[#TechNotes 03] Memory Cards in Photography - DOs & DON’Ts in my Experience - TravellerG

[TravellerG]

In this post, I am trying to share my experience (of decades) with memory cards in photography. I am sure many of you will be knowing most of the points; however, if this post can even remind you of a single point, I will be happy.

Here is another post regarding the technical aspects of Memory cards.

When you plan to buy a new camera, get a recommendation of the memory card from the camera manufacturer. (hereafter, the Memory Card is mentioned as Card)

1. Try to buy the card from a reliable brand/manufacturer - a cheaper product may be disastrous.
2. Procure a product which is slightly more than the minimum specifications.
3. The memory card should be formatted in the same camera in which you are going to use it. Card formatted in a PC needs to reformatted in the camera, as the camera manufacture needs to build its database index, etc.
4. I usually format the memory card before every shoot session.
5. Immediately after every shoot session, copy the images to more than one storage location (Backup).
6. And return the Card to the camera immediately.
7. Ensure that the camera is turned off before removing the memory card.
8. Ensure to use a good quality “Card Reader” - if you are using a card reader; I have heard more stories of Card getting corrupted in cheap card readers than the card itself getting corrupted.
9. Always use the ‘Safely Eject’ option on your computer.
10. Plan to use 80 to 90% of the card’s memory only during shooting.
11. The remaining photo numbers shown in the camera may be reduced, if larger phots are saved - always keep a margin for the same. This is very important to those who shoot in RAW format.
12. I use 2 numbers of 64 GB Cards (earlier 32 GBs) than a Single 128 GB Card; this method has saved many photographers, including me - a card error will not wipe out all the shots.
13. Avoid shooting when the battery power is less than 10% - if the camera switches while writing, the card can get corrupted.
14. Also, never switch off the camera before the camera completes the writing to the Card - this important when shooting in RAW, Burst shots, etc.
15. Keeping the Cards in safe environments is very important - preferably keep it in its plastic case.
16. Serial Number your Cards clearly, if you plan to use multiple Cards in a shoot session - I have heard of people overshooting on the same card.
17. If you happen to see any errors, the best way will be to stop using the card; Label them clearly as BAD.
18. Deleting photos from the camera is technically not an offence, although, I try to avoid delete command as far as possible.
19. If possible, practice locking the card once you take out of the camera.
20. Using a ‘Pro’ card gives many additional benefits along with higher speed.
21. Finally, like any other product, remember that the Cards also have its life span; nowadays, I prefer to change my cards in use, only once in 3 years - earlier I used to change every year.

Of course, the technologies have developed a lot and these days the cards have become very reliable and higher capacity cards are becoming very affordable.

EDITs:

1. SD Card with “Wifi” facility is a very important feature, although this card will affect the battery life of the camera - the information shared by our @StephenAbraham is Here.

2. If you want to sell or give away a memory card, “Wipe SD Card” (better use a PC & Full Format option - this will take some time); delete or normal format command will not remove full data - tip added by @davidhyno

IMPORTANT: BEFORE DELETING

Double confirm that at least one copy of the photos is saved in a reliable location; (Creating copies of the photos in the same partition of a PC is invalid). Close the directory & remove the card from the PC, before deleting the photos from the memory card - I do not delete the photos; instead, after saving the photos in 2 different locations (RAW files only in one location), format it in the camera again. This avoids me using the delete command - even before pressing the formatting button, think twice.

Some (silly) questions I have answered:

• Do cards have any effect on image quality?
  • NO
• Will the photos be erased if the Card is dropped in water?
  • NO. (Technically)
• Xray or Magnet affect Cards
  • NO (for safety, avoid extreme conditions)
• Will the card gets heated while writing?
• Can be warm, but not hot. Cheap cards may not have temperature balancing & may get hot - you may lose photos even.

What all I try to avoid:

Extreme humidity & temperatures & vibration, accumulation of dirt, bending, dropping, inserting with pressure, wrongly trying to insert, puncture, etc.

Hope this will be helpful.

PS:

Thanks to @TusharSuradkar for reminding me about this post, which was written long back - in fact, I totally forgot about this - just proof-read & publishing.

Have you any more points to add? Welcome… Please

@MortenCopenhagen @StephenAbraham @davidhyno @jaisoncbe @faizanpatel @AmbrishVarshney @NareshDarji @TPattanaik & our other team members

[sophie_fusion]

Dear Sir, thank you for the informative post. Very happy to read something i need reached just on time.

[Mukesh71]

Thanks @TravellerG Sir for sharing such an informative post here on connect. I shall follow ur advice while purchasing and using memory card.

[TusharSuradkar]

Thank you for listing very useful and life-saving (for the card ) tips and tricks @TravellerG

I however disagree with #4 - I usually format the memory card before every shoot session.

What I have always known is that cards should not be formatted unless absolutely required.

But if you insist I will change that impression and format it before every session from here on.

Do you recommend formatting using the command inside the camera or using a PC?

[DhawalShah]

This is so informative…keep up the good work sir

[NareshDarji]

Thanks @TravellerG sir for sharing such informative post.

Currently Im using 64gb class 10 memory Card for my mobile.

[RoshanBajpaiLG]

Very useful tech post releated to SD cards.

[Mohammadalauddin]

Gave many beautiful descriptions of the use of memory cards. Each description is explained step-by-step. If anyone thinks that he will use the memory card well. So I think reading this post is enough.

Thank you @TravellerG for to give an instructive post on the use of memory cards sharing with us.

[BidurC]

@TravellerG thank you sir for sharing these useful information about memory cards with us.

[jaisoncbe]

Very useful information @TravellerG sir. Thanks for sharing

[jayasimha78]

@TravellerG Another thing I would add is Data Transfer rate of the card is very important, specially when you are shooting in continuous mode. Newer the Camera (generally higher mega pixel), buy faster speed (of course higher capacity) cards.

[Erna_LaBeau]

Argh you make me missing my Canon digital camera @TravellerG I would love to play with it again. Thank for the tips reminder!

[Soumendra]

Thanks for sharing…This is really useful for everyone…

[PaulPavlinovich]

Hi @TravellerG some of these things may have applied in the past but are no longer true and possibly never were, some of them are old photographer’s tales… I might address some of your points to give you some more modern information. I will put my answers to your points in a bold.

1. Try to buy the card from a reliable brand/manufacturer - a cheaper product may be disastrous.
   Definitely agree with this one - mostly - really it depends on the chips in the card, if the chips are from a known good manufacturer then you’re probably ok even with a cheap card but if you want to be safest and couldn’t be bothered doing research into the card then the easiest way is to buy a reputable brand from a reputable seller - there are lots of counterfeits out there. I exclusively use Lexar and Sandisk cards. They both use reliable chip manufacturers (usually the same one).

2. Procure a product which is slightly more than the minimum specifications.
   I don’t think this really matters, the camera will specify a card that can keep up with its needs for burst mode still shooting and video shooting. The camera engineers will have already said they need a card of higher spec than they really do, so increasing it again won’t hurt but it will cost you money and no advantage. That said, a card is an investment - you should get 2 to 5 years out of a card under heavy use, so if you plan on upgrading your camera within that time frame then getting faster cards will mean it will (hopefully) suit the new camera.

3. The memory card should be formatted in the same camera in which you are going to use it. Card formatted in a PC needs to reformatted in the camera, as the camera manufacture needs to build its database index, etc.
   Kind of. This one is totally camera dependent and really only applies to old cameras that used a proprietary format. Nearly all cards are formatted to FAT32 or exFAT (depending on card capacity). The cameras simply write into folders on the formatted card and will make their own folders if they are not there the first time they write an image. So with the majority of modern cameras I would be very surprised if you found one that forced you to format the card to its own format before using it anything other than the first time. An important side note - formatting is not how it was in the sense of magnetic media. Formatting a FLASH memory device does not write to every single block in the memory, it only writes a new header and folder structure overwriting what is there. The reason for this is that FLASH has a finite life. Each block has a maximum number of writes that it can tolerate after which it will decay or fail. It is better to format than erase all because the format is less writes to the card to do the same job.

4. I usually format the memory card before every shoot session.
   I do this too - but see above. I do it because I want to keep my shoots tidy and separated. Especially when someone is paying me. This is for privacy and not wanting to upset people. The last thing I would want is to be showing some family the portraits I’ve just done of them then scroll through the lot and see the model shoot I did the day before.

5. Immediately after every shoot session, copy the images to more than one storage location (Backup).
   Definitely do this. I try to do this even when travelling. I have a device which you put two cards in and it copies A to B. It overwrites everything on B so don’t get them backwards :).

6. And return the Card to the camera immediately.
   I’m curious why you would do this? I’ve got about 20 cards that I circulate through in numerical order. I log which ones I’m using on which shoots and if one starts to go bad it gets cut up and a replacement takes its number and slot in the pouch. It is important to keep them clean and dry so I keep the plastic boxes the cards come in. The cards are kept in their box in a pouch with a slot for each card.

7. Ensure that the camera is turned off before removing the memory card.
   This one is again only true for old equipment. Modern equipment will cope just fine if you pull a card while it is being written. You may lose the image but the card protects itself from corruption over a partial write.

8. Ensure to use a good quality “Card Reader” - if you are using a card reader; I have heard more stories of Card getting corrupted in cheap card readers than the card itself getting corrupted.
   This one is fairly important, but mainly for speed. A cheap reader isn’t likely to hurt your card (your PC OS or anti virus is much more likely to do that) but it will be slow. I use Lexar readers and achieve very fast read speeds approaching the maximum my cards can do.
   As an extra note here do you disable malware and virus scanning on your cards? If you don’t you should as while they’re unlikely to damage the card they do a lot of reads and writes that will both slow down ingesting images from the card but they also use up the finite number of writes in non productive ways. As long as you only ever use your cards in your camera and your own computer this will not cause you any issues. If you use cards in other people’s computers then I would not do this in case they inject malware onto your card.

9. Always use the ‘Safely Eject’ option on your computer.
   Do you still use windows XP? Safely eject hasn’t been needed since then! Windows writes in a safe mode (same as modern cameras do) that if the card is removed mid-write then the worst that can happen is one bad file.
   Note that if you have turned on caching for your memory cards (Windows 10 will have it off by default) then you do need to safely eject because caching improves speed by doing what’s called write-behind where the computer is writing onto faster storage and transferring it to the card behind the scenes.
   Similarly if your AV or Malware software is scanning the card then you should use safely eject, because it tells the scanner you want to stop now.

10. Plan to use 80 to 90% of the card’s memory only during shooting.
    Why? Again I suspect this might have been a feature of old cameras that might corrupt a card when they tried to write when it was full. Its highly unlikely to happen in a modern camera. The modern camera will not show you the full capacity of a card because it will use about 99% of the card and tell you its at 100. Did you know that card capacities reduce over time? As blocks fail the operating system on the card remaps them so another good block.

11. The remaining photo numbers shown in the camera may be reduced, if larger phots are saved - always keep a margin for the same. This is very important to those who shoot in RAW format.
    It is important to note that every file saved by the camera includes some compression (including raw - sort of) so the camera is guessing at the number of shots it has left based on average image sizes. Different circumstances cause bigger files on different cameras.

12. I use 2 numbers of 64 GB Cards (earlier 32 GBs) than a Single 128 GB Card; this method has saved many photographers, including me - a card error will not wipe out all the shots.
    I agree with this. I actually use smaller cards of 32GB except when I’m shooting 4K or 8K video then I use massive cards to avoid changing mid scene. Most of my images are not replaceable - either because the circumstances won’t repeat themselves or because I’ve left the location. With really important shoots my camera writes every image to two cards simultaneously so if one fails I still have the other one.

13. Avoid shooting when the battery power is less than 10% - if the camera switches while writing, the card can get corrupted.
    This should never happen with modern hardware for two reasons, firstly because the camera when it shows you 10% is probably more likely at 30% to 50% of the battery capacity and because the write should fail gracefully. It certainly was a problem with old cameras. What I would suggest is that when your camera starts flashing red then its time to put a new battery in it and not try for one more shot. It’s not likely to hurt the card (because it should not try to write if the voltage is too low) but because you’ll lose the shot. Now while you are on the subject of batteries, you should consider their life and usage. I replace my batteries quite often especially if I’ve used them in cold situations because lithium batteries have a finite life time and when they fail, they fail fast and sometimes spectacularly. A failing battery will show 80% or 90% charge then die instead of gracefully going down. This is because lithium batteries are awesome at maintaining their voltage - for a while, when a battery is going bad instead of giving you say the described 5VDC for 2 hours, then 4.9VDC for the next hour then 4.8VDC for the next hour it will give you 5VDC for the first 5 minutes then drop to near zero “just like that”.

14. Also, never switch off the camera before the camera completes the writing to the Card - this important when shooting in RAW, Burst shots, etc.
    Another one attributed to old cameras with a physical switch. These days the off/on does not cut off power, it signals the camera’s operating system that you want to shut down. The camera will complete all processes and like the modern computer that it is will gracefully shut down. The camera will continue to draw a miniscule amount of power watching for you to turn it back on again via that soft switch. Note that some professional and high end consumer cameras also keep their sensor warm which uses a bit more power. Note that shutdown and sleep are different but in both cases the CPU is still running, or if not the CPU at least a circuit that watches the switch and boots the CPU.

15. Keeping the Cards in safe environments is very important - preferably keep it in its plastic case.
    Definitely.

16. Serial Number your Cards clearly, if you plan to use multiple Cards in a shoot session - I have heard of people overshooting on the same card.
    Definitely. I use a very simple precaution for this. When they are available they face forward so I can see their number. When they are used I put them back into the pouch in the numbered slot backwards - if I can see the card’s “teeth” then I know its been used.

17. If you happen to see any errors, the best way will be to stop using the card; Label them clearly as BAD.
    Yes and No… this really depends on personal choice. Normally the card will cope with bad blocks by itself, but something else might have happened like corrosion on the circuit board or contacts in which case getting rid of it is best. If you can afford to when a card drops down to about 80% of its former capacity I tend to get rid of it because that means its getting a bit old. I don’t label them, I cut them up.

18. Deleting photos from the camera is technically not an offence, although, I try to avoid delete command as far as possible.
    This one is only because you might accidentally hit erase-all from your menu then you have an unhappy moment on your hands. Interestingly this idea came to light from the old Sony cameras that used physical floppy disk drives and old operating systems that were not good at managing the memory. Today’s card operating systems (yes they have one) are really good at memory management and removing a file in the middle of a stream of files won’t hurt anything. No more so than it does when you do the same thing on your computer.

19. If possible, practice locking the card once you take out of the camera.
    This is another one I have to wonder about, if you’re trying to avoid accidentally overwriting it then sure, but all that locking and unlocking… sigh. Practice good methods consistently and you won’t need to do this. But if you can’t then yeah lock them. However, chances are if you didn’t practice good card management methods then you won’t remember to lock it either :).

20. Using a ‘Pro’ card gives many additional benefits along with higher speed.
    The word “pro” is so mis-used. What you want to do is understand what your camera needs then look for:

    1. Type of card (micro SD, SD, CF, etc.)
    2. Card Capacity and filesystem (SD, SDHC, SDXC, SDUC)
    3. Brand of flash used in the card
    4. Speed Class of the card (make sure its what your camera needs) - I use at least UHS 3 these days and where I buy specifically for video I get V60.
    5. Maximum write speed (make sure its as good as what your camera needs)
    6. Maximum read speed (so you can get the images more quickly later)
    7. Durability rating (i.e. can you get it wet?) I usually get IP51 or IP52 which means sealed against dust enough to avoid improper operation and can handle dripping water (e.g. light rain)

21. Finally, like any other product, remember that the Cards also have its life span; nowadays, I prefer to change my cards in use, only once in 3 years - earlier I used to change every year.
    A modern card under heavy use should last 2 to 5 years depending on the flash chips used in the card. With life you get what you pay for.

As a final note, don’t despair if you get a bad card and can’t read the files because, chances are you can probably recover them. I’ve used both Recuva and EaseUS Data Recovery. Both tools are great, EaseUS is amazingly good but its very expensive and is subscription. Recuva has a free version and the paid version is a once of payment for each new version.

I hope this is helpful to you and your readers.

As a final question - what did you do to that poor Lexar card? It looks like its plastic coating is coming off - or have you taped the lock switch?

Paul

[StephenAbraham]

Another good option to consider (assuming our device doesn’t already have wifi sharing function), is to get one of these Flash Air Cards which supports direct wifi connection from within the card when powered on. Very useful indeed especially for older non-connected devices.

The rest, I would say just ensure speed is sufficient. Photos maybe not the critical measurement, but especially when recording videos, especially when we start getting into 4K and above.

[RamboRazor]

Thanks @TravellerG sir for sharing it with us, this guide would be very very helpful always.

[Anil6969]

very useful powerful yet gentle tips which will be certainly useful for frequent user specially formating the card in camera instead of PC

@TravellerG

Thanks for useful post keep sharing

regards

[TravellerG]

Thank you for your detailed response, dear @PaulPavlinovich . Really appreciate & thank for your valuable time to create such a detailed reply.

First of all, I have clearly mentioned that these are my experiences & I fully stand with every point I wrote; & I wrote this for a wide range of audience with different knowledge level.

As an Electronics Engineer (I am a double PG) & Consulting Technologist (also, as Chairman, I head a conglomerate), I try to keep myself up to date in my fields - however, as a humble human being, I don’t want to argue with you.

I appreciate your knowledge, but, honestly speaking I don’t fully agree with your responses (modern) and also, I am not here to argue with you - sorry.

Once again thanks for your support.

[TravellerG]

Welcome, dear @sophie_fusion - happy to know that the post is helpful to you.

[TravellerG]

Welcome , dear @Mukesh71 …I am always with you all,

Hope to bring out few more posts, shortly.