GH3 Media Card for GH3

Sherman

Sherman

Well-known member
I've heard larger SD cards (larger than 16 GB) are unreliable.
Network shooter says he's been burned and won't use anything larger.
Is this an issue with the card or the use of the card, formatting etc, what is your experience?
Also Sandisk or Lexar, what's your choice,... or something else?
Been using the Panasonic P2 cards for years and have never had corruption or failure.
So media has never been a concern.
Seems as though the word of SD cards may be a different story when it comes to reliability.
And that scares me a bit.

Thanks

Dan
 
I don't know where you heard that cards larger than 16GB are unreliable, but this has NOT been my experience. I've been using 16GB and 32GB SDHC cards for more than 4 years now and have never lost a single frame from any shoot.

I follow a few rules with SD cards...

- Buy good quality cards ( SanDisk, Lexar, Kingston, etc... )
- Test your cards with drive benchmarking tools ( like the free ATTO benchmark ) to ensure they are performing properly
- Store them in a proper case ( Pelican makes some nice waterproof hard-shell memory cases )
- Always format every card before you shoot with it ( this is the last quick check that the card is working properly )

I've also used the low-cost Patriot EP card SDHC / SDXC cards ( and the much older blue SDHC Patriot cards ) for many years with no problems.

One thing that has been mentioned by other shooters is to perform low-level formatting on your cards ( something that usually has to be done on a computer ), as this will do much more thorough error checking of your cards. I've never done this to date, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea if you use your cards a lot. I could see doing this once every 6 - 12 months to ensure that everything is working 100 percent.

The cards I use today are: SanDisk 64GB SDXC UHS-I 95 MB/sec cards, Patriot EP 32GB SDHC UHS-I cards, Patriot EP 64GB SDXC UHS-I cards
 
TheDingo said:
One thing that has been mentioned by other shooters is to perform low-level formatting on your cards ( something that usually has to be done on a computer ), as this will do much more thorough error checking of your cards. I've never done this to date, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea if you use your cards a lot. I could see doing this once every 6 - 12 months to ensure that everything is working 100 percent.
Click to expand...

The only caveat to this is that low-level formatting works on a Windows machine. Apparently (and I haven't done it so can't comment) low-level formatting on a Mac can make the card unreadable by the camera. So tread carefully and perhaps do a search if on a Mac.
 
stoneinapond said:
Apparently low-level formatting on a Mac can make the card unreadable by the camera.
Click to expand...

The Mac must be doing some sort of Mac specific formatting of the card when doing the low-level check, which sounds like it could be reversed by re-formatting under Windows afterwards.
 
TheDingo said:
The Mac must be doing some sort of Mac specific formatting of the card when doing the low-level check, which sounds like it could be reversed by re-formatting under Windows afterwards.
Click to expand...

Without a doubt. But if did something like that at 11 pm, finding a PC might be an issue.....:happy:

And needless to say, the original formatting on the Mac would need to be a file format that Windows recognizes, even if it isn't the correct one for the camera.
 
Been using 64GB Class10 45MB/s SDHC cards (Sandisk) on a variety of cameras for a while now and never had an issue. When a card is not in the camera, I ALWAYS have it stored in its plastic casing. Never leave cards just loose in the bottom of a camera bag or even in a pocket. Always store the card in its plastic case.
 
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You should be able to format to any windows-compatible format on a mac. When I checked the format on my GH3 card, it's exFat, which you can format to using disk utility.
 
One thing I am wondering about is the compatibility with 128GB sd cards. I believe one person on this thread says they have one and it works. Does anybody else use 128GB sd cards for the GH3? In the manual, the chart only goes upto 64GB.
 
Hi My question is, if 'll be shooting video at 50 or 72Mbps, do I need to purchase the $125 Class 10 card that does around 90 Mbps, or can I get away with the $65 version (Class 10) rated at 45 Mbps?
 
jonpais said:
Hi My question is, if 'll be shooting video at 50 or 72Mbps, do I need to purchase the $125 Class 10 card that does around 90 Mbps, or can I get away with the $65 version (Class 10) rated at 45 Mbps?
Click to expand...

You're confusing megaBYTES per second (MB/s) with megaBITS per second (Mb/s). There are eight bits in a byte. Any class 10 card is supposed to be able to do a sustained write of 10MB/s, which is 80Mb/s.
 
He's not really confusing the two, likely just used lower case letters. The two media cards he's referencing are probably SanDisk Extreme (45MB/s as marked on the card) and SanDisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s). Both are marked Class (10) as well as being marked UHS Speed Class 1. The prices he lists match up.

While I now purchase the SanDisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s) I have shot some video with the GH3 on the 45MB/s SanDisk media with no problem I could see so he might be able to get by with the slower of the two. While it is true that a Class (10) is supposed to be able to keep up with a sustained write of 10MB/s it is a fact that many do not.

Bargain brands often fail in this respect.
 
Bruce Foreman said:
He's not really confusing the two, likely just used lower case letters. The two media cards he's referencing are probably SanDisk Extreme (45MB/s as marked on the card) and SanDisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s). Both are marked Class (10) as well as being marked UHS Speed Class 1. The prices he lists match up.

While I now purchase the SanDisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s) I have shot some video with the GH3 on the 45MB/s SanDisk media with no problem I could see so he might be able to get by with the slower of the two. While it is true that a Class (10) is supposed to be able to keep up with a sustained write of 10MB/s it is a fact that many do not.

Bargain brands often fail in this respect.
Click to expand...

thanks, Bruce. You just saved me a whole lot of money. I'll pick up the less expensive of the two SanDisk memory cards...
 
SD less reliable than P2? Might want to pop open a P2 card and see what's inside (hint: it's SD cards).

Also, storage media always fails. It's really only a matter of time when it'll happen to you. Some people hate Seagate while others hate Western Digital because of the brand of hard drive that failed on them.

My approach is:
  • Stick to quality brands - Transcend, SanDisk, etc. While there's always a chance a card may fail (see above) better brands seem to do better QA so it's less likely you'll get a card that will fail quickly.
  • Buy media with good warranties - you never want to use it but Transcend's lifetime warranty and SanDisk's 5 year warranty will come in handy if you do get a failed card.
  • Don't buy the newest/highest capacities - Higher capacity media tend to also have higher failure rates when they are first released. By contrast, most of the kinks have been worked out of the lower capacity media. The price:capacity ratio is also much better when you're not buying the newest storage size on the block.

As for what will work with the GH3, I've been using the same 16GB and 32GB Transcend class 10 cards that I already had from shooting with the GH1 and GH2. They work fine with the GH3's 50mbps codec in my experience. There are of course faster and higher capacity cards out there, but these are dirt cheap at the moment and you get at least an hour of 50mbps footage on the 16GB cards if memory serves.
 
Jive said:
SD less reliable than P2? Might want to pop open a P2 card and see what's inside (hint: it's SD cards)
Click to expand...

SD and CF cards ARE less reliable than P2, as P2 cards utilize a RAID format that error-checks every write to the media which pretty much guarantees your data will always be written to the card.

P2 is a great system but it's out of my price range, so I'm happy using high quality SD cards.
 
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