Any good reason to get CF card for my Z8?

I don't do any video. My photography is landscape and walk around photography. I don't do birding or sports.* I've been using my SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 mb SD card from my D800 (link here: SanDisk SD Card ).

*I will be shooting the Boston Marathon and have done some practice shooting with runners with Z8 and fast lense at ~20 fps RAW lossless and no jpeg. I'd focus on one runner at a time, do a full burst and then done. The card handles it fine and no slow down. It doesn't seem like I really need to get a CF card. But the shop where I got it said even with my use cases, I should get one, of course!

Can you think of any good reason(s) given the above type of photography it might make sense? Maybe there is a good reason I'm not aware of.

If you take thousands of photos it will be a lot faster offloading onto a computer.

MrKazador31 said:

If you take thousands of photos it will be a lot faster offloading onto a computer.

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That would be exceptionally rare for thousands to offload in a day. Maybe 500 pics tops in a day of shooting. The only exception is maybe 1k for the marathon coming up. Often when I offload pics at home, I do something else while I wait.

one time very early in my career a card just flat out died and ever since then I've appreciated having dual slot writing. CF A cards aren't that expensive, you just need one.

My photography sounds much the same as yours & I have never found myself in a situation when my SD card is inadequate.

I bought a CF card primarily to provide a back up card option for photo opportunities that are 'one offs' & I would be devastated lose my shots, i.e. holidays, trips to other places that I am unlikely to return to etc.

In 25 years of digital shooting I have never had a card fail on me but there is always a first time so it seemed common sense to me to use both card slots on the camera as I did (& still do) on my D500. Better safe than sorry?

Whilst it seems unlikely, I also purchased the high speed card just in case I find myself in a situation where it would be a real advantage.

net1994 said:

I don't do any video. My photography is landscape and walk around photography. I don't do birding or sports.* I've been using my SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 mb SD card from my D800 (link here: SanDisk SD Card ).

*I will be shooting the Boston Marathon and have done some practice shooting with runners with Z8 and fast lense at ~20 fps RAW lossless and no jpeg. I'd focus on one runner at a time, do a full burst and then done. The card handles it fine and no slow down. It doesn't seem like I really need to get a CF card. But the shop where I got it said even with my use cases, I should get one, of course!

Can you think of any good reason(s) given the above type of photography it might make sense? Maybe there is a good reason I'm not aware of.

Click to expand...

I used my Z8 for the first few months with a slower SD card than yours and it was fine. The Delkin Pro G4 1TB came on sale at B&H for an intro price of, I think, $99 so I pounced on it and now that is what I use.

If you are comfortable using your SD cards then keep with them. I do suggest you look for deals and eventually move to a CFe card and a fast reader - I have the Delkin SD/CFe reader - because your offload rate will jump from 0.75 images per second to about 8 images per second. Impatient guy that I am, I appreciate that speed.

As backup. I have one CF card that stays in my Z8 for backup. From time to time I'm reformatting it in camera to free space. Otherwise I'm doing everything with UHS II SD cards. They are easier to handle, e.g. slot directly into my MacBook for post processing. Shooting a lot sports with 20 fps. Never encountered a limitation with SD, nor did I ever have a card failure.

net1994 said:

I don't do any video. My photography is landscape and walk around photography. I don't do birding or sports.* I've been using my SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 mb SD card from my D800 (link here: SanDisk SD Card ).

*I will be shooting the Boston Marathon and have done some practice shooting with runners with Z8 and fast lense at ~20 fps RAW lossless and no jpeg. I'd focus on one runner at a time, do a full burst and then done. The card handles it fine and no slow down. It doesn't seem like I really need to get a CF card. But the shop where I got it said even with my use cases, I should get one, of course!

Can you think of any good reason(s) given the above type of photography it might make sense? Maybe there is a good reason I'm not aware of.

Click to expand...

It's really just for the speed. Of course with speed means you can process in volume faster. If you don't need to deal with time nor volume, then it's fine to stick to SD cards.

Canaryfan said:

My photography sounds much the same as yours & I have never found myself in a situation when my SD card is inadequate.

I bought a CF card primarily to provide a back up card option for photo opportunities that are 'one offs' & I would be devastated lose my shots, i.e. holidays, trips to other places that I am unlikely to return to etc.

In 25 years of digital shooting I have never had a card fail on me but there is always a first time so it seemed common sense to me to use both card slots on the camera as I did (& still do) on my D500. Better safe than sorry?

Whilst it seems unlikely, I also purchased the high speed card just in case I find myself in a situation where it would be a real advantage.

Click to expand...

I've never had a SD card fail on me. If I had paid gigs where my income depended on reliability, for sure I would have CF cards. I think in my OP I kind of answered my own question. But with the marathon coming up, I think I could certainly run out of storage. Might be better to just buy a new reliable SD card with high speeds. So many other folks I've asked about all this are horrified I'm not using CF cards.

But MOST important, we haven't had great weather since I got the Z8 and do sort of today. I should probably get off the internet and, you know, actually go out and use my camera lol.

CFe cards are much faster to read and write than a SD card, and arguably more robust.

If you've invested that much money in a Z8, it seems crazy not to spend a little more and get a CFe card.

Not all CFe cards are created equal. I personally use Delkin Black cards in my Z9's and Z6III, but many find that Prograde are also excellent. SanDisk are not so well thought of.

Just saw this on Nikonrumours:

https://nikonrumors.com/2025/04/06/nextorage-and-other-nab-specials-at-bh-photo.aspx/

CFe and SD with large discounts.

As I said before, not all CFe cards are created equal.

I think I'd be wary of a card that has such a low list price. Their higher end cards may be better.

The higher priced 'Pro' cards are on the Nikon list, but not the $9 type.

I've not seen any reports from users of this make of card.

The fact that B&H is selling these hopefully says something about the level of quality.

Chuck Yadmark said:

one time very early in my career a card just flat out died and ever since then I've appreciated having dual slot writing. CF A cards aren't that expensive, you just need one.

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?? I think you meant CFe B (or XQD). Nikon's Z9/Z8/Z6iii use CFe B (not CFe A).

I think once you start using CFe cards (or even XQD) you'll never want to use SD cards again, that's how I feel every time I'm forced into using SD and I only have XQD cards!

net1994 said:

I've never had a SD card fail on me. If I had paid gigs where my income depended on reliability, for sure I would have CF cards. I think in my OP I kind of answered my own question. But with the marathon coming up, I think I could certainly run out of storage. Might be better to just buy a new reliable SD card with high speeds. So many other folks I've asked about all this are horrified I'm not using CF cards.

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While I have never had any XQD/CFexpress Type B card fail, I have had a few SD cards fail. Just a couple of weeks ago, an old SanDisk UHS-2 64G card failed during an event. I was using my Z8 with CFx/SD in the backup mode. I removed the SD card and continued without missing anything.

Over the years, I have had a few SD cards fail and some cracked. I have been using XQD/CFx since the D5 and D500 in 2016. It was then I bought that 280GB/sec SD card, 64G for $100, and it finally failed after about 9 years. Typically I don't keep cards for that long.

net1994 said:

But MOST important, we haven't had great weather since I got the Z8 and do sort of today. I should probably get off the internet and, you know, actually go out and use my camera lol.

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If you don't shoot 20 fps, I would get a 256G, 512G CFexpress card. You don't need the fastest type; just a 2nd-tier ProGrade (gold) or Delkin Power card. That should be well below $200 and perhaps below $150. I would never depend on just one SD card. If you can afford a Z8, I am sure you can afford a CFx card or two.

What have you decided ?

Ive seen your posts on facebook, Reddit and here. Let us know what you decided. If you do get a CFEXPRESS dont buy cheap ones.

madecov said:

What have you decided ?

Ive seen your posts on facebook, Reddit and here. Let us know what you decided. If you do get a CFEXPRESS dont buy cheap ones.

Click to expand...

I just checked one of the well known stores. A 128GB Delkin Power (green) G4 card is $96, a bit below $100. Even 325GB is around $127. Even though they are called G4, those are CFexpress 2.0 cards with a decent sustained write speed of 805MB/sec. I wouldn't use those cards if I am doing 20fps RAW, but for most applications, they are fine. For a Z8 owner, I don't think you need to spend a lot of money to get a very decent CFexpress card or two.

Based on your description it's not necessary, but you may enjoy itit.

I used a lone SD card for a very long time until I needed a second card for backup at paid work. I was just buying the CFE card to have a second card, but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

Now I do shoot sports and wildlife and I was pretty impressed by how much faster I could deal with bursts of shots.

However I was also surprised by how much nicer it was to be able to review even a smaller selection of shots right away without having to wait for the camera to finish writing.

I was also very happily surprised by how much better it felt to have something like 13,000 shots without needing to change my card.

It's not necessary if one isn't shooting these more intensive things, but I would say it is nevertheless worthwhile.

Canaryfan said:

My photography sounds much the same as yours & I have never found myself in a situation when my SD card is inadequate.

I bought a CF card primarily to provide a back up card option for photo opportunities that are 'one offs' & I would be devastated lose my shots, i.e. holidays, trips to other places that I am unlikely to return to etc.

In 25 years of digital shooting I have never had a card fail on me but there is always a first time so it seemed common sense to me to use both card slots on the camera as I did (& still do) on my D500. Better safe than sorry?

Whilst it seems unlikely, I also purchased the high speed card just in case I find myself in a situation where it would be a real advantage.

Click to expand...

I always have a backup card in my camera.

I have seen quite a few SD cards fail and corrupt image files. I see a lot of folks say that these CF Express cards are bullet proof, but they are not.

The first one was in one of my other photographers Canon R5 and I lost an entire day of her work. The card corrupted and I could not recover anything from it. She was not running a backup card. I had a second similar incident with another photographer, but she had backup so not as big of an issue

At this moment I have a card shipping back to Angelbird USA for replacement. This is one of their Pro CF Express cards. No data loss, but was locking up my 78 and also my Z6ii when I tried it in that camera to verify the issue was indeed the card.

So don’t let anyone try to convince you that the cards are 100% reliable.

net1994 said:

I don't do any video. My photography is landscape and walk around photography. I don't do birding or sports.* I've been using my SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 mb SD card from my D800 (link here: SanDisk SD Card ).

*I will be shooting the Boston Marathon and have done some practice shooting with runners with Z8 and fast lense at ~20 fps RAW lossless and no jpeg. I'd focus on one runner at a time, do a full burst and then done. The card handles it fine and no slow down. It doesn't seem like I really need to get a CF card. But the shop where I got it said even with my use cases, I should get one, of course!

Can you think of any good reason(s) given the above type of photography it might make sense? Maybe there is a good reason I'm not aware of.

Click to expand...

If you're shooting any type of things that require burst shooting you're going to want a CFE card. SD will bottleneck the camera especially if you're shooting say more than 10 fps as the buffer on the Z8 is not that large in reality (compared to some other cameras). So the faster your card, the less likely (or the more time) it will take you to fill your buffer.

I would recommend the Delkin Black cards as they are among the fastest and run the coolest. Sandisk should be avoided as they are prone to getting hot and possibly causing a hot card warning (And they can be slower than the compeition).

If you don't want to buy the Delkin Blacks, then my second recommendation would be one of the ProGrade cards (they can be a bit cheaper ,but aren't quite as fast but many people use them). You could get the Cobalt version but they';re expensive, but their regular ProGrade Gold cards should be fast enough. The main thing is you want a card that won't get hot and can write fast enough (I'd say at least around 700-800 MB/s sustained write speed). If you're going to be shooting in HE RAW then you may be able to get away with a bit of a slower card (one in the 400-500 MB/s range perhaps since the file sizes should be smaller).

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