go, what your capacity works out at depends on what your average file size is. :shrug:
 
Biggest I go with is 8gb but in general, i stick with 4gb so I can split a shoot over several cards to minimise risk....
 
redhed17 said:
I think 300-400 images on a card is enough to lose in one go, what your capacity works out at depends on what your average file size is. :shrug:
Click to expand...

I actually agree with this, but I would say get a bigger card and half fill it to your 300/400.

On my 30D a 4GB card was big enough, now I need a 16GB card for the same number of images on a 1D.

I get diddly squat number on the 4GB card with the 1D, I would have been better of get a 16GB card for the 30D and only using a 1/4 of it then and would still be able to use it in the 1D now.

Of course the price your prepared to pay for a card is going to depend on the size you get.
 
whiteflyer said:
I actually agree with this, but I would say get a bigger card and half fill it to your 300/400.
Click to expand...

There would be too much temptation by most people to just fill a big card imho. :shrug:


If you're planning to upgrade soon and/or often then 'maybe' getting a larger card is a good idea, but the price of cards comes down all the time and buying a large card to try to be future proof yourself may be a false economy.

You pays your money. etc :shrug: ;)
 
I read the insertion rating of the slots somewhere, sadly I can't remember where but if anyone is interested I suppose Googling will find a rating somewhere... Anyway, from what I remember the number of insertions wasn't that high for CF and as far as I remember even lower for SD so I suppose that one thing to possibly consider is that with smaller capacity cards you're possibly going to be doing more insertions.

Having said all that I always remove my cards from the camera and use a card reader and I've never had either a card or a slot fail.
 
Last edited:
Never had problem with any of my SanDisk cards getting corrupted. But I would choose 8GB card instead of 32GB. Just to be on the safe side. Currently have few 8GB SanDisk cards and 4GB spare in the bag. :)
 
I've got 4 16Gb CF cards, all Duracell make. 2 of them are 300 speed and 2 of them are 600 speed. Consistantly get download speeds of 30 Mb per second or more on them and I usually download to the computer when I've had a sizeable shoot whether it's full or not, but I always have all 4 with me, 1 in each body and 1 spare for each body and keep the spares in the straps pouch.
 
kokakaste2 said:
Never had problem with any of my SanDisk cards getting corrupted. But I would choose 8GB card instead of 32GB. Just to be on the safe side. Currently have few 8GB SanDisk cards and 4GB spare in the bag. :)
Click to expand...

Exactly the same as me.
When shooting weddings or anything like that, change cards after every important moment or two (Ceremony, speeches etc). Never risk losing a whole days shooting by getting a corrupt card!
I wish I still had dual card slots, its one of the biggest things I miss about my 1dmkII
 
I've got 5, 8gb EXTREME's... I prefer having the choice of using different cards :)
 
I prefer several smaller cards, for the reasons above. I don't shoot huge numbers of images at a time and 4GB are fine with the 30D, but I'd probably go for 8GB or 16GB if I had a camera producing big raw files.
 
My body takes two SD cards. I use two 16gb Transced Class 10 SDHCs and have it set to use the second slot as back-up copy, so that if one card fails I still have a copy on the second one.

I would feel slightly uncomfortable going back to a one-slot body. In that case several smaller cards are probably "safer" from a technology malfunction point of view, but I'm rather good as misplacing small items, so I'd probably be more likely to lose the wee thing than to have it break.
 
Cards are so cheap these days I have many 16/32Gb cards, you never know when you want to video.
 
Lots of large ones, I use about 12 x 16GB ones If I'm away

I do shoot to two cards at once though
 
I use 16GB sandisk extreme 3 cards, that way I do not need to change cards which can result in cards getting lost or damaged pins in camera. I will not use any cheap cards, just Sandisk and they have never let me down.
 
I've been using CF cards for over a dozen years and, so far, I've had zero failures. So I use one big card that lives in the camera all day. That way, the only way I can lose it is if I lose the camera.

In the bad old days when 64MB cards were horribly expensive I was forced to use several small cards. That's when I did lose some images - because I put a card 'somewhere safe' and never saw it again.
 
Nikon Fan said:
I use 16GB sandisk extreme 3 cards, that way I do not need to change cards which can result in cards getting lost or damaged pins in camera. I will not use any cheap cards, just Sandisk and they have never let me down.
Click to expand...

Have any cheap cards ever let you down?

Just asking, cause I've had a broad variety of CF and SD(HC) cards in my life and none of them ever "let me down" - some were SanDisk, some were made by the lesser known brands.

How many people have actually experienced data loss through a malfunctioning CF of SD card?

I'm not sure I'd know where to look for these 'unreliable' 'cheap' cards.

I'd like to think storage card failures aren't actually terribly common and I'm pretty sure it could hit any brand when it does.

I've stuck with Transcend lately, mostly for price vs performance reasons. They - like any other card - have yet to disappoint me.
 
Multiple 8GB cards for me.
 
Thanks for all your replies and helpful information.
It seems that several smaller cards seems to be the most popular option. With regard to the questions about having cards fail... I am a professional photographer and have been using memory cards pretty much every day since my first digital camera way back in 1998. Over the years I have had several cards fail on me. A few times I have recovered the images successfully or had a third party expert recover the images. But on 3 or 4 occasions I have lost all of the data forever from the card. I normally only use good quality cards from the obvious manufacturers and there has been no pattern of either reliability or failure. These failure, though extremely rare have made me wary so I do try to take every precaution. One of the lost data forever instance happened whilst on assignment in Africa, just after an extremely successful photography session and it hurt like hell to lose those images.. It still hurts to think about it today a decade on.

Here is an interesting nugget for you. I have only ever had one really cheap CF card, made by some dubious generic company, Can't even remember how I came to have it in my collection. It was a 256 mb so that's going way back to the 10d days. Well that card went round the world with me many times. Went across oceans, up mountains, through deserts and then was finally retired years ago. Never went wrong in anger. I found that card recently in the bottom of an old Pelican case, rusted to hell with salt water and hanging apart, I stuck it in the camera and guess what.. It still works fine! slow.. But fine.

Really, I think this all proves that it's purely just a matter of luck or lack of it that dictates if a card goes wrong on you. I will continue to spread the love across a few cards and rest happy that most of you are doing the same.

Hope everyone has a really nice weekend

Roy

www.royriley.co.uk

It
 
SimonTALM said:
My dad lost all his photos from his round the world trip because he used a cheap ebay SD card which corrupted.
Click to expand...
I was asked to try and recover pics from a work colleague's dads point and shoot from holiday pics. Card was a 2gb no-brand, and using my limited skills I suggested it was ruined. She sent it to some kind of professional data recovery specialist who concurred.

This, however, is the only time I've ever heard of an SD card failing thru someone I know.

So yep, multiple 4gb cards for me, but that's cos I bought a few years ago, now I'd be buying 8gb jobs, as that's the perfect price/size ratio for me.

Again I'd go sandisk, as I have had such delights from them as a 512mb Cruzer flash drive that was dropped outside my house, subsequently broke into its 3 component parts and then left in a puddle for a week (not deliberately of course!). This was around five years ago and the drive still works today. I'm aware other brands may be just as good, but so far my sandisk cards have served me well, so I'm happy to stick with them :)
 
Large card approach for me. All my branded cards have not failed me once - I download images onto computer everyday if I can. For me there's just as much risk losing cards when changing, bending pins in a rush, another one to look at it, the more cards you use the more likely you'll get a corrupt card :)
 
evo456 said:
Large card approach for me. All my branded cards have not failed me once - I download images onto computer everyday if I can. For me there's just as much risk losing cards when changing, bending pins in a rush, another one to look at it, the more cards you use the more likely you'll get a corrupt card :)
Click to expand...
Can only assume bent pins refers to cf cards only, as the SD interface uses sliding contacts ;)

Have to admit to being slightly amazed at the continued proliferation of compactflash in pro cameras, I assume it must have a speed advantage?
 
ronnus said:
I assume it must have a speed advantage?
Click to expand...

You assume correctly. :D

Compact Flash cards are faster than SDHC cards. At the moment at least. The fastest CF card at the moment is, afaik, 100MBs (Sandisk Extreme Pro).

I think the fastest SDHC card you can buy can transfer data at 45MBs (again, Sandisk Extreme Pro). The new SDXC format in theory 'may' eventually achieve 300MBs. But not yet. :nono:


Of course, fast cards are only an advantage in the camera if your camera can take advantage of the speed. You may get some advantage when downloading, but again you would have to have the hardware, either in camera USB connection, or a fast card reader and fast connections on the computer.

Sometimes it may not be worth paying the extra for the speed if you can't use it, but you would be paying for the reliability because these cards are 'probably' made to a higher standard as they are aimed at Professionals.

You pays your money you makes your choice. :shrug: ;)
 
I use 4 x 8GB CF cards. Definitely safer to use more smaller ones to minimise risk!
 
ive always thought never put all your eggs in one basket if it breaks all you images are on there i have several small memory cards for my camera
 
think that there are two main points to consider. Firstly, which camera do you have...a large file size from RAW images (which is what I assume most on this forum use) means a larger card requirement, and secondly what type of photography do you do and where.

I travel a lot shooting mainly wildlife and so will need probably to store more images than say a landscape togger close to home. I shoot RAW and each file size is either 22 or 18 MP, and so I use UDMA cards, usually 16 Gigs..or sometimes 8.
When travelling I try to estimate how much memory I'll use and then double it so that I'm not overwriting cards.
Each night I download cards to a Nexto unit which has a 750 gig HD in it...this can even be done in the field if I need to....and from a UDMA card it downloads at approx 1 gig per minute so is extremely quick. I usually also have an external hard drive on my laptop for a second backup (or third if you include the card)

This for me gives as much file security as possible, and....touch wood.....no problems as yet!!

It still amazes me how many people don't regularly backup, as if you do then card size is much less of an issue.
 
The biggest I use is 8gb, I have a number of them and 4gb ones.
 
One big one for me, I'm more likely to lose a card than to have it go belly up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top