Sony A7iii Memory Slot Strategies / Workflows?

[Jeffrey J Davis]

All -

Been shooting with A7iii since it was released last year. I have a Sony 128GB UHS-II in Slot 1 and a Sony 256GB UHS-I (class 10 94MB/s) in slot 2.

The thinking when I ordered the cards (never having held the camera in my hand yet), was to buy a big expensive fast card for slot 1 and a bigger less expensive card in slot 2, somehow imagining I would lean on card 1 most of the time, back it up to slot 2 if I filled up card 1 , reformat card 1 and start over.

I shoot RAW+JPG straight to Slot 1, not shooting a lot of video. If I'm on a trip or shooting a lot, I tend to import images to Lightroom (with import backup) and reformat in camera , on a nearly nightly basis. The reality is that I've only maxed out Card 1 a couple of times in the field, and when it happened I didn't really want to waste however long it takes to copy all the contents from Card 1 over to Card 2 and then reformat, so I ended up just pointing the camera to save shots on Card 2.

So if my goal is leveraging the speed of Card 1 as much as possible (I do a fair amount of hi-speed continuous shooting) while having reasonable image security and backup, what are your best practices for memory card workflow?

1. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up then copy over in camera to card 2, then reformat card 1 in camera? (How long does it take to copy 128GB from 1 to 2?)
2. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up and then just change the camera settings to point to card 2 (or leave autoswitch media set to ON)?
3. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up and then just swap the cards (would this in any way confuse the image DB)?

I'm currently practicing option 2, but am open to all inputs and experiences. As mentioned I try to get stuff off the cards and onto backed up hard drives on almost a daily basis.

 

[pollup]

My strategy is very different, and not included in your options: the raw is saved to slot 1 and the jpeg is saved to slot 2, I have a 128gb uhs ii for slot 1, and 64gb uhs i for slot 2 (the jpeg are about 3x smaller in size compared to compressed raws, so I really need ~40gb on slot 2).

If slot 1 fails then I still have the jpeg as backups.

 

[woodyggg]

All -

Been shooting with A7iii since it was released last year. I have a Sony 128GB UHS-II in Slot 1 and a Sony 256GB UHS-I (class 10 94MB/s) in slot 2.

The thinking when I ordered the cards (never having held the camera in my hand yet), was to buy a big expensive fast card for slot 1 and a bigger less expensive card in slot 2, somehow imagining I would lean on card 1 most of the time, back it up to slot 2 if I filled up card 1 , reformat card 1 and start over.

I shoot RAW+JPG straight to Slot 1, not shooting a lot of video. If I'm on a trip or shooting a lot, I tend to import images to Lightroom (with import backup) and reformat in camera , on a nearly nightly basis. The reality is that I've only maxed out Card 1 a couple of times in the field, and when it happened I didn't really want to waste however long it takes to copy all the contents from Card 1 over to Card 2 and then reformat, so I ended up just pointing the camera to save shots on Card 2.

So if my goal is leveraging the speed of Card 1 as much as possible (I do a fair amount of hi-speed continuous shooting) while having reasonable image security and backup, what are your best practices for memory card workflow?

1. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up then copy over in camera to card 2, then reformat card 1 in camera? (How long does it take to copy 128GB from 1 to 2?)
2. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up and then just change the camera settings to point to card 2 (or leave autoswitch media set to ON)?
3. Shoot to card 1 until it fills up and then just swap the cards (would this in any way confuse the image DB)?

I'm currently practicing option 2, but am open to all inputs and experiences. As mentioned I try to get stuff off the cards and onto backed up hard drives on almost a daily basis.

Love having redundancy... I put all to both cards.

 

[Hawkmooon]

My strategy is very different, and not included in your options: the raw is saved to slot 1 and the jpeg is saved to slot 2, I have a 128gb uhs ii for slot 1, and 64gb uhs i for slot 2 (the jpeg are about 3x smaller in size compared to compressed raws, so I really need ~40gb on slot 2).

If slot 1 fails then I still have the jpeg as backups.

I do this as well. So far I haven't had to ever use the backup JPGs but it's nice to know that they're there.

Also, I figure that if I ever max out the RAW card before I can copy them to a computer (hasn't happened yet) then I could choose to spill over onto the JPEG card (and potentially delete the JPEGs if I needed to make room).

 

[DmitryA7III]

Hello everyone, this may be my first post here. Is there an explanation to why Sony didn't just built in 2 identical fastest card slots?? I came from Fuji X and Nikon, both systems have 2 fast slots for years... hope to learn from you, guys. TX!

 

[adventure_photo]

I think the best solution is to just shoot to both cards redundantly during capture. I suspect the difference in card speed is not going to make that much of a difference for 95% of the time and subjects photographed. The buffer is deep and personally I have never buffered out not able to shoot photos. Plus I like having the redundancy in camera at time of capture. Especially for travel because you can get smaller less expensive cards like 64gb and just keep one of the two cards as a master backup that is not formatted until arriving back from traveling.

 

[Jeffrey J Davis]

Thanks . One thing I learned researching this behavior is that dropping RAW on 1 card and JPG on another FORCES you to shoot RAW or RAW+JPG all the time.

i.e. (you couldn't do an in-camera HDR JPG or any of the Picture Effect modes which are JPG only options.) Probably this does not matter to you, but I occasionally do shoot an in-camera JPG.

 

[Jeffrey J Davis]

I think the best solution is to just shoot to both cards redundantly during capture. I suspect the difference in card speed is not going to make that much of a difference for 95% of the time and subjects photographed.

Thank you, this is the way I am proceeding. I have changed the setting to shoot simultaneous (for Stills only) and have kept Auto-Switch media on.

While shooting 2 RAWs and 2 JPGS simultaneously for each shot seems like it would slow down the camera, I guess in practice the DEEP buffer prevents that from really being an issue.

I guess if I ever got into a situation where I was bottoming out the buffer, I could temporarily turn off redundant saving to card 2.