Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

Speaking of Transcend and large format CF cards, Transcend just came out with w 16GB CF card as well:

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SPD/transcend-16gb-133x---300x-udma-enabled-compact-flash-card-transcend-16gb-133x---300x-udma-enabled-compact-flash-card--8000029D-1189545879.jsp

[David Salmanowitz]

Last week I had a Sandisk card not work correctly. Did not do any faux pas as in removing card while camera was still writing, ...  Anyway, Photorescue worked flawlessly and saved the images. BTW, manufacturers do not really advertise the fact that the cards will not last forever as with the card readers. Digital photography is not failsafe as when cards go bad, etc. but then neither was film sometimes. :-)

[Marc Schultz]

I have been shooting with the Sandisk 16GB Extreme III card for a few weeks now and so far no problems. Knock on teak!

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--and may it keep working for you! The biggest card I have is 4GB but I am paranoid with that one, but do like not having to change smaller cards more quickly. I have thought about using bigger cards but think that I would rather lose 4GB than 8GB or more. I know a few photogs who refuse to use anything bigger than 2GB as that is FAT 16, wheras all the other cards are FAT 32 and they believe the problems can arise from that system. Excuse me if the FAT #'s are incorrect. Obviously with a big file camera (as in a digital back) a bigger card is required.

[Marc Schultz]

In my case I am always protected with SD cards capturing a backup copy of my pictures in real time. As you may know, the Mark II holds 2 cards and writes to them both simultaneously. So if the 16GB card fails I always have a second copy of the pictures. I am never at risk really, but my case is rather unique to DSLRs in general and I can understand why most photographers are concerned about using such big cards in general.

[bkkdave]

Marc I am just curious about something in connection with the two cards: Lets say you are continually removing the main card for download to a computer and every time this is done the computer person deletes the card and gives it back to you empty to take more images. This will happen several times during a shoot. Does the backup card still retain all images from the entire shoot?

What about when you reformat the main card in the camera? Does the backup card get formatted as well or is it left alone?

I help out a photographer occasionally who does location portraits for various occasions. They print the images right there and give the photos to everyone at the end of the event. They will take my card and hand me back an empty card as they print. As a habit I always format the card before I start shooting again, but what happens to the backup card in this scenario?

Thank you

[Marc Schultz]

Sorry for the late reply on your question Dave.

In regards to your first question, yes, if you only delete the photos from one card then they will remain on the second card.

In regards to your second question, the second card only gets reformatted if you reformat it as well. Otherwise it is left alone, regardless of what you do to the first card.

In regards to the third question, nothing happens to the second card at all unless you actually do something to it to delete pictures from it and/or format it.

A couple more points worth noting:

1 - You are doing the right thing by reformatting it each time. Cards are prone to write errors when used in digital cameras if you don't format each time and just delete pictures from the card. I have had that experience myself.

2 - One of the reasons the second (backup card) does not delete pictures automatically when you delete them from the first card is because if you accidentally delete a picture from the main card then you still always have a backup available until you actually delete it from or format the second card.

3 - At the moment I am shooting with a 16GB CF card and a bunch of 2GB and 4GB SD cards as backup. When I put the 16GB CF card into the camera with a 4GB SD card it tells me I only have 200+ pictures left I can shoot in RAW, even though the 16GB CF card is capable of capturing close to 1,000 RAW pictures.

Basically, the camera, when you have it in backup flash card mode saving to two cards, only allows you to shoot as many pictures on your main card as you have backup space available for on the second card. So this way when the backup card is full I am able to know that and change the backup card to a fresh empty one at that point. Then I am able to keep shooting on the main card again until the backup card gets full again. So my backups get spanned over a number of backup cards, but all of my pictures are saved on one main CF card. Eventually I will get a 16GB SD card to match the 16GB CF card, but for the moment this system works. They just came out with a 16GB SD card by the way in case you would like to see:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220254&Tpk=16gb%2bsdhc

I hope that helps.

[bkkdave]

Marc thanks for the detailed reply!