want to buy the 150 but afraid of sd card failing during shoot!

T

thedigitalcurrent

Active member
I don't want to wait and the price is perfect for what I need, but I am just so scared of being at a wedding and right in the middle of the shoot the camera says card failure. I had it happen on my ex1 with sony's $1000 genuine sxs card! i hate this worry, and i can't wait for the ac130 to come out. can u say something to make me feel better? lol thanks
 
Tapes can fail. Memory cards can fail. Maybe one of your AC's improperly loaded a film magazine.

**** happens sometimes. If you're that worried about it, buy an external recorder and record to that and your card media simultaneously.
 
Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle for $345 + a solid state drive (256gb for around $400). Or an Atomos Ninja for $995 + your choice of 2.5" drive, solid state or not.
 
i agree with the above poster. There is no way to record where things dont happen. Get a good quality card, back it up as soon as you're done, and that's about as good as you can hope for. I'm really happy with this camera
 
There's practically no way that a HyperDeck Shuttle is going to be a practical solution for a wedding shooter. The Ninja is the least-expensive recorder that would be practical for an HMC150 shooter.

You can minimize your risk of card failure by using the very best cards you can get, especially those that are optimized for error correction and error handling. The brands I use are the SanDisk Extreme Pro, and the Panasonic Gold. Panasonic's also introduced a new line of professional SDHC cards specifically for AVCCAM use, which should be the best since they're designed around ultimate reliability.

If you use cheapo cards or off-brand cards, your risk of card failure goes up.

The AC130 won't be out for another month or so, but it does include the ability to record redundantly on two cards, which should reduce the chances of losing a shot to virtually zero.
 
If you need redundancy, then wait for the 130. I shot a lot with my 150 over the last 18 months (before selling it) and never had a card failure, though I did with my T2i, using the same cards. So something in the software of the 150 must be doing something to help with that. And Barry is right, my experience with cheaper cards was NOT worth the price. Sandisk, Panasonic Gold are all great choices and seem to never fail (knock on wood). However, I like you, was worried about failure on paid shoots, so I sold my 150 for an xf305. There are pros and cons, and likely, in retrospect, if the choice would have been today, I would have waited for the 130. But an impending project forced the buy. I love the xf305, but my experience with Panny is that they are engineered more for a shooter than Canon. Lots of reasons why, but this isn't the thread for it. A month isn't a long time to wait.
 
I worry about the same thing. Had it happen to me after only a couple weeks with the camera and was nearly about to get rid of it. But it ended up being due to the kingston card, which you can find horror stories about all over the net and this forum.

I still worry, but haven't had a failure since. I've been using 2 16gb transcend class 6s. I said I would totally replace the camera if Panasonic came up with a followup that had two slots and redundant recording. Unfortunately that follow up ended up being a CMOS camera. I've contemplated getting a ninja, but I'm just not getting enough work to justify the price. I wish there was a more basic affordable solution.
 
I've been shooting my weekly local TV with both the hmc150 and a gh1 with three Transcend cards. I have a 32gb class 10 with the gh1 (not hacked) and two 16gb class 6 cards. I've not had any problems. Before the HMC and the gh1, we shot on the little Sony 50u and the Nex-5 and before that we had two T2is.

The Panasonic setup we have now has been the most stable. My favorite look is out of my wife's T2i (I sold min), but it overheats and isn't good for ENG work.

A couple weeks ago, we shot a commercial project on a 60D using the card that the camera's owner uses. Shoot went fine, but after, I discovered that the card was one called Data Mine. I had never heard of it. The footage transcoded well luckily. Anyone have thoughts on those cards?

I'm sticking with Transcend but will look into the new Panasonic AVCHD ones.
 
The other point is to have redundancy on everything. If a card fails or camera fails, there needs to be some redundancy. A Car crash will ruin your life, but we don't stop getting in cars do we. I just bought an HMC-150 because I had 2 tape failures on 2 consecutive jobs. But, I had redundancy, I had 2 other cameras rolling. Dive in. Life is about living.
BIll
 
Spend some money on quality cards like Sandisk Extreme or ATP Promax, etc and you will minimize the chance of a problem. They only card failure I ever had was with a cheap brand.
 
As a current HMC150 owner, I would add my name to the list of people advising waiting for the 130. Even if you never have a card failure, you will always worry. The redundancy and lack of stress make the 130 worth waiting for (along with other goodies).
 
I just recently had a corruption problem on my Sandisk Extreme that had nothing to do with camera or card error but had a power disruption caused by someone tripping and pulling out the power cable. I lost all power and ended up with the 30 min clip I was recording corrupted and completely unreadable. I'm certain that the only solution to fix the file is to finalize the clip.
Does anyone know of an application that can read in the corrupted video clip and add finalization???
I have a small application that will do this for AVI files and it has saved me many times. Is the file structure of High Def files (AVCHD) the same? Meaning that the actual recording is enclosed in some kind of envelope with an ending finalization like AVI is.
 
Sorry, fellows, but, OP... DON'T FOLLOW THE ABOVE ADVICE!
At least, not primarily.

I'd say:

1) Test every card you use thoroughly before use. Stick it in your computer and fill it and copy everything off it a few times. Any problematic card I've ever found has been problematic in testing. I have 37 SD cards in very regular use (avg of 2-3 cards per day) (all either Panasonic or Transcend)... none have ever failed in-camera.

2) Buy from reputable dealers. There are tons of counterfeits and, I imagine, factory rejects, for sale. The web is a great place to pass off fakes and junk. I've bought all my transcend cards from Amazon (NOT Amazon affiliates, which have an iffy reputation). The Panasonic cards came from B&H. Counterfeits and such are IMHO a bigger issue than brand differences.

3) Be extremely careful with your write-protect switch. Most failures I've seen could be attributed to the write-protect switch not being exactly "on" or "off". Exercise it and make sure it's properly locked in position before you put it in the camera. ALWAYS write protect a card before you stick it in a computer. OS like to write little maintenance files and such on mounted cards. Computer crashes can corrupt things. Premiere Pro, at least, writes all sorts of files on the card if you try to work from the card (and maybe if you don't). Only write protecting your card will keep it safe from computer-based corruption.

4) After all this, worry about brands!
 
Sorry, fellows, but, OP... DON'T FOLLOW THE ABOVE ADVICE!
At least, not primarily.

I'd say:

1) Test every card you use thoroughly before use. Stick it in your computer and fill it and copy everything off it a few times. Any problematic card I've ever found has been problematic in testing. I have 37 SD cards in very regular use (avg of 2-3 cards per day) (all either Panasonic or Transcend)... none have ever failed in-camera.

2) Buy from reputable dealers. There are tons of counterfeits and, I imagine, factory rejects, for sale. The web is a great place to pass off fakes and junk. I've bought all my transcend cards from Amazon (NOT Amazon affiliates, which have an iffy reputation). The Panasonic cards came from B&H. Counterfeits and such are IMHO a bigger issue than brand differences.

3) Be extremely careful with your write-protect switch. Most failures I've seen could be attributed to the write-protect switch not being exactly "on" or "off". Exercise it and make sure it's properly locked in position before you put it in the camera. ALWAYS write protect a card before you stick it in a computer. OS like to write little maintenance files and such on mounted cards. Computer crashes can corrupt things. Premiere Pro, at least, writes all sorts of files on the card if you try to work from the card (and maybe if you don't). Only write protecting your card will keep it safe from computer-based corruption.

4) After all this, worry about brands!
 
You're right Barry, I downloaded this free sftw from Panasonic and sure enough it fixed my problem very easily.
It's an awesome tool for us AVCCAM users. Amazingly enough I wasn't able to find one restore/recovery program on the internet that could fix the problem, this was the only tool that delivered what it said it would.
 
Sorry Ullanta, the problem had nothing to do with the quality of the card. It had everything to do with the camera not being able to finalize the video clip when power was lost. The Panasonic restore tool did an outstanding job of fixing the problem.
 
VideoDave said:
Sorry Ullanta, the problem had nothing to do with the quality of the card. It had everything to do with the camera not being able to finalize the video clip when power was lost. The Panasonic restore tool did an outstanding job of fixing the problem.
Click to expand...

Righteo! I was generalizing for the OP and earlier posts than yours… hope my wording didn't make it seem like I meant the post immediately above mine!
 
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