Camera SD cards

This SD card came with my new Lumix zs60.

When shopping for a P&S one sales person stated not to get a card larger than a 32 or 64 gb (can’t remember which one) - thoughts?

Obviously I want to buy more SD cards -not sure size & why it makes a difference.

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One school of thought is that several smaller cards (16GB is considered "small" these days) are better than one large card. That way you use a different card every day or two and if the camera is lost or stolen or if a card fails, you won't lose all of your pictures.

The other is to use a single large card since card failures with units from reputable dealers are rare and losing a tiny memory card is more likely than loss of the camera.

Personally, I take the middle ground and fill up a card every few days but back up the pictures to another device daily.

It's a philosophical choice with the only physical consideration being that some older cameras can't recognize cards larger than 32GB.

This is a common question, so I wrote an article that explains how images are stored, the difference in speed ratings and capacity options.

http://www.pptphoto.com/articles/viva.html

Dave

One thing about camera shopping in a 'big box' store - the sales clerks do not know when they are lying.

Older cameras [like my FZ-50] would have a problem with large capacity sd cards, as the larger cards use a sightly different file system.

Modern cameras can use much larger cards without issues. [i have several 4 gig cards for the old cameras, and 32 gig cards for the newer cameras]

Most cameras provide a counter of number of pictures that will fit onto the card at the current resolution - that should be thousands of 'large / fine' jpeg photos on a 16 gig card.

I would say either 16 or 32 gig as the standard size - and don't forget getting additional batteries for the camera too.

The cards a fairly cheap, so you may want to consider a strategy of one card per [shore excursion] day, unless you also bring a device [laptop, iPad] that lets you copy/backup the photos before returning home. Always use the camera to format the card back to blank after extracting the photos [the camera will most reliably write to a card that it has formatted].

I wouldn't' worry about getting to many more cards. Depending on how may mp's your camera has your will be able to store literally thousands of jpeg images on that card alone. The link below is from sandisk and has a nice chart showing aprox how many images you can store depending on card size, mp and raw/jpeg. (they need to update it so it shows the newer higher mp camera though. :rolleyes:)

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/69/~/number-of-pictures-that-can-be-stored-on-a-memory-device

They make them in different sizes and colors, but these are great for organizing multiple SD cards:

https://www.amazon.com/Micro-SD-card-holder-BLUE/dp/B006J73RAI/ref=lp_5771051011_1_1

If you will be shooting in RAW and especially if you will be shooting RAW and jpegs together at the same time this will consume the card more quickly than just JPEGS. Video and "burst mode" photos (several photos in very quick succession, especially useful for action shots) will also consume the card capacity more quickly.

Having said that, a 32Gb SD card gives me around 700 shots in combined RAW/jpegs on a Fuji XT-1.

I have had a CF card fail on me during a holiday, and to avoid leaving myself short had to do some hunting around to find a shop with high spec CF cards. However, SD cards can be found more readily in most places.

Though card failure is relatively unlikely, theft of the camera is a greater possibility. As suggested above, it's really important to back up regularly, and to keep your backup device separately from your camera and cards.

Though card failure is relatively unlikely, theft of the camera is a greater possibility. As suggested above, it's really important to back up regularly, and to keep your backup device separately from your camera and cards.

This. Or loss. I format my cards before each trip so I'm not really worried about card failure. Older cards get used as the "backup".

I tend to use larger sizes. 64 and 128GB sizes. I'm much more apt to lose cards so I minimize the cards I have in rotation. I back up in case of loss/theft, not because I'm afraid of card failure. Having to switch out every 16 or 32 would drive me nuts.

One school of thought is that several smaller cards (16GB is considered "small" these days) are better than one large card. That way you use a different card every day or two and if the camera is lost or stolen or if a card fails, you won't lose all of your pictures.

 

http://www.pptphoto.com/articles/viva.html

 

Dave

Dave, great article ! Very informative and explained in layman's terms - perfect! Thank you

One thing about camera shopping in a 'big box' store - the sales clerks do not know when they are lying.

 

I would say either 16 or 32 gig as the standard size - and don't forget getting additional batteries for the camera too.

 

The cards a fairly cheap, so you may want to consider a strategy of one card per [shore excursion] day, unless you also bring a device [laptop, iPad] that lets you copy/backup the photos before returning home. Always use the camera to format the card back to blank after extracting the photos [the camera will most reliably write to a card that it has formatted].

Great advise - already purchased another battery and Panasonic charger. I did use different SD cards when we were in Europe - I like the idea of one per excursion or day.

Expecting with our DIY land and Alaska cruise, I'll be snapping away, lol

Thank You

They make them in different sizes and colors, but these are great for organizing multiple SD cards:

https://www.amazon.com/Micro-SD-card-holder-BLUE/dp/B006J73RAI/ref=lp_5771051011_1_1

This is excellent - just added to my order! Thanks :D

Thanks Paul S and codex57 - appreciate your response.

I geek out when it's time for more cards, and do a price per GB comparison to find out where the density really starts to cost more. Also note that speed matters: even if your camera today can't "use" the speed of cards you might buy, your card reader might be able to, and your next camera might be able to use it as well. Back when I first started buying CF and SD cards, I picked up some 2GB, 15MB/sec SD cards that did their job reasonably well. I now have a stash of 16GB, 95MB/sec SD cards, but ended up putting one of those old cards into my "best" camera, which creates 60MB raw files. It took me a bit to figure out why it would take 8 seconds to clear each burst of 2 shots, until finally it dawned on me. :(

My wife and I are crazy into photography. I travel with enough cards to survive any one day (which for us in Alaska would probably be Tracy Arm Fjord in the morning and Juneau in the afternoon; in 2015 we shot 157GB in one day), copy them to three drives overnight, and reuse them the next day. That's a mix of 32GB and 16GB cards, mostly.

I use Sandisk, but their naming system still confuses me. But yes, speed matters. Even if you don't shoot video.

I use Extreme Plus as I find it's the minimum acceptable for my camera if I want to shoot at high frame rates in RAW. It's gold, but apparently the regular Extreme comes in gold as well (as Tyskie posted)? His picture also shows it saying 90MB/sec while mine says 80 (mine is an older card). I have newer ones but they came in microSD format and just have some red lettering on black.

I use Sandisk, but their naming system still confuses me. But yes, speed matters. Even if you don't shoot video.

Yes, it confuses me too. This was what came with the camera so I’m assuming it’s what is recommended. I don’t shoot raw & not much video.

This is my 3rd Lumix -still think my first one was the best but it had an untimely accident with a fall [emoji33]

The 2nd one saw us thru births, grandchildren & Europe before trouble started with video button

This choice was made out of familiarity with the product.

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If your camera can make use of them the UHS ll SD cards are very much faster than the UHS l cards, though not so easy to find in store. We picked one up at a very reasonable price in Costco not realising it was UHS ll and not seen them there since.

If you have a USB 3 card reader it can take advantage of the UHS ll speed, which can make a big difference on large file transfers.

Lucky! My Costco just has 3 packs of the slower speed Sandisks in small sizes. Really only good for those $150 point and shoots IMO, and my Costco carries some pretty decent DSLRs too that need better memory cards than they sell.