If you are a pro, do you use two card slots for backup? Locked

David Franklin wrote:

I concur. I have been a pro photographer, and have earned my living from being so for the last 40 years or so, shooting first film and then digital. I was a pioneer in using digital cameras for commercial work as soon as they become good enough, as well as a pioneer in digital imaging from film before that, going so far in pre-digital camera times as to buy film in many formats by the caseload, running my own automated and dedicated E-6 processing line in my studio and using multiple drum scanners to scan my work and retouch the resulting digital files for my clients.

Now, let me tell you about all the card failures I've had shooting digital hand held cameras and digital backs for medium and large format cameras over a 20 year period. In about 1997, when using primarily non-solid state IBM Microdrive compact flash cards, I had one of those cards that I used on a job yield several corrupted frames, all but a couple of which I was able to restore with software. One time. In over 20 years shooting digital cameras. Maybe two lost frames.

I'm not saying that a catastrophic loss isn't possible; it is. But, if you follow good procedures, it becomes extremely unlikely. Here's what I mean. First, buy the best and most reliable (read "expensive" here) card that you can. Then, every time I start a shoot I bring many cards with me - enough so that if one card isn't working properly, several others can take its place. Each time, just before the shoot starts, I test the card I slip into the camera, to make sure it can record and display and transfer files properly. I also do this with at least one other identical card that I carry with me. And then, after the shoot, after I've become confident that I have the files from a just completed job safely transferred to one or more reliable hard drives, I do a full re-format of the card on either my PC or camera, careful to maintain the proper formatting protocol for the card that the camera demands.

If you do this, the chances of suffering an unrecoverable card failure are very near zero.

This is just all part of doing a job successfully. It's all part of thinking ahead and being prepared. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm not sure, but I heard years ago that formatting on a PC is a big no no, always to be avoided.  But even formatting in camera, I've had a few unrecoverable cards over the years.  I think they were just poorly made.