large capacity cards or Mutliple cards

large capacity cards or Mutliple cards

  • multiple medium to smaller sized cards (16GB etc)

    Votes: 18 78.3%

  • Fewer high capacity cards. (64GB etc)

    Votes: 4 17.4%

  • there is no real advantage/disadvantage either way

    Votes: 1 4.3%
  • Total voters
    23
Jason Adams

Jason Adams

Section Moderator
wanted some feedback from other users what are you doing for your recording medium.

are you getting several smaller cards or fewer large cards.

For example 2 16GB vs 1 32GB.

I am on the fence on a good strategy.

several cards could be a liability from keeping track of them all.

On the other hand if you break or loose your 32 GB or 64 GB card that could be most of your footage.

So safety in numbers or keep it simple with high capacity cards?
 
I say go with multiple 16gb cards. They're usually the sweet spot price-wise, and you won't lose a whole day's work if one gets misplaced or malfunctions. Lets you offload one card while shooting on the other, as well, if you've got someone helping you.
 
Personally I subscrube to the safety in numbers idea.

It usually works out cheaper and you minimise your risk. You can teach yourself good organisation to minimise the risk of misplacing or over-writing one of your manu cards, but you can't do anything about it if your only cards dies along with an entire days footage.

Seeing as you cannot record a continuous clip longer than 4gb anyway, it's not too big of a deal if you have to change cards regularly. It's not like an AVCHD camera where you can put in a 64gb card and leave it running untouched for several hours at a concert.
 
I looked on Amazon over here and 4x4G Sandisk class 10's worked out cheeper than a 16G card. Thinking that's the way to go.
Dave
 
I wouldnt go 4Gb, you will be changing cards every 12mins of shooting. 8Gb is a safe bet, 24mins of footage isn't a huge disaster to lose if something went wrong, but you won't be changing cards so often.
 
I picked up a couple 8gigs and a couple 16gigs Transcend class 6. I agree a 4gig card would be filled up too quickly shooting video or RAW images. I'm with the popular thinking that I'd rather chance losing a partial day's work if a card goes bad, rather than the whole thing on a larger card.
I use the same methodology with my hard drives - I have mostly 500 - 750GB drives with a few projects on each (and backups). I'm still apprehensive about putting everything on a big RAID or single TB drive.
 
Multiple 8 or 16 gb cards are the best option. Just get a case for all of them and you'll be fine. I don't understand the rationale for huge 64GB cards, they're not cost effective and for video shooting you're limited in how long you can shoot, anyway. Even still shooting - it's not much hassle to swap out cards.
 
TooTallTim said:
I wouldnt go 4Gb, you will be changing cards every 12mins of shooting. 8Gb is a safe bet, 24mins of footage isn't a huge disaster to lose if something went wrong, but you won't be changing cards so often.
Click to expand...


Not when your money shot is on that card ! So for me its just the reputation of the card that counts .

BTW never had problem with kingston and the newer 16g transcend cards 133x !
 
My money is shot on that card. Of course it's massively unprofessional if footage gets lost, but 8Gb lost is better than 64Gb (and potentially EVERYTHING you've shot) lost. That was my point.
 
I don't think there is a good answer to this other than 'balance' - and everyone needs to find their own comfort level.

Having many smaller cards will minimize the loss when a card goes down - but it will also increase the odds of a card going down (more cards = more opportunity for failure)

Having fewer large cards will decrease the odds of one of your cards going down - but it will make the loss potentially catastrophic when it happens.

Personally I like 32GB cards (which are not listed in the poll, by the way).
64 makes me a bit nervous - but 16 leaves me feeling like I have to watch the clock too much.
But like I said - I think everyone needs to find their own threshold.
Unfortunately there isn't an easy answer.
 
I'd say on 75% of my shoots the entire thing fits on one 16gb card. I have 2x 16gig cards and 1x 32gig card and the only time I use the 32gig card is on a really long day it's my last card, which is a nice feeling knowing that I have more space than I'll need at that late in the shooting day.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd go all 16gig cards and maybe a few 8gig cards for the really small jobs.
 
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