What sort of SD card is everyone using these days?

[Eric]

I've been using the SanDisk 64 GB 80 mbs write speed and found that's it's just too slow, so I pulled the trigger for the SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-II that writes at 300 mbs in hopes that it will speed things up for my long exposures. The problem I'm facing is that camera takes equally as long to write to the camera as it does to take the exposure, so if I take a 15 second exposure, it takes an additional 15 seconds after the shot to write it which can be very frustrating.

 

[mollyc]

i use cfexpress for my z cameras. my z6ii has an old sd card from my (no longer owned) d800 in for the times i forget to put back in my main card.

 

[Cmaier]

i use cfexpress for my z cameras. my z6ii has an old sd card from my (no longer owned) d800 in for the times i forget to put back in my main card.

I use cfexpress type a for my a1, and sd cards for my older sony cameras (looking forward to giving my dad my old a7rii body when i can finally travel to the east coast). It's an amazing feeling never having to wait for the buffer to clear with the cfexpress cards. The only problem is I frequently find I've taken 500 photos now, in the same amount of time I'd get 20 shots off with my older cameras.

 

[Clix Pix]

Sony Tough CFExpress Type A cards in 80GB and 160 GB capacities in the Sony A1. I use Sony Tough 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB SD cards in the A7R IV, the RX10 IV and the RX100, as well as some older Sandisk Extreme Pro cards.

Sounds as though there is an issue with buffering in your camera, Eric.... Hopefully the faster card will speed things up considerably. Yes, Cmaier, the A1 is amazingly fast, isn't it? No wait for buffering at all. Wow! Especially when one is shooting in Continuous High + /burst mode. It's all too easy to quickly zip through a card in nothing flat! I had started out with the 80 GB ones and then realized that, oops, I'd be better off with the 160 GB ones when doing certain kinds of shooting.

 

[Eric]

i use cfexpress for my z cameras. my z6ii has an old sd card from my (no longer owned) d800 in for the times i forget to put back in my main card.

Nothing worse than the sinking feeling of getting out to your location and realizing you forgot to put it back, it actually ruined a shoot way back when as I "thought" I had a backup and didn't. Now, as a rule when I update my card I keep the remaining ones in like 3 different locations throughout my gear just to be safe. And with the Sony AR7III it flat out won't work without 2 cards in it, I figure there must be a setting somewhere that I have to dig out but it's not outwardly obvious whether or not it's even allowed.

 

[Eric]

I use cfexpress type a for my a1, and sd cards for my older sony cameras (looking forward to giving my dad my old a7rii body when i can finally travel to the east coast). It's an amazing feeling never having to wait for the buffer to clear with the cfexpress cards. The only problem is I frequently find I've taken 500 photos now, in the same amount of time I'd get 20 shots off with my older cameras.

So will the cfexpress seen here work with the A7RIII? I can't seem to find a compatibility chart.

 

[Clix Pix]

That's weird about the two-card situation..... For some reason I never got around to putting a card in the second slot in my A7R IV and have had no problems in the two and a half years that I've had that camera. With the A1 I realized that I'd be doing a lot more shooting in situations where I'd really appreciate having a second card in there ready to continue on with wherever the first one left off, so set that up fairly soon after I got the camera. I haven't tried using it without a card in the second slot; should experiment with that, see what happens....

Even when shooting around the lake I always carry a small pouch with an extra battery and extra card in it; more than once I would be out with the A7R IV, all the way around the lake and would use up the card or, more often, the battery would need to be replaced and so I'd have to come all the way back home. Didn't take long to train myself to get into the habit of checking the remaining battery capacity before leaving the house, even when just going around the neighborhood.

At home, after I have run the card(s) through the card reader, I check to be sure everything looks OK and then, whether or not I'm going to begin post-processing immediately, I take the card(s) right back to the camera, which I have deliberately left out on the table after putting away the lens(es) that I've been using, as this serves as a reminder that the camera needs to have one or more cards replaced in the slots. I then go ahead and put the card(s) back in, format, and only after that do I put the camera body away in the cabinet.

 

[Clix Pix]

So will the cfexpress seen here work with the A7RIII? I can't seem to find a compatibility chart.

No. The CF Express Type A cards only work with the A1 and the new A7 IV and one other new model which I forget. The A7R IV and A7R III and all older bodies use SD cards only.

Just to make things more complicated, Sony has chosen to use the Type A CFE cards whereas other manufacturers are using Type B. Go figure....

 

[Eric]

No. The CF Express Type A cards only work with the A1 and the new A7 IV and one other new model which I forget. The A7R IV and A7R III and all older bodies use SD cards only.

Just to make things more complicated, Sony has chosen to use the Type A CFE cards whereas other manufacturers are using Type B. Go figure....

Thank you, okay then I'll stick with my 300 mbps sandisk that I already have on order.

 

[r.harris1]

My cameras use either CFExpress Type B (right now, Delkin Power) with a secondary SD slot I sometimes use (SanDisk-something-or-other variety), or they use Compact Flash (SanDisk Extreme). I have one camera, my beloved Fuji x100f, that uses SD only, it's the same SanDisk-something-or-other variety - will look at the specifics later. While the type B CFExpress cards are the fastest of the two types generally used in portable cameras, none of mine come close to being able to peg the theoretical write speeds. That's Z9 / A1 territory. I think my fastest is my d850 at 9-10 fps on full 45mp raw files. Barely scratches the surface of what I understand the type B cards to be capable of .

 

[kenoh]

I've been using the SanDisk 64 GB 80 mbs write speed and found that's it's just too slow, so I pulled the trigger for the SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-II that writes at 300 mbs in hopes that it will speed things up for my long exposures. The problem I'm facing is that camera takes equally as long to write to the camera as it does to take the exposure, so if I take a 15 second exposure, it takes an additional 15 seconds after the shot to write it which can be very frustrating.

Just reading this again. How does the time to write a long exposure image take longer than non-long exposure images? have you got long exposure noise reduction on? If you are taking bursts of images then yes you should be getting write times like that as it is clearing the buffer but a single image should take the same time regardless of shutter duration.

 

[Eric]

Just reading this again. How does the time to write a long exposure image take longer than non-long exposure images? have you got long exposure noise reduction on? If you are taking bursts of images then yes you should be getting write times like that as it is clearing the buffer but a single image should take the same time regardless of shutter duration.

Maybe it's my wording that's confusing here but let's say it's a 15 second exposure, then the write speed after the 15 second shot (as soon as the shutter closes) takes another 15 seconds, so in total 30 seconds for a single 15 second exposure. The Canon never had this problem, I could take a 30 second exposure and it would write within a few seconds.

 

[kenoh]

Maybe it's my wording that's confusing here but let's say it's a 15 second exposure, then the write speed after the 15 second shot (as soon as the shutter closes) takes another 15 seconds, so in total 30 seconds for a single 15 second exposure. The Canon never had this problem, I could take a 30 second exposure and it would write within a few seconds.

Can you check to see if you have long exposure noise reduction turned on. That takes a second exposure the same length as the initial exposure with the shutter closed immediately after to just record noise that it them subtracts from the first exposure image.
A long exposure image is still the same size as a short exposure image so writing time should be the same.

 

[Eric]

Can you check to see if you have long exposure noise reduction turned on. That takes a second exposure the same length as the initial exposure with the shutter closed immediately after to just record noise that it them subtracts from the first exposure image.
A long exposure image is still the same size as a short exposure image so writing time should be the same.

Yes, after you mentioned it I looked it up and this is definitely my issue so thanks for pointing me in the right direction here. When taking golden hour shots that time is just too costly, I would rather deal with hot spots in post and get more shots.

 

[kenoh]

Yes, after you mentioned it I looked it up and this is definitely my issue so thanks for pointing me in the right direction here. When taking golden hour shots that time is just too costly, I would rather deal with hot spots in post and get more shots.

I was about to say that exact thing. Arguably noise reduction and hotspot removal is better handled by software in post than the methods in camera - for a start more sophisticated processing is possible.

Unfortunately on my chosen fav. camera, it is on full stop. You cannot turn it off.

Also the 128GB UHS-II might not give you any benefit in your camera if it cannot make use of the dual channel functionality of the card. Check your camera can use UHS-II before you open the packaging on the card.


Another gotcha.... if your camera has two slots, and one is UHS-II and one isn't, and you have it set to backup i.e. card 1 is a straight mirror of card 2, it will slow down your camera as it still has to write raws to the slower card. I felt a fool when I worked that one out - not many cameras do the copy to the second card in the background, they do it at time of write to the main card. This applies to CFExpress to SD too though it is less noticeable due to the speeds.

 

[Eric]

I was about to say that exact thing. Arguably noise reduction and hotspot removal is better handled by software in post than the methods in camera - for a start more sophisticated processing is possible.

Unfortunately on my chosen fav. camera, it is on full stop. You cannot turn it off.

Also the 128GB UHS-II might not give you any benefit in your camera if it cannot make use of the dual channel functionality of the card.

Now that I know what it is I feel fortunate that I can turn it off, I like the idea of taking a single dark exposure of the same length to use in post when done with a sequence of shots, seems like a nice compromise. I'm so used to healing spots in post though that I don't think this will be any big deal for me, it's worth a few added clicks. I'm holding a workshop for long exposures in the field this weekend and it will definitely be a time saver, you saved my day!

 

[kenoh]

Now that I know what it is I feel fortunate that I can turn it off, I like the idea of taking a single dark exposure of the same length to use in post when done with a sequence of shots, seems like a nice compromise. I'm so used to healing spots in post though that I don't think this will be any big deal for me, it's worth a few added clicks. I'm holding a workshop for long exposures in the field this weekend and it will definitely be a time saver, you saved my day!

also remember that when the dark frame is being taken, you can grab the camera and move round. The shutter is closed and so it doesnt matter about movement at that stage - saves a minute or two when repositioning

 

[Eric]

also remember that when the dark frame is being taken, you can grab the camera and move round. The shutter is closed and so it doesnt matter about movement at that stage - saves a minute or two when repositioning

Right, so in theory it seems that the only thing that matters is the length of the long exposure, meaning I could just put the cap on and match the time regardless of where I'm at.

 

[kenoh]

Right, so in theory it seems that the only thing that matters is the length of the long exposure, meaning I could just put the cap on and match the time regardless of where I'm at.

Not quite.... the sensor temperature, atmospheric conditions and each frame change the noise pattern hence why the camera does it immediately after to get it as close as possible a match. You can actually blend a series of the same exposure as a method for noise removal in post too because the noise pattern changes - but that is a faff. This is why we need the multitude of bias and dark frames in astrophotography - the bias frames can be taken once and kept for reuse. The dark frames need to be taken at the time because they need to be close to the same conditions. - taking 50 or so of those are a PIA too!

 

[Eric]

Not quite.... the sensor temperature, atmospheric conditions and each frame change the noise pattern hence why the camera does it immediately after to get it as close as possible a match. You can actually blend a series of the same exposure as a method for noise removal in post too because the noise pattern changes - but that is a faff. This is why we need the multitude of bias and dark frames in astrophotography - the bias frames can be taken once and kept for reuse. The dark frames need to be taken at the time because they need to be close to the same conditions. - taking 50 or so of those are a PIA too!

Ahh I see, okay noted.