POLL: Do you wish your camera has dual card slots?

Steve W · Dec 23, 2015

JLim22 said:
andrewD2 said:

Two card slots are fantastic for a wedding photographer.
Destination wedding? I could rate the images on the SD card on the plane home while knowing I couldn't corrupt the CF card that was safely in a card safe. Have a day spare? Take one card with you, one in the hotel safe, take some scene setting photos for the couple without worry of loss or theft. Chances of losing either one are low, lets say 2:1000 both at once 1:1000,000.
Piece of mind.
You come home after a very long day. I've almost turn the clock round this year 23hours to get there, shoot and get back. You fumble a card to the reader, falls on the floor, you are tired, swing the chair around to find it. Wheel of the chair is centimeters away. That's centimeters from a disaster on one card slot or you get the CF card out on the other.
If you can truely say you are perfect and have never dropped anything in your life fair enough.
I've never had to use the second card but I was centimeters away. Do it long enough and something like that will happen. First 9 years I didn't do anything similar.
Not even mentioned the card failing and you'll know they do if you know enough photographers, I know of 2 this year. One had one of the two chips inside cracked, user error no doubt but no one is perfect.
Cheers,
Andrew

Click to expand...

You're right, it's better to have a back up than to be sorry later.

I think they should make a triple card slot!

Better yet, I might want a quadruple slot for those days that I might need a back up of a back up of a back up. It will come in handy if I'm ever caught in the middle of a earth quake, hurricane and tsunami combo, then I'll know that my files will be safe.

Laugh now but when you do lose a card you'll be the one that "WTF" :-x look on your face.

papillon_65 · Dec 23, 2015

Midwest said:
papillon_65 said:

like weathersealing, I'm not a pro, it would make the bodies larger, I couldn't care less.

Click to expand...

You get twenty bonus points for NOT saying 'I could care less.'

Duly noted

ecube · Dec 23, 2015

andrewD2 said:
Sarcasm aside, I have a minimum 4 copies of wedding folders, 2 in each of 2 computers. If I leave the A machine without having backed up to B I take a copy with me.
You have to make every effort to minimise the risk of loss. A backup of a laptop on an portable drive in the same bag risks theft of both, 3 drives, 4 drives, doesn't matter to that mode of failure. 2 cards can be separated if required, that's enough. When I walked from the venue to the car park across a major city the risk of someone trying to take my bag is low but not impossible. Having one set of cards in a coat pocket lowers the risk of a wipe out.
Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew, I agree with you completely and note I ignored sarcastic post.

I too, download to two external portable HD, one HD stored in a waterproof - fire resistant safety box. I use a third external HD to process and store processed file. I choose not to store my file on-line or cloud.

JimKasson · Dec 23, 2015

Alpha Photo said:
Member said:

However, in my experience, the right exposure for a JPEG file that looks good OOC is hardly ever the right exposure for a raw file.

Click to expand...

Interesting point - you probably have covered this in your blog already? Could you point me at the right place? THANKS !!!

Actually, I haven't. Thanks for an idea for a future post.

Jim

JLim22 · Dec 23, 2015

ecube said:
andrewD2 said:

Sarcasm aside, I have a minimum 4 copies of wedding folders, 2 in each of 2 computers. If I leave the A machine without having backed up to B I take a copy with me.
You have to make every effort to minimise the risk of loss. A backup of a laptop on an portable drive in the same bag risks theft of both, 3 drives, 4 drives, doesn't matter to that mode of failure. 2 cards can be separated if required, that's enough. When I walked from the venue to the car park across a major city the risk of someone trying to take my bag is low but not impossible. Having one set of cards in a coat pocket lowers the risk of a wipe out.
Cheers,
Andrew

Click to expand...

Andrew, I agree with you completely and note I ignored sarcastic post.
I too, download to two external portable HD, one HD stored in a waterproof - fire resistant safety box. I use a third external HD to process and store processed file. I choose not to store my file on-line or cloud.

--
ecube

Hahahaha. Thanks for the laugh.

Tristimulus · Dec 24, 2015

balancedphoto2 said:
Okay so based on what I have read from everyone's response...I can see that a majority of those who said "no" are either hobbyist or aren't doing photography professionally where they see a must for dual card slots. (those doing professional landscape, studio..I can see why you don't find yourself needing dual card slots)

I also noticed that a majority of users here care mostly about size (in my opinion, the Sony a99 is already quite a normal size camera and the a7Rii is really small. Again, in my opinion)

Those who said "yes" are most likely working professionally (like myself) where a small mistake of losing photos for your client, and you can be sued. This is where I see a7 users want dual card slots. (especially large weddings where clients are putting a large investment into your work) This is because it can happen and nothing is perfect. Though it never happened to some people, it's waiting to happen anytime.

Recap: I can see that a majority of the users here are hobbyist (yes there are some professionals, don't worry I didn't miss you)

Don't get me wrong though! I respect everyone's opinion on their thoughts about dual card slots! I just realized that the target audience about dual card slots specifically is entirely different here than other systems.

Happy shooting, everyone!!

le_alain · Dec 24, 2015

Tristimulus said:
Trollmannx wrote: (

So next poll: two cards in one camera or two cameras and still two cards? ;-)

Two camera with two cards.

Of course for wedding, you have Camera, lense, flash backup.

having card backup is also important !

And not only cheap cards can have failure, had with Sandisk and Lexar Pro,

Steve W · Dec 24, 2015

webrunner5 said:
noflashplease said:

webrunner5 said:

As to why I voted "no it doesn't matter". Just buy a bigger memory card. Problem solved.

But I started in film cameras MANY moons ago, so taking a whole roll of 36 expose film, or 12 on MF, even 10 on certain models, was a big expense film and processing wise. I probably got more keepers then than I do now shooting 100+ with a digital camera. You HAD to concentrate, not just shoot everything that moves or not like you can now.

I have a new to me A7r and I laugh out loud about all the people that complain they can ONLY get 300 shots on a battery, so they carry 3 extras ones. Really!! I have NEVER run out with just one all day. Like you are going to take 1,000 good shots in a day? Sounds more like spay and pray to me.

A pro doing that, well maybe. But 99% of all the people that own one don't make a dime with it, I really doubt you need 4 batteries with you. Am I glad I can shoot 300 shots on a battery, heck yes! I am not going back to film any day soon LoL.

Click to expand...

I'd expect a pro to shoot several thousand images at a wedding or at a fashion photo shoot. For travel photography, I've often individually composed 500-1,000 images in a single day at a museum, event or major destination. I shoot RAW + JPEG on separate SD cards for the sake of workflow - I need images that are immediately viewable as well as backups for later editing. For other venues involving movement, such as theater performances, wildlife or sports, I shoot a lot of frames just to get keepers.

The battery life of the A7 series is a huge problem to enthusiasts and pros, if not to tinkerers and hobbyists. It comes down to a tiny battery inherited from original NEX line. There are plenty of mirrorless cameras with larger capacity batteries and more than enough room in the second generation A7 bodies.

Click to expand...

Well l have shot probably over a couple thousand Weddings with two Hasselblads and 4 lenses. Wore a couple of bodies out. In my day 200 shots was over the top back then. That was 20 rolls of film! A heck of a lot to develop yourself. And I bet all the Brides I shot were just as happy as people shooting "Thousands" of shots like today.

How many shots they going to buy?, how many can you sell?? What 50 shots cutting the cake?, a bust of 30 throwing the flowers to unmarried women in the crowd? 20 walking down the Aisle? Sounds more like "spray and pray" than skill to me.

Oh and Fashion shots. Well I had a Deardorff 8x10 view camera in my studio and 30 shots was about all you could "afford" to shot back then. If I shot 30 shots I was overdoing it. Well guess what, an 8x10 negative got the job done! All 10 of them if you were lucky. Used a Polaroid back for test shots. I would think even today a 8x10 B&W would still be unmatched by any Digital camera. Probably have to win the Lotto to buy the film, drum scan it, and print it, but....

I know I am a old turd and times have changed LoL. But skill, quality trumps iffy skill, quantity any day, even now. It put food on the table for 17 years.

Totally agree with you. A redundant camera and lens/lenses and flash are more important to me than a second card in general since if those fail your done for the day.

The card redundancy is nice simply because you can, and a lot do, put so many images on a card. With film, when the roll went bad, and it rarely did, you lost 10, 24 or maybe 36 images before you loaded up another roll of film. Today you could lose them all, a reasonable 200 - 300 images of a wedding, or the 1000 - 2000 people shoot today.

Problem is you can have 300 great images on the card and writing that 301st image can dork the card. I know it happens very rarely but it does happen. Two card can protect you from that. I guess it can protect you from losing one of he cards as well but if you losing card you might want to think of another profession.

RC Photography · Dec 24, 2015

JimKasson said:
It's been mentioned here by several that an advantage of having two slots is the ability to simultaneously write JPEGs and raw to different cards.

However, in my experience, the right exposure for a JPEG file that looks good OOC is hardly ever the right exposure for a raw file.

Jim

Docno · Dec 24, 2015

balancedphoto2 said:
Do you wish your camera has dual card slots? Wedding photography specifically, but it would be great to hear from different kind of people!

It wasn't much of a problem back then because the only cameras that really had dual card slots were Nikon D3 series and Canon 1D series. Now TODAY there are many cameras that have dual card slots and do you believe that shooting with a single card slot for major weddings is not acceptable (or not recommended) today because back then there really was no other option? Thoughts and opinions!

a700 and a900 models had dual card slots (CF and MS). That was back in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

The only use I found for this feature was when I was taking shots in Burma that might be deemed sensitive by the overly-anxious authorities at the time (got stopped twice for taking innocuous shots of old colonial buildings and a market).... After taking shots, I could switch to the other memory card containing images of harmless landscapes.

Paul712 · Dec 24, 2015

Single Card Slot please ... Reasons

Confusing as to which card contains what. Single card avoids this problem. (Previously I had a dual card slot camera somtime ago). When using multiple cameras, this problem magnifies even more)
Memory Cards are now available in large capacities with more than adaquate capacities. So capacity is not a reason anymore.

ecube · Dec 24, 2015

Paul712 said:
Single Card Slot please ... Reasons

Confusing as to which card contains what. Single card avoids this problem. (Previously I had a dual card slot camera somtime ago). When using multiple cameras, this problem magnifies even more)

Memory Cards are now available in large capacities with more than adaquate capacities. So capacity is not a reason anymore.

Kiril Karaatanasov · Dec 28, 2015

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

dave46978 · Dec 28, 2015

balancedphoto2 said:
Do you wish your camera has dual card slots? Wedding photography specifically, but it would be great to hear from different kind of people!

It wasn't much of a problem back then because the only cameras that really had dual card slots were Nikon D3 series and Canon 1D series. Now TODAY there are many cameras that have dual card slots and do you believe that shooting with a single card slot for major weddings is not acceptable (or not recommended) today because back then there really was no other option? Thoughts and opinions!

I couldn't take the poll, because my cameras only have on card slot. It seems silly that guys like me aren't given a yes option. I would like a two slot body, but I have to live with whats available.

papillon_65 · Dec 29, 2015

Kiril Karaatanasov said:
For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Kiril Karaatanasov · Dec 30, 2015

papillon_65 said:
Kiril Karaatanasov said:

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

Click to expand...

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Exactly! I am not a pro wedding shooter. I do not think A7 cameras were meant for pro wedding shooters anyway - a lot of people seem to have realized this quite obvious thing for many other reasons.

I actually do not buy the 2 cards requirement for weddings. I wonder what people did in film days - did they shoot two films?

Actually the opportunity for failure does not diminish substantially with two cards above certain card capacity.

papillon_65 · Dec 30, 2015

Kiril Karaatanasov said:
papillon_65 said:

Kiril Karaatanasov said:

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

Click to expand...

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Click to expand...

Exactly! I am not a pro wedding shooter. I do not think A7 cameras were meant for pro wedding shooters anyway - a lot of people seem to have realized this quite obvious thing for many other reasons.

I actually do not buy the 2 cards requirement for weddings. I wonder what people did in film days - did they shoot two films?

Probably more in the region of 10-20 rolls, so failure was less of an issue.

Kiril Karaatanasov said:
Actually the opportunity for failure does not diminish substantially with two cards above certain card capacity.

Two cards will always be better than one if it's your livelihood.

noflashplease · Dec 30, 2015

Kiril Karaatanasov said:
papillon_65 said:

Kiril Karaatanasov said:

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

Click to expand...

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Click to expand...

Exactly! I am not a pro wedding shooter. I do not think A7 cameras were meant for pro wedding shooters anyway - a lot of people seem to have realized this quite obvious thing for many other reasons.

I actually do not buy the 2 cards requirement for weddings. I wonder what people did in film days - did they shoot two films?

Actually the opportunity for failure does not diminish substantially with two cards above certain card capacity.

Actually, it's a lot easier to lose hundreds or thousands of pictures to a corrupted SD card than it was to lose all 36 exposures on a roll of 35mm film.

For a professional wedding photographer, the loss of critical images represents a huge business and reputation risk.

webrunner5 · Dec 30, 2015

noflashplease said:
Kiril Karaatanasov said:

papillon_65 said:

Kiril Karaatanasov said:

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

Click to expand...

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Click to expand...

Exactly! I am not a pro wedding shooter. I do not think A7 cameras were meant for pro wedding shooters anyway - a lot of people seem to have realized this quite obvious thing for many other reasons.

I actually do not buy the 2 cards requirement for weddings. I wonder what people did in film days - did they shoot two films?

Actually the opportunity for failure does not diminish substantially with two cards above certain card capacity.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's a lot easier to lose hundreds or thousands of pictures to a corrupted SD card than it was to lose all 36 exposures on a roll of 35mm film.

For a professional wedding photographer, the loss of critical images represents a huge business and reputation risk.

Amen to the roll of film statement. I shot with a Hassy back in the day and you were only taking 10 exposures on a roll. Weddings are Always scary I don't care how many you have done.

Steve W · Dec 30, 2015

Kiril Karaatanasov said:
papillon_65 said:

Kiril Karaatanasov said:

For 10 years I never had issues that required a second card slot except using Nikon for a while that wrote huge RAW files....I had couple of slots on some of my sony cams and never used them

Click to expand...

My house has never caught fire but I'd definitely be glad of my Insurance if it did. If I was Pro wedding shooter I'd definitely be wanting a camera that dual writes to two memory cards, as an enthusiast? not so much.

Click to expand...

Exactly! I am not a pro wedding shooter. I do not think A7 cameras were meant for pro wedding shooters anyway - a lot of people seem to have realized this quite obvious thing for many other reasons.

I actually do not buy the 2 cards requirement for weddings. I wonder what people did in film days - did they shoot two films?

Actually the opportunity for failure does not diminish substantially with two cards above certain card capacity.

Yes they shot with two cameras and if you lost a roll of film due to mishandling or camera failure you lost at most 36 shots not several hundred that included the ceremony, etc.

I've only shot a few weddings but I can tell you I'm more comfortable having taken the belt and suspenders approach. Both my camera and the one use by my son, the second shooter, both had two memory cards. For my Canon's they all have two cards. For my Sony's which I'm using more of I always have two camera bodies. I don't do enough of any one thing to ake all my cameras identical. Each has a purpose in my mind. For the Sony I own the A7RII for landscape and architecture and my back up for that is an A7II. I'd love it to be an A7RII as well but already have too much invested for a part timer.

POLL: Do you wish your camera has dual card slots?

POLL: Do you wish your camera has dual card slots?

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