How important are dual card slots?

John Motts wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

oroalej wrote:

I guess if you are only a hobbyist, dual slot is not a MUST have. However, if you are paid to take a picture. Dual slot is a must. What will you tell your client if their wedding picture is corrupted and you got no backup? I will not gamble and hope that my card will not fail.

A card is not the only thing that can fail. I would like to see the reliability statistics concerning card failure, camera failure and lens failure. I expect after infant mortality has been eliminated (and that's easy to do - never put in a new card at an important event) the card is less likely to fail than the camera. In reality event photographers should always have a complete backup system ready to go - two card slots or not if the images are that important.

The real difference is that camera failure is generally more likely to prevent further images being taken. Card failure can or will kill off previously taken images.

But yes, equipment failure is relatively likely, certainly more likely than card failure.It should always be taken into account if you are shooting an important event.

Truth about having two card slots is that it isn't hugely expensive, relatively speaking. Imagine if theoretically there was some sort of fairy godmother insurance company who genuinely offered a policy to professionals that would replace any images taken on a shoot that were lost to card failure. Say it cost only £100 per year, I think pretty well every professional in the land would have such a policy.

Well, here you have such a policy. (And you don't even need to go through the stress and hassle of claiming!)

Funny thing, I wasn`t even bothered much about second card slot being present or not, but this thread made me thinking, and eventually I bought and started using another SD card in backup mode.

I`m not a professional. Would I miss losing some of my images due to card failure? Of course, heck, I care about them. But do I absolutely need it? Of course not, I`ve lived without it so far, and I`m doing my best to minimize any possible damage that could be caused by card failure (frequent image offloading and backup, for example).

But even for a mere enthusiast, another SD card is cheap (dirt cheap in comparison to cameras and lenses), and it just works. The possibility is there, so why not to use it.

And it came with a nice "bonus" I didn`t even originally think of -- as I usually delete images in camera, too, and some almost instantly after taking (if I don`t find them satisfying for whatever reason), second card slot now serves as some kind of a "recycle bin", too, where I always have a chance to "recover" an image even after I`ve just deleted it - but regretted, as I might have remembered noticing something - too late, finger being faster on the delete button. Well, not too late any more

It`s a bit liberating, even... but yeah, let`s not exaggerate