Sd card saving options.

[Ted.G]

This R6 M1 is our first camera with dual sd slots and we are wondering what is the best way to utilize them. Should we use them as mirror images of each other in case one fails? Also on a side note, should we bother with saving jpegs or just stick to RAW? Thanks

 

[MSH411]

It depends on what you want to output. I only shoot Raw so I mirror in the event a card fails. I friend of mine saves Raw to one and JPEG to the other.

So I guess the question is, what format do you use?

 

[Archibald]

Hi, @Ted.G .

Different people use their card slots differently. If you are doing pro work, have duplicate images sent to both cards. Card failure is very rare, but in case one fails, you have the images on the other one.

Myself, I only record to one card, and it doesn't matter which. I'm not a pro. It is just for fun. It wouldn't be fun to lose my images, though, but that has never happened.

You can shoot JPG or Raw, up to you. If you shoot RAW, then you will need to process your images. That is (for me) one of the great delights in photography - the editing afterwards. But it's up to you. If you don't want to edit, you can just shoot JPG.

Some people even shoot both! I used to do that until I found out the JPG is just a useless sidecar file. So I stopped doing that. My phone is the exception, though. I shoot RAW and JPG on the phone. The latter is more convenient if I want to immediately send a copy to someone.

You can still edit JPGs but it's harder to correct color balances, and you won't be able to recover blown highlights.

 

[StevenAunan]

If you use the mirror setting, make sure both cards are the same speed class. The camera's buffer performance will be determined by the slowest card.

If you shoot stills and video, set one card to store photos and use the other for videos. For me, this simplifies the process of downloading to my computer because I have separate folder structures for each type.

Personally, I'm much happier with RAW files because the final edited result is much better than JPEG.

 

[PKM-UK]

Hi Ted,

We do what Ed does (for the same reasons)...

Phil and Karen

 

[RedCobra]

R5 and MkII I mirror to both cards. Both Raw. CFe and a V90 SD card. Camera is a little faster if I take the SD card out and shoot to just the CFe, but for what I do the slower V90 SD is not an issue although the buffer clears slower when using Pre-shoot.

 

[Ted.G]

We are certainly not professionals, but we have lost pictures on a high quality card before (I don't remember the brand off hand), but it was not a nice feeling. After talking with the better half, we think having RAW on one and jpeg on the other is the best bet for us.

The reason for this is she can just take the jpeg card out to view and and mark pictures worth post processing. After that the RAW can be sent over from the camera to the desktop so she can work her magic. Should one card fail, say the RAW we still have a backup of jpeg. Not the best, but not a total loss.

We are using Sandisk extreme pro UHS2 V60 128GB cards if that matters. Now I just have to find where I seen the settings to make this work lol. Thank you all for the insights .

 

[Archibald]

RAW on one and JPG on the other is a good solution.

Card failures are rare. I haven't had one in 18 years of digital photography, but had a near-miss one time. Two of us were doing some testing that required removing and reinserting the card frequently. And during one of those operations, the card wouldn't read on the computer. But it recovered after reinsertion into the camera.

This episode leads me to suspect that many if not most card failures are due to mishandling of the card. In the case I just mentioned, the card was probably yanked before it had finished writing. We were in a hurry. Cards can also fail due to static electricity or dirt on the contacts. There can be hardware issues too, like intermittent contacts, that can lead to write errors. Usually in those cases, the camera can detect the issue, and give a warning.

 

[Ted.G]

I completely agree with you Archibald about mishandling the cards.That is probably the biggest problem when it comes to corrupted data. Dust/dirt on the sd card contacts is not really a problem as one can see that easily. Dust and dirt on the reader end is another story since one can't see it or clean it easily.
With that, cards do have a limited life span of read writes. The card that we did have fail was due to that as it was used in a high read write home automation project of mine and for some goofy reason I decided that it was a good idea to use in the camera. Dedicated camera cards are very unlikely to have this problem, so it was my own fault. And I have now been instructed by the better half that the new cards stay with the new camera-wise words.

 

[Grahamk]

I agree that RAW on one and JPG on the other is a good solution - it’s what I now do having previously mostly shot JPGs. I don’t do much post processing with the majority of my images but for those that I do work on then obviously RAW has much greater flexibility. I found it an interesting exercise to post process the JPG and RAW versions of the same image to see how the same notional changes were reflected differently in each image.