Question about SD cards

[DrEntropy]

Who uses what, and why?

 

[GregW]

At the moment, I have a 32GB Sandisk in each D610. I've used different brands in the past and never had an issue. Usually go for a 90MB/sec rate on the transfer and have never run into a buffer problem. Though I almost always have the camera on semi auto.

 

[DrEntropy]

At the moment, I have a 32GB Sandisk in each D610. I've used different brands in the past and never had an issue. Usually go for a 90MB/sec rate on the transfer and have never run into a buffer problem. Though I almost always have the camera on semi auto.

Thanks, Greg. Are you shooting .NEF and then doing post work and clearing the cards?

I've only fooled around with RAW to get into Darktable/GIMP and fuss around with the images. The size of those files is staggering and the effort to "process" 'em as well. Been pretty happy with images shot as .JPEG for most of what I've done (so far). I s'pose if I were going for "money shots" there'd be more motivation to do the post work.

Yesterday I ordered a couple 128G Sandisc cards, 170MB/s U3 (likely optimistic/overkill). Thinking to devote one to RAW shots for "practice."

 

[GregW]

I don't clear the cards. Frankly, I don't take that many photos. Never filled a card up either. I retired a pair of 64GB cards that still have the original RAWS. A cheap and effective backup in my book. As far as processing, RAW is more forgiving of a dark shadow than a JPG. easier to pull details out. The things that can be done in Darktable (and I imagine Lightroom) make Gimp and Photoshop look like MS Paint in limitation. I have my goto modules so processing takes 5-10 minutes per shot.

 

[Basil]

In my Panasonic Lumix 100 (16MB) I currently have a 64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD. In my Canon SX50 Bridge Camera I have a similar card but 32GB.

However, in my Canon 5D Mark IV, which yields RAW (.CR2) images in the 40MB range, I have a 128GB Lexar Professional 1066x in the CF slot and a 1 TB Lexar Pro 633x in the SD slot.

I have the 5D4 set to shoot to the CF card, but every now and then I do an in-camera move of images over to the 1TB SD card. I almost always shoot RAW (I'm a glutton for punishment and find I can tweak things a bit more in post with the greater dynamic range afforded the RAW format. (But .JPGs I've shot are not really bad in that regard)

 

[GregW]

I may be doing the math wrong, but doesn't that give you ballpark 28,000 RAW photos?

 

[DrEntropy]

A cheap and effective backup in my book.

Yes. That is another reason for my getting a second "large" card.

Though I wonder about what "archival" means in digital imaging terms sometimes.

 

[Basil]

I may be doing the math wrong, but doesn't that give you ballpark 28,000 RAW photos?

Your probably not far off. I just put a freshly formatted 128GB CF card in my camera. With the camera set to take RAW images,
My "images remaining" count is 2792, meaning the camera "estimates" I could take 2792 images before filing up that card. Dividing 128GB by 2792 images means my camera must be using an average file size of 0.04576GB or just about 47MB per image (I'm assuming 1024MB - 1GB)

Since 1TB is 8 times the size of the 128GB card, theoretically, using the same file size, I should be able to get 2792 x 8 = 22,336 images on the 1TB card. I said my images were in the 40MB range, but apparently Canon uses a figure slightly bigger than that.

 

[Basil]

Though I wonder about what "archival" means in digital imaging terms sometimes.

I go a little overboard on backing up my images. I keep my images on my camera cards until that get near full. After every shoot I transfer all to an external 2TB SSD drive, which is then backed up to a separate 4TB mechanical drive. On top of that, I use BackBlaze "cloud" archival Service to keep everything on my system (not just images) backed up. Someone could come in my house and steal all my physical drives, or my house could burn down, but I'll always have the BackBlaze backup.

PS; Forgot to mention, I also backup the backups locally onto an 8TB RAID drive.