Canon R7 What size is your memory card?

Spitfirejd

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What size SD cards are you using for your R7? I‘ve moved from the Canon DSLR CF cards, and I’m debating on what size SD cards to get. Previously, I’ve always preferred to have more, smaller cards so I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. However, I didn’t really shoot any video, which I plan on doing more of with my R7. I will probably shoot mostly short clips, but I could see there may be some instances where I would want to shoot some longer footage of wildlife, depending on what they are doing. By longer, probably no more than 5-10 minutes at a time. Also, the R7 has a much higher MP sensor than they old cameras so I’m not sure how much space RAW photos will take.
 
While I don't have an R7, I have an R, which has a 30mp sensor compared to your R7's 32mp sensor. With a 32GB card, I get about 900 shots at iso 100. If I shoot at iso 25600 (almost never do this) I get about 670 shots. The noise in high iso images is data and makes file sizes larger. Your R7 might handle noise better than my R.

If you have a look at page 942 of your EOS R User manual, you will see that Canon says you should be able to shoot 873 RAW images on a 32gb card. They don't specify iso settings, so that depends on which iso settings they used. Maybe it is an average.

Personally, I have mostly 64gb cards because they are more common in UHS-II than 32gb cards. And I prefer UHS-II cards because they are a lot faster when copying the images to my hard drive than UHS-I. Do they save me a lot of time? Not really, but I like the faster speed. It makes me feel better....haha.

I don't normally shoot video, so I don't personally have a need for something larger than 64gb. But if I could get a 128gb card for the same price as a 64gb, then I would buy the 128gb. Just because I have a large card doesn't mean I have to fill it....just because I have two large baskets doesn't mean I have to only carry my eggs in one basket.

As far as brands go, I have Kingston, Sony, Lexar, Transcend, and Sandisk cards. I have not had any failures with any of these brands. The only failure I have had with any memory card, going back to 1997, was a Lexar SD card that I retired a year or so ago. It still worked, but the plastic housing was separating and I was afraid that it might get stuck in the camera, so I trashed it.
 
I used to think the same about egg basket, but ~15 years of active photography and I think I'm inching towards 1M clicks, I've never had card failure so (knock on wood) I've started doing shoots mostly without changing the cards. All my bodies recently had dual slot so most cases I save double, either raw+jpeg or jpeg+jpeg for sports so there's next to zero chance of both cards failing the same time. Probably only way for both cards to lose pics would be if the camera goes haywire and corrupts/formats both cards. Most of my SD cards are 128-256GB. All are Sandisk or Lexar, bought from reputable stores.
 

I use this one.

Thank you. That’s a great article, but it doesn’t address sizes, other than what is available. I’m leaning towards 128GB, but was debating the size vs price and how often I would need to change the cards, etc
 
While I don't have an R7, I have an R, which has a 30mp sensor compared to your R7's 32mp sensor. With a 32GB card, I get about 900 shots at iso 100. If I shoot at iso 25600 (almost never do this) I get about 670 shots. The noise in high iso images is data and makes file sizes larger. Your R7 might handle noise better than my R.

If you have a look at page 942 of your EOS R User manual, you will see that Canon says you should be able to shoot 873 RAW images on a 32gb card. They don't specify iso settings, so that depends on which iso settings they used. Maybe it is an average.

Personally, I have mostly 64gb cards because they are more common in UHS-II than 32gb cards. And I prefer UHS-II cards because they are a lot faster when copying the images to my hard drive than UHS-I. Do they save me a lot of time? Not really, but I like the faster speed. It makes me feel better....haha.

I don't normally shoot video, so I don't personally have a need for something larger than 64gb. But if I could get a 128gb card for the same price as a 64gb, then I would buy the 128gb. Just because I have a large card doesn't mean I have to fill it....just because I have two large baskets doesn't mean I have to only carry my eggs in one basket.

As far as brands go, I have Kingston, Sony, Lexar, Transcend, and Sandisk cards. I have not had any failures with any of these brands. The only failure I have had with any memory card, going back to 1997, was a Lexar SD card that I retired a year or so ago. It still worked, but the plastic housing was separating and I was afraid that it might get stuck in the camera, so I trashed it.
Thanks for the thorough reply! After all the years I‘ve had DSLRs, I didn’t even realize that high ISO images took up more space. Lots of good info here.
 
I shoot with 128 GB cards in my cameras. They are mostly old cards, but they never limit me in any way. I never shoot bursts that are so long that the buffer fills. I never shoot so many pics that the card fills (only happened once years ago on a 16 GB card). I usually carry extra cards but have never had to use them.

As for "eggs in basket", I never switch baskets in the field, because IMO that is very risky. Often I'm in a grassy field, or maybe in the woods or on the deck of a boat. If I drop the card, it might be hard to find. There is also a static electricity risk when handling cards. So the card never leaves the camera except at home or in the hotel by my computer.

Last year I bought an expensive 128GB CFexpress card for my R5. I'm pleased that I now have a card in the otherwise-unused slot, but there is no difference at all in my shooting. I use the R5 for people shots where high performance isn't needed. But one day I might try some BIF with it.

I shoot CRAW which saves space and has no discernable effect on the image. I shoot stills only, no movies.

Thinking back over 17 years of digital shooting, I've never had a card failure. But I have had a shutter fail fatally, a lens whose focus froze, a flash that couldn't be removed from the hot shoe, and a balky Mode knob. From this I conclude that memory card issues are the least of my worries. I carry spares anyway.
 
I am the same way, I really don't need a spare memory card, but I have 12... :D . I have bought them over the years and I really like testing things, so many of the purchases have been simply to test the card for read and write speed with different card readers as well as write speed in the camera.

Normally if we are on vacation for several days, I will switch memory cards each day, or every other day depending on how many images I took. But again, it is an old, unnecessary habit.
 
My modus operandi when on vacation is to keep shooting on the same card day after day, but archive all new shots to my laptop every evening. I can go a week or two on the 128 GB card before it fills.

Once the new shots are on the laptop, I eagerly review them. I do some culling and preliminary editing. I want to see what shots I am getting, and learn from any problems that I see. I use Lightroom Classic for this. The culling/editing takes a fair bit of time, so I back up that effort (the photo folders and the LR catalog) to an external drive.

So I end up with copies of the pic files in 3 places: on the card, on the laptop, and on the external drive.

No matter how good a job of editing I do on the laptop, I have found I can always do better at home on the desktop with the nice big monitor. So I resist posting photos until I get home and do a proper job of editing.
 
My modus operandi when on vacation is to keep shooting on the same card day after day, but archive all new shots to my laptop every evening. I can go a week or two on the 128 GB card before it fills.

Once the new shots are on the laptop, I eagerly review them. I do some culling and preliminary editing. I want to see what shots I am getting, and learn from any problems that I see. I use Lightroom Classic for this. The culling/editing takes a fair bit of time, so I back up that effort (the photo folders and the LR catalog) to an external drive.

So I end up with copies of the pic files in 3 places: on the card, on the laptop, and on the external drive.

No matter how good a job of editing I do on the laptop, I have found I can always do better at home on the desktop with the nice big monitor. So I resist posting photos until I get home and do a proper job of editing.
Nice workflow. I haven’t had a laptop in years, they get obsolete so fast and they cost too much for how long you get to use them. I use an iPad most of the time and have an old Mac Pro for editing. Will probably upgrade that to a Mac Studio in the Spring. Haven’t quite figured out what my workflow will be when I get my camper next year and do a lot of traveling and shooting.
 
I get the files off the card after every shoot. I plug the card in and pre-cull the files using Canon's DPP. I delete all the unwanted files and the drag the remaining ones to to a folder I created on the desktop which is named based on the shoot. I import that folder into LrC. After the previews are built using LrC I drag that folder to the powered external drive.

When I travel I create a new catalogue on my laptop and name it based on the trip. I follow the same process. When I get home I copy the catalogue to the portable external drive, plug it into the desktop and and use the Import from Another catalogue command. It merges it into the master catalogue.
 
What size SD cards are you using for your R7? I‘ve moved from the Canon DSLR CF cards, and I’m debating on what size SD cards to get. Previously, I’ve always preferred to have more, smaller cards so I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. However, I didn’t really shoot any video, which I plan on doing more of with my R7. I will probably shoot mostly short clips, but I could see there may be some instances where I would want to shoot some longer footage of wildlife, depending on what they are doing. By longer, probably no more than 5-10 minutes at a time. Also, the R7 has a much higher MP sensor than they old cameras so I’m not sure how much space RAW photos will take.
64 GB V90
 
I use 32Gb Sandisks in my SD slot and as I have an R5 I also use a 512GB Sandisk CFExpress card. I use both cards for my shots, My R5 copies the same files to both cards (Raw). In my years with a 350D, 7D, 5DMKII, 5DsR and now the R5 for 18 months I have never, ( touch wood, I'll jinx myself now), had a card failure. I use exclusively Sandisk on the R5. I have found the 32GB cards to be more than ample for what I need. Heck, I even did a wedding with 3000 shots, The 5D MKII and the 7D did well with changing only one card. I did use 64Gb back then. I always carry extras though, for insurance. I don't like big cards, except for the CFExpress, as it's a lot of files to lose if the card goes down.
 
My modus operandi when on vacation is to keep shooting on the same card day after day, but archive all new shots to my laptop every evening. I can go a week or two on the 128 GB card before it fills.

Once the new shots are on the laptop, I eagerly review them. I do some culling and preliminary editing. I want to see what shots I am getting, and learn from any problems that I see. I use Lightroom Classic for this. The culling/editing takes a fair bit of time, so I back up that effort (the photo folders and the LR catalog) to an external drive.

So I end up with copies of the pic files in 3 places: on the card, on the laptop, and on the external drive.

No matter how good a job of editing I do on the laptop, I have found I can always do better at home on the desktop with the nice big monitor. So I resist posting photos until I get home and do a proper job of editing.
I do the exact same thing.
FWIW I have never had a card failure since my first digital cam the Canon D60 (not 60D)
 
Funny to remember when every new digital camera came with a memory card that you could barely put a few dozen pictures on! I've long since gotten rid of those smaller memory ones but kept a 4 GB Hitachi Micro Drive CF card just as a curiosity. It was actually a tiny hard drive in the form of a CF card.

These days I shoot mostly with 128 GB SD cards, none of my current cameras take CF or other cards. I took Tim's recommendation on the Kingston Canvas React Plus. They are very fast at writing the files.
 
Funny to remember when every new digital camera came with a memory card that you could barely put a few dozen pictures on! I've long since gotten rid of those smaller memory ones but kept a 4 GB Hitachi Micro Drive CF card just as a curiosity. It was actually a tiny hard drive in the form of a CF card.

These days I shoot mostly with 128 GB SD cards, none of my current cameras take CF or other cards. I took Tim's recommendation on the Kingston Canvas React Plus. They are very fast at writing the files.
Those were the days! I still have the CF card that came with my camera back around 2006. It says "16" with "MB" barely noticeable in the corner. Everyone knew that megabytes was intended. To imagine 16 GB would have been crazy, let alone the bigger cards we use now without much thought.

R7_C0190.jpg
 
I bought my camera an SD card for Christmas - a fast 256GB one. Now I can shoot for 6 months without having to clear the card.
 
Archibald, you are going to have to step up your game here. I suspect this dinosaur was sold with one of my PowerShots in the ‘90s.

IMG_3720.jpeg
 
On my R7 I currently shoot RAWS to a 64GB Extreme Pro V30 in slot 1, and JPEGs to an Ultra Pro V10 Micro SD in slot 2. I usually download after every shooting event so space on card 1 has never been an issue. Whenever card 2 fills up I just reformat it.
 
Archibald, you are going to have to step up your game here. I suspect this dinosaur was sold with one of my PowerShots in the ‘90s.

View attachment 24438
Neat, 8 MB.

It is just amazing how things have gone with memory. That 16MB card was half as big as the whole hard drive of my first computer. It was huge at the time. And the new 256GB card is 16,000 times bigger than that card.

It is not that easy to get an old 2GB or 4GB card for an old camera or GPS. And they don't work with bigger cards.
 
R7 here. 2 x 256 gb (overkill I know) Lexar V60 one main/one backup. After reading that they aren't what they used to be in the card review, might consider changing brands.
 

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