Memory Cards Options

[John Potts]

Hey everyone, I ran into an issue this weekend when I shot a friend of mine's wedding, I ran out of space faster than expected. I have 2x 4 gig cards and 2x 2 gig cards, I shot with my 7D as my main camera and a 30D as my wide angle backup. I've been considering ditching my 2 gig cards and getting something bigger but I remember someone telling me, or reading it somewhere, that the bigger the card the better chance of catastrophic failure. Now I don't shoot with the 7D's full resolution 18MP, I dial it down to 10 to save room.

So my question is, how big are the memory cards that you're using? And do people still use those epson portable hard drives? I remember a few years ago some of my friends had them to dump memory cards on instead of using a laptop.


On a side note, the wedding turned out fine, I was lucky enough to have my laptop and dumped my memory cards halfway thru and ended up with 20 gigs of pictures, ( 4 full 4 gig cards and 2 full 2 gig cards )

[UnicornPictures]

I use 3 x 8Gb cards. I would love to use 3 x 16GB just to have the space to shoot but when I'm thinking about it I never filled more then 2 8GB cards on a shoot ... the third 8GB card is just a spare in case of ... I know a friend of mine that shoots with 3 times 32GB cards ... and is also using a 5D mark II like me.

[Jacob Photo]

Last year, I had 1 4gb card, 2 2gb cards, and 3 1gb cards for a 7D and a 1d mk2. I never shot more than 7 gb in 1 day.

This year, I swapped the 1D2 for a 5D classic, and ditched all my 1gb cards for 2 8gb cards. I have yet to fill 1 8gb card in a day, but have come pretty close.

If I'm at an event where I anticipate having to dump cards, I'll bring my laptop and an external drive. Pics get copied to both the laptop and the external before the card gets wiped, and stay in both places until the photos are distributed to the client.