Tip: Avoid BestBuy "marketplace sellers." Avoid third party sellers on Amazon. Both these retailers host fraudulent sellers, especially for things like memory cards, and especially the cards that are priced too good to be true. Avoid like the plague.
@@blytheandkarryOr avoid buying from Amazon entirely, since apparently stock from third party sellers is intermingled with Amazon’s own stock in their warehouses. So even if you choose to buy from Amazon directly, there’s still a chance you could end up with a counterfeit product or a returned item sold as new.
Two more suggestions: 1) If your camera can hold two cards, always use the second to write "backup" vs. overflow. If one card fails, you always have a backup. Rare both cards fail at the same time. Cards now can hold enough data to store thousands of pictures, and cheap enough to buy a second set if it gets full. Buying extra sets are a small price to pay compared to losing all your vacation or client pics because you didn't use the second card as backup. 2) If you are shooting professionally - who would use a camera that only holds one memory card?
I mostly agree with you on your first suggestion, particularly for photos. However, sometimes I shoot sequentially when I'm recording video simply because of the sheer amount of space videos take up. And doing that really saved me on one wedding last year when my card filled up just before the reception exit. In that situation my camera switched over to the second card and everything was fine. But if I'm shooting something where I don't anticipate filling up one card (which is every time I'm doing photos, and sometimes when shooting video), I will typically record to both cards simultaneously when shooting on my R6 Mk II. As for buying a camera that only has one card slot...We have two EOS R camera bodies. We made the switch to mirrorless fairly early on - before the R5 & R6, and the only options at the time had one card slot. I haven't ever had any issues with card failures, and I attribute that to always following the recommendations I gave in the video.
"2) If you are shooting professionally - who would use a camera that only holds one memory card?" When I shot weddings with film cameras, I used cameras that only held one roll of film.
@@Narsuitus That is true, but it's the only option you have with film. My comment was based on shooting with digital cameras for commercial purposes such as a wedding. I can imagine the disappointment of the loss of a "one time opportunity" like a wedding - which you cannot reshoot - all due to the failure of a SD card for one reason or another. It just makes sense as a professional to use a camera with two cards, writing to both, as all SD cards will eventually fail. Film on the other hand does not "fail" - unless of course you start out with a bad roll (due to a problem with manufacturing). I started out using film in the 70's, doing my own developing and darkroom work - and never had a problem film - other than those I created due to my own mistake - which were many
2) A: I did for a couple years but now my main camera has two populated slots. Maybe I've been lucky but I'm careful with cards and only buy top models from reputable manufacturers. No issue since ~2007.
One other comment: 3) You should ensure your camera is turned off before removing a card - to ensure it's not in the middle of writing something while you are removing it. Same applies to the computer (if you tend to remove the card from your camera to copy the files to your computer) always remember to "eject" the card before removing it from your external card reader/computer.
Absolutely!!! Removing the card in the middle of a write operation is a sure way to cause data loss. I don't believe it's as important anymore to safely "eject" drives from a computer as it used to be, but it is still best practice to make sure your computer isn't actively using it. Since you shouldn't normally be writing data from your computer to your camera SD cards, the biggest issue there would be that something only partially copies over or a program gives you an error message if it was using one of the images on the removable drive.
YES! This. It's exactly the same as when you have it plugged into your PC. Almost never a a good idea to just yank it. I have killed a few flash drives this way too.
Three issues I would add. Firstly, whenever I buy a new card I always run a utility on the card to make sure the entire capacity can be written to to demonstrate the capacity is not fake. Secondly, I always use cards with significantly more capacity than I am ever going to use. That way, if the card is clever enough to replace dead sectors with other sectors then there will be plenty of spare sectors that have likely never been written to for the card to use to replace worn out sectors. Thirdly, your comment about not deleting files in situ has an additional benefit in that it ensure that writes will happen at the end of the card rather than filling holes in the middle of the card so reducing the chance that some sectors of the card will be written to significantly more often than other sectors.
Thanks for the comments! I do agree that to be 100% certain the card is good, running a test is a good idea. However, for me personally, as long as it's from a trusted source, I'm probably not going to do that. Yes, with higher capacity cards, they should be able to get more use out of them. But is it worth the substantially higher price tag? For me, I'd like to stick to a lower capacity card AS LONG AS I have ample storage space for what I'm going to be recording to it. With "smaller" cards, I'm not going to worry about putting off retiring the card because of the cost. Also, with the rate of technology advancement, upgrading more often will help keep the latest and greatest card tech and speeds. And yes, you're not wrong about the "holes" in the card wearing certain sectors more, but I'd be more worried about random writes slowing the card more than a freshly formatted card operating a peak speed with sequential writes. Unless you're writing an insane amount of data to a card, I doubt any reliable SD card will fail if you are mindful about replacing/upgrading on a regular basis.
In the >10 years and taken >1 million photos, I have never had a SD cards failure. However..., I have known 2 other people that have experienced SD-card failures, one person bought theirs from Amazon, and the other from eBay. I have bought mine from B&H & Adorama, and my local Wall-Mart, zero problems. I always carry a spare older(&slower)SD-card, just in case though. I bailed my 2 friends out with my spare SD-card. I always format the card after each session, probably not necessary, but I do it.
I feel like poor quality or counterfeit cards are probably the main reason people have issues, hence why it was first on my list. I would definitely trust all 3 of those vendors to have legit cards. I think formatting between every session isn’t always necessary as long as you have enough storage for how many pictures you’re going to be taking, but it’s also not going to hurt anything. I always format before a wedding, but if it’s a small session I may or may not, depending on how full the card is.
Thanks. I only use Sandisk Extreme Pro cards and write to both slots on my main cameras. I've yet to have any of those cards fail, but if they do, I've always got a back-up. I disagree that you can't tell when certain images just won't make the cut (I usually use the EVF to review and enlarge if necessary), so I do delete those in-camera to save curating time later. Interestingly, when I delete images in my dual-slot Lumix cameras, it only deletes them from the card in slot 1, which makes potential "oops" moments a non-issue.
As you probably noticed from my thumbnail, I only buy SanDisk as well. I have some non-pro cards that I use for personal photography, but stick to the Pro versions for all paid shoots. I would assume the reason your camera only deletes from one card is that image review is viewing images from one card at a time. And yes, I know there are times that it’s obvious a certain image doesn’t make the cut. But to me, it’s much easier (and safer) to hit one button for a non-destructive “reject” of an image or video on my computer than to spend time on site (and perhaps miss an important moment) culling with a minimum of three button presses per image to permanently delete (or if you do have dual cards, even though it’s not permanent, it would probably take a fair amount of time to find an accidentally deleted image). One other reason I didn’t mention in the video to not delete in-camera is that your camera will write at full speed when it’s writing sequentially to the card. When you delete individual photos and the camera starts writing to random sectors, it may not be able to write at its full rated speed. Most people probably wouldn’t ever notice, especially with photos. But when shooting high bit rate video or burst photos, you may experience issues. My main reason for making this video was for people just starting out, especially with cameras that just have single SD card slots. I feel like most of the SD card failure horror stories are from people who don’t follow the first tip, and buy knock off or counterfeit cards. But, I feel like the other tips are valuable information to be aware of when starting a photography or videography hobby or career.
I prefer many small-capacity cards over one big one. When you have 4 pcs 8GB cards and run into problems you can just swap the cards. I hide full cards in my car. If the camera get stolen or lost, you still have most of your photos. When I take pictures where I am not supposed to do so, I use a fresh card.
It makes sense, but I’m going to disagree with you on that one. For one, an 8GB card would only hold about 9.5 minutes of 4K video from my camera. Second, what happens when you’re on an important photo shoot and miss the shot because you ran out of space because the 8GB card can only hold 292 RAW images? Lastly, it seems like having multiple full cards hidden would be very easy to lose and therefore lose important images!
@@blytheandkarry Today that would be 4 pcs 32 GB SD cards. The problems you mention just do not apply to me. Nor for the type of pictures I take anyway. But your points are valid nonetheless,
I've seen videos express a number of opinions on this subject, but nothing based on rigorously conducted tests. I'd guess my usage level is at medium - high usage for amateur who doesn't shoot video. My practices: Format the SD card in the camera first time I put it in. Don't swap the card to other cameras (Pretty easy for me since 95%+ shots are with the same camera.) Don't let the pics sit on the camera too long (what's too long? It depends . . . is always subjective) Use the USB cable to download the pictures using the camera vendor's provided software. Use the camera's ERASE ALL feature after verifying the pictures have been safely downloaded. - If I start shooting without clearing the card first, I make use the camera's feature to delete all in selected prior dates. If the card glitches, replace it.
Those sound like good practices. I personally don't use the USB cable or the manufacturer's software, since I'm typically shooting with 3-4 cameras and it's substantially easier to just pop out the SD cards (and keeps my desk much less cluttered). Also, when shooting video, I'm always importing straight into Final Cut Pro, so manufacturer's software would be an unnecessary extra step. Not sure what your camera make is, but it sounds like the "Erase All" feature is similar to Canon's standard format card option.
I agree, I never swap cards between cameras. It's one of the may be myth around this topic but one that I think could be possible. I do use a memory card reader to move pictures to my PC and never had a problem. I shoot around 500 pictures per week, close or around 2000 per month so I can't say that I'm a heavy user.
@@blytheandkarry Wouldn't it be easier to just have a card in each camera? That way, whatever you grab is ready to go (except for checking the battery charge). Reading your reply a little more carefully, you may already be doing that and the difference is in the method of transfer. My preference is primarily based on a desire to minimize physical handling of the SD card.
Nice video bro. I like the part where you did not delete the recently taken photos, it's helpful as sometime I fck my own photos up in my pc and there are no way to recover. To my own experience, there was once when I accidentally killed my memory card, not a sd, but a cf card. As I hurry for the shot, I put one of my cf card into my pocket. Then I took it out and equip it to my camera. Zap! Card's dead, camera left for repair. Maybe I should have bought a card box?
Glad you were able to get something out of it. Yikes, yes, card holders are worthwhile investments if you’re carrying around cards that aren’t in your camera. This video was mainly aimed at the digital aspect of memory cards, but the physical aspect is just as important!
hold on 2:29 , will deleting indiviual images through the camera damage the SD cards over time? or was it just to be able to recover those single lost images that you deleted that way? im guessing nr.2
Deleting individual images shouldn’t damage SD cards, but it can cause the card to not operate at peak speed if it’s performing random writes (versus sequential writes). And yes, that was the main point that you can’t recover lost images if you accidentally delete one (theoretically you may be able to as long as you don’t write over that sector, but not guaranteed). But also my personal opinion, it’s way easier to hit one button to reject in Lightroom than to hit a minimum of three buttons to delete individual images in-camera. Just to do everything we can to prevent data loss with my client’s images, we always back up all the RAW files to an external drive before any culling.
Thanks! So, technically SD cards are SSDs… Joking aside, I think the main reason for not using something like an M.2 NVME drive is just the large size of the drive. That and those drives aren’t designed to be swapped between devices without an even larger protective housing. That being said, some of the more “pro” cameras use CF Express and CFast cards that have a faster transfer speed and arguably better reliability than standard SD cards. And some new cameras (like the newer Panasonic LUMIX cameras) can record directly to an external SSD over USB.
@@blytheandkarry Yes, SD cards are in fact SSDs lol. I also am aware that some camera manufacturers have started to adopt SSDs but only in very expensive and non mainstream cameras. I am still wondering though why there are no "entry level" cameras that have adopted m.2 SSD. A M.2 SSD can be as small as a 2230. They are also quite cheap so much so that even cheap laptops have them now. It might be a cooling issue though. I mean the canon R5 already overheats without an SSD,..
@@blytheandkarryHooking up an external (2.5") SSD via USB to a camera like that LUMIX S5IIX for ProRes video is just clunky and stupid. The new Nikon Z6III, when using a CF Express card, can record not only ProRes but _ProRes RAW_ *internally*.
3:25 I've regularly seen numbers over 100k write cycles for modern cards and I've used a older SD card as a boot drive for a Linux laptop and never had issues. Also don't bother using cards bigger than you need, the more layers in NAND flash the less durable it tends to be and they can also be slower because everything needs to be removed from the cell even if it's not the stuff being read or written.
True, you can see 100k write cycles on an SD card, but would you run the risk of using an old SD card in a camera to capture once-in-a-lifetime images? If it's in a dual card slot camera as a secondary card recording simultaneously with a newer card, sure. But why run the risk when it's $30 or less every couple of years to replace your primary SD card? As for not buying bigger cards than you need, there's good arguments for both sides. Yes, the storage may be less durable, but also you're not going to be using it as heavily as you would with a smaller card. Also, most of the SD cards out there now have more than enough speed to support whatever you throw at it (with the exception of sports cameras, that typically have CFast or CF Express slots too). I'm personally going to buy just a little bigger than I need. I haven't made the switch to UHS II cards yet even though my cameras support it, because a V30 card is plenty fast enough to handle 4K video. If I upgrade cameras later to something that needs faster transfer speeds, it will be time to upgrade SD cards anyway.
@@blytheandkarry I definitely approve of dual card cameras running what is effectively RAID 1, that's just the best option regardless. I do think for clients mission critical stuff it's fair to use a new, known good card. Maybe for personal stuff a 5 year cycle is good and quite safe. I do mostly astro though so in a night I could have thousands of RAW files getting dumped into the card so I'm definitely up there in terms of cycles.
@pitrow66 yikes! I almost added an extra tip of always storing/transporting cards in a protective case. Not quite on the same track as the other tips dealing with the data integrity part of digital storage, but nonetheless important to prevent data loss! As long as the chip itself inside wasn’t damaged, someone who’s good at micro soldering would probably be able to move the flash memory chip over to a donor card to be able to recover the files. That seems a little steep for the job, but it may be worth it in some circumstances.
It's definitely possible to delete in camera, and most of the time there won't be any issues. Besides the drawbacks I mentioned in the video, there's also the chance it could slow down transfer speeds due to random write versus sequential write. However, that probably wouldn't be noticeable unless you're shooting high speed RAW or recording video in a high bitrate 4K.
Hi @@blytheandkarry random write and sequential write are things that affect spin-disk hard drive. Those do not affect memory cards or SSD cards. You will not see in the market a defrag for SSD cards or Memory cards. To me, the only thing that makes a difference is the quality of the card. This is one part where if you are making money with your camera you can't go cheap. I delete in camera and I do not format my cards in the camera that often (once every 6 months may be) and in more than 10 years I only had one issue with one card, the issue was reproducible and the solution was to change the card for a better one. Places as ebay, amazon, bestbuy, waltmart (marketplaces) are not recommended to buy your memory cards because the fact is that there are a lot of fakes cards branded with good OEMs names. And this apply too to Batteries. There are a bunch of "Canon" batteries being sold that are fake.
Is there a reason you don't like cards over 64GB? I have to use 128GB or larger cards when shooting video, especially now that I shoot everything in 4K, although I could easily get by with a 64GB card for photos. I certainly agree with backing everything up on an external drive! We always transfer from the cards onto the computer and external drive simultaneously, then also keep the RAW files on the SD cards until we've delivered the client gallery.
@@blytheandkarry i agree 💯 with you on all that ..getting new everything soon ..have the incredible Canon SX 70 HS this week . Just (Imo)paranoid about such massive sizes ..I've been frugal so far ..but all my amazing stuff from 2 years are on two cards right now .. scary 😳 so I'm buying more .just got rare red racoons on vid ..
A new, favorite practice of mine, especially if occasionally putting cards in my pockets, is to remove the cards from my pockets before running clothing through the washer and dryer.
I’m cringing just reading this. I’m assuming this was a recent occurrence? But that would be a good standard practice if you have a habit of putting SD cards in your pocket.🫣 I prefer to leave the cards in the camera until I get back to my desk, if at all possible. If I do have to take them out, I try to always use the protective case they all come with to prevent any physical damage to the card. Water shouldn’t affect SD cards short term, but may cause corrosion long term. I can’t imagine tumbling in a hot dryer would be much better for it.
In my opinion, that is quite wasteful to replace cards with each wedding, even if they are relatively inexpensive. These cards are designed for multiple thousands of write cycles. A hundred or so cycles from a couple of year’s worth of weddings isn’t going to get close to failure on a quality card. Also, I’m sure the failure rate of new cards is VERY low. But I would trust a card I’ve used several times more than a card I haven’t personally tested yet.
@@blytheandkarry Wouldn't you give the memory card with the agreed paid images to your client, hence no waste? I'm no photographer, but I'm sure the client would be happy to receive this and therefore no waste.
We always deliver all of our images via an online gallery. I think it's a much better client experience and allows for them to easily share photos with family and friends. I haven't ever heard of a gallery being delivered on an SD card. Not everyone has access to an SD card reader and they're fairly easy to lose. Some photographers used to deliver images on a USB stick, but that's a bit outdated since basically everyone access to high speed internet. It is true that individual cards are relatively cheap, but if you do the math things don't look quite so good. Since we're using 3-4 cameras to capture a wedding (plus photos from the engagement session captured on 2 cameras), with dual card slots on two of those cameras, that's between 8-10 SD cards that we would need for each wedding!!! We also never deliver RAW images, so even if we did use the SD cards for the gallery, we'd have to erase them before transferring the exported files. But since RAW files take up significantly more space, we're typically averaging between 16-32GB per camera/card when capturing, but the total size of the entire exported gallery is only around 5-10GB.
I haven’t ever used Samsung. As the thumbnail image may be a clue, I’m a pretty dedicated SanDisk user and haven’t had any failures in the 10+ years since I started photography & videography. That being said, Samsung may be just as reliable, but I’m personally sticking with what I trust.
