Do you need two cards?
|
|
Nikon D850 Dual Slots. bigger. |
Sony A7 III Dual Slots. bigger. |
This junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to my personally-approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. Get yours only from the approved sources I use myself for the best prices, service, return policies and selection. Thanks for helping me help you! Ken.
February 2020 Better Pictures Canon Nikon Sony Fuji LEICA All Reviews
Today
I buy only from these approved sources. I can't vouch for ads below. |
I love having two card slots, but do I really need them?
I always put a huge card in my second slot and use it as long-term backup. I set my camera to record to both cards, and while I remove the first card for downloading and format it every time I put it back in a camera, I leave my big second card in the camera with my long-term backup and only reformat if it starts getting full every few months. I'll also reformat my big backup card if I'm leaving on a big job.
I almost never need my backup. Having a second-card backup means I don't worry about backing up my laptop to which I load all the images as I shoot them each day from my first card, since if my laptop goes away, I still have everything on my huge second card. This saves time because I don't have to backup my laptop each night.
If I accidentally delete an image in the camera, no worries, my Nikon only deletes from the first card but leaves it on my backup so I can get it later!
This is important: while card errors are nearly unheard of today, my own errors where I get excited and delete images or format cards before downloading still happen, and my second backup card always saves me.
We all have our reasons for using the second card. When it comes to do I need it for security, the answer is how lucky or smart do you feel? Read on for historical perspective which leads to our answer.
The Bad Old Days
In the early days of digital cameras before about 2005 it was common to have a card that would simply have an error and become unreadable, which meant you just lost everything on that card. You'd curse a bit, and when you gave up, you'd shrug it off, reformat and keep shooting.
Overall, I lost about one image for every thousand I shot in my Nikon D1H back around 2002. Nikon's Pro Services told me I was doing better than average if I only lost one frame out of every thousand. I probably was doing that good because I only used first-level cards recommended by Nikon, which as far as I know are still Lexar and SanDisk, ONLY. I always properly formatted them every time I put one back into a camera, and followed all the safe data rules I still follow today. You have to presume once you put a card in a reader or another camera that you computer's OS or another camera may or may not have mucked with the card's file structure, and thus we always reformat when it's put it back in the camera to reduce the potential for problems.
Cameras had only one slot up until about 2007, so if you had a card error, you lost that shoot. It only happened once or twice to me, after which I learned to shoot each job across a few cards so losing one wouldn't lose the whole job. Back in those days you shot important things on film, because film never mysteriously erased itself on its own.
Film was far more reliable than digital; in the over 30 years of serious shooting I had already done by 2003 when I had my first card error, I had only lost a few film frames due to any cause out of probably a hundred thousand film frames. Even the frames I lost weren't catastrophic, as they were sheets of 4x5" film lost in a lab mishap and I didn't lose the whole job, I only lost a few sheets. When I lost a couple of hundred digital shots in an instant for no reason the first time I had a card error in 2003, I realized that digital was much more dangerous then film; you couldn't consider anything shot digitally as safe until it was backed up in two different physical locations — and I still don't until it's all in two different places.
Do You Feel Lucky?
The good news is I haven't had any card errors that have lost me any images since 2004. Technology has greatly improved. Do you remember how bad TVs were even back in 2004? TVs in 2004 still had tubes, but today TVs and everything look so much better. In 2004 the iPhone was still years off.
Having not had any errors in over a decade makes me feel much safer today — but I still use two cards for backup to let me skip daily laptop backups or recover from an overactive DELETE finger.
I still only shoot Lexar and SanDisk and still reformat every card every time I put one in a camera.
I always use my second card slots. I hate it when someone like Nikon deletes the second card slot in the D7500, or in the Z6 and Z7. Sony has finally gotten on board with having dual SD slots in their newest A9, A7R III and A7 III cameras. I also hate it when anyone makes the second slot something bizarre like an XQD slot in the Nikon D850.
But let's get real for a moment. I've been shooting for over 50 years today. I shoot a lot, and haven't had any errors other than a card being bad when I first put it in the camera (which loses no photos) for almost 15 years.
Remember when cars had a choke knob you had to pull out to cold-start a car in the 1950s? Remember the 1970s when TVs had Horizontal and Vertical hold knobs to keep the picture from tearing and you had to press your car's accelerator to the floor and release it to set their automatic chokes to cold-start a car? Well technology has replaced all that, with computerized fuel injection in cars and digital sync separators in TVs so those controls are simply not needed. No longer do we need to clean tape heads to record sound.
I've seen that the error rate today, at least if I follow safe data practices, is so astronomically low that digital is at least as safe as film. I've made hundreds of thousands of digital shots and not lost a single frame since 2004. Heck, if it's an important job I'll copy everything to an SD card at the hotel and put it in an envelope and mail it to myself in case I lose all my gear on the plane, or upload it to cloud storage — and I still haven't had any errors that needed this other than when I get trigger-happy with my camera's DELETE button as I'm shooting.
Recommendations
I greatly prefer cameras with two slots, but if a unique camera I need to shoot a job, like the Fuji X100V, only has one slot, I don't worry about it. I just make sure to download early and often, and back up my laptop frequently.
Given the choice, I always use a camera with two slots if I can, as I make mistakes and like to be able to recover from them.
So there you have it. I'm a prolific old-timer who's earned a living full-time in digital imaging since the 1980s (honest), and while I prefer dual slots, I don't worry too much if a specialized camera has only one - but I insist on two cards for my bread-and-butter shooting.
This junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. I use the stores I do because they ship from secure remote warehouses where no one gets to touch your new camera before you do. Buy only from the approved sources I use myself for the best prices, service, return policies and selection.
Thanks for helping me help you!
Ken, Mrs. Rockwell, Ryan and Katie.
© Ken Rockwell. All rights reserved. To us draughts reserves. Al le Recti viripotent.
Help Me Help You
I support my growing family through this website, as crazy as it might seem.
The biggest help is when you use any of these links when you get anything. It costs you nothing, and is this site's, and thus my family's, biggest source of support. These places always have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.
If you find this page as helpful as a book you might have had to buy or a workshop you may have had to take, feel free to help me continue helping everyone.
If you've gotten your gear through one of my links or helped otherwise, you're family. It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site full-time. Thanks!
If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a gift of $5.00.
As this page is copyrighted and formally registered, it is unlawful to make copies, especially in the form of printouts for personal use. If you wish to make a printout for personal use, you are granted one-time permission only if you PayPal me $5.00 per printout or part thereof. Thank you!
Thanks for reading!
Mr. & Mrs. Ken Rockwell, Ryan and Katie.