SD Card Advice

[jmurph]

Hey guys, Ive just brought a Canon 90D for mainly macro/wildlife shots & am just looking for SD card advice. Ive searched online but theres obviously a load of different opinions. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

[ameerat42]

One with capacity, and "speed". It has to match the capabilities of your camera:
large raw files, 11 fps continuous shooting, 4k video at 30p...

I did a bit of a search last year, and put the results here, though I never got around
to getting any other card (as I just don't use the 4k video function).

--And, of course, get more than one.

[ricktas]

if you plan on shooting in RAW get a card that offers fastest read/write speeds. Cameras have a memory buffer for when you shoot several frames one after the other, but once that buffer fills, the camera will not take another photo until it can transfer the images in the buffer to the memory card. So a fast card helps with that.

Get a reasonable sized card, the highest storage capacity you can afford, or get 2-3 cards, so you can swap them in and out as needed.

Be very careful buying off ebay. Many cards on ebay have found to be not up to the speed and size noted, and there have been issues in the past with fake cards. Cheap ebay cards that are shipped from China, Hong Kong etc are often not what they appear. You are better off buying locally from a local camera shop, officeworks etc as you will get the real thing.

Having said all this, cards will fail. They wear out, or just stop working. Whilst not common, there are enough members on AP that have experienced a card failure that having more than one, is a great idea. Nothing worse than being 2 hours from home, card fails and you do not have another one. Oh actually there is one thing worse, you are two hours from home, get the camera out and it won't work, because the camera battery is still on the charger, at home.

[arthurking83]

Rick and Am made good points. Have at least two cards, they can get corrupted.
eg. say you want a 64Gb card, you're better to get 2x32G cards instead.
If one becomes corrupted while you're out and about, at least the other still works.
another example is that say you already shot a lot of images.
If you had one card and it became corrupted(or lost .. unlikely but never know) you could lose all the images already captured. If you have two cards there is less chance to lose more files.

As to which card. Realistically makes little difference nowadays.
I'd say budget between $60 - $100 for two cards.

From a quick poke about the net here's a couple of recommendations available from Scorptec.


Sandisk 32G card

Sandisk 64G card $59 other card for $39

All three of those cards will come close to max out the performance ability of your 90D.
Although in saying that you can get more performance than they allow. But this costs more.
If you want faster, top speed gear, then look for the more expensive UHS-II versions of SD cards.
So then it's up to you, do you have (say) a $100 budget for two cards, approx 64G each, or do you allow yourself $200 budget for 2 x 32Gb UHS-II cards just to save yourself a few seconds of wait time every so often.

So, now you're thinking .. "awesome! .. I want the fastest cards" .. and yeah they can be capable of 200Mb/s transfer rates and whatnot from card to computer .. etc, etc. But do you have the right computer gear to get this?
If not, then wasted! If you have a current card reader on your computer, then it's almost certainly not 200Mb/s capable. And just because the card is, doesn't mean that you get that speed all the time.

From what I can find, the 90D seems to be caapble of about 100Mb/s if you use a UHS-II type card, and about 70(ish)Mb/s using the UHS-I type card.
So, if you find a UHS-I card that says it does 170Mb/s, then that will be in ideal conditions on specific hardware using software you never heard of. ie. don't expect that.

My personal suggestion would be this Lexar 32G UHS-II from cheapchips.
Half decent price, and you get a usable card reader.
Get two, so you get two card readers. Keep one at home, keep one in the bag with the camera .. you never know!
FWIW those Lexar 2000x cards seem to work pretty well as good as any other card that is easily obtainable in Aus.
It's slightly cheaper than the SanDisk 300Mb/s USH-II card, you get a bonus card reader, and it's slightly faster in the camera(although this metric is not worth mentioning as it's about 0.1% better .. ie. same!)

[Mary Anne]

Agree with Arthur about size though I only buy 64GB cards now And the camera RAW images are getting larger.
Though 32GB cards would be ample for what you need.

My cards were all very fast, the latest 2 years back overkill I know at 250 MB/s as I dont shoot video and the old Desktop computer is still going strong
Only shoot with Lexar now and when they are not available anymore I will switch to Sony.

One to look at. https://canoncamerarumors.com/best-m...canon-eos-90d/

[Tannin]

Check local, yes, but watch out for price gouging. Australian brick and mortar shops can be very dear for flash cards.

For best quality and value, I recommend buying on-line - but not, repeat not from Ebay. Go to B&H, the largest camera shop in the world. They are based in New York and provide an excellent mail order service. They have a larger range than anywhere else I have come across, only sell genuine products, and offer excellent prices. Freight cost is the thing to watch. If you are buying one single item at a time, it's generally better to try locally. I used to like Cheap Chips, but although their name hasn't changed, this last year or two their prices have. Overall, provided that you can find two or three things to buy at one time (maybe two flash cards, a card reader, and a filter or accessory), I find B&H by far the best. But, as always, DYOR.

Flash cards vary on several dimensions.

Speed. Ultimate speed is for people with more money than sense. But one or two steps back from the top is usually quite affordable. If you only shoot single frames, you don't need a fast card. (Though speed never does any harm.) Speed matters where you shoot bursts in rapid succession - anything that involves action photography, such as sport, motor racing, birds in flight, kids playing with your dog - there are lots of examples. This is least demanding if you shoot JPG only, more demanding if you shoot raw, and very demanding if you shoot both (raw + JPG).

Quality. This varies with the brand, and varies across the range. Sandisk is the biggest name and often makes good stuff but is generally overpriced. Lexar is superior, in my view, and I'd say the same about one or two others. Sony's cards are well made but can have compatibility problems. (I don't know what it is about Sony, failure to test properly for interoperation with other companies' products is a long tradition - their CD and DVD drives were always a bit weird back in the days when I was a computer tech.) Delkin is another company which makes good stuff. Transcend is in the second rank, you could certainly do worse. However variation within brands is very high. A cheap, slow Sandisk, for example, is not nearly as good as a medium-good Transcend. In broad, you get what you pay for.

Capacity: look for the best value per MB of storage, but don't go silly buying huge cards you won't ever fill.

Oh, and look out for a good reader-card bundle. You will need a good reader anyway, and this can work out well.

[ameerat42]

Picking up on this point...

...Oh, and look out for a good reader-card bundle. You will need a good reader anyway, and this can work out well.

I must stress this: make it a USB3 card reader!

Once upon a trip I forgot to bring my USB3 card reader! and
It meant that each evening I had to wait about 15 mins to download the day's pics from a
direct (mere USB2) connection to the camera. Yes, USB3 is about 15X~20X faster than USB2
for this.

And then also, make sure that as you build up your number of photos, you have some means
of external storage and backup. A couple of USB3 external drives would be the basic go here.
There's one thing that's worse than slow transfer speed: irretrievable data loss!

[arthurking83]

Just to add a bit more info to the last three replies.

Speed: what the cards says and what you may get are going to be totally different things.
eg. a 300Mb/s card won't get 300Mb/s in the camera. Just the way it is.
Then you can have two cards that both do 300Mb/s, and the camera may transfer at 100Mb/s(to the card) but not every card will do this 100Mb/s either. Some more, some a bit less.
So base you choice on value for money .. why I recommended the Lexar + card reader link.

Another car brand worth searching for for your 90D is Adata. I have two very old, very heavily used Adata cards, my two longest serving cards and if they weren't 1 and 2 Gb in size, still be in use. Adata have a nice UHS-II card that tested well too.

What Am said: USB3 connection from card reader to PC is very handy. Not all USB3 computer ports are made equal. Some only barely faster than some USB2 ports. If you have any issues down the road with this, just post about it.
Otherwise you should get a minimum of 100MB/s from card to a high quality hard drive. And again, not all hard drives were created equal too, so YMMV in that sense.
But the difference between specific hardware can be enormous on the card to computer side of things.

Of course you need to give yourself a rough budget, and as you haven't done so, and our idea of a half decent budget to work with(mine of about $100) may not work for you. No problem!
As said earlier, nothing wrong with just getting one from Officeworks for $20-30 and be done with it and just use that card(eg. Sandisk UHS-I 90Mb/s card) and just use the camera as the card reader.

[ameerat42]

-- And for every "Mb/s" that AK wrote read instead MB/s.

The first is Megabits/sec, and the last is MegaBytes.

The B is 8 times bigger than the "b"

[Tannin]

(a) Using the camera as a card reader
(b) Ants in the honey
(c) Sand in your undies.

Pick any one.

Personally, I'd take (c) or maybe (b).

[jmurph]

Thanks heaps for the replies guys, as always great info.

[arthurking83]

(a) Using the camera as a card reader
(b) Ants in the honey
(c) Sand in your undies.

Pick any one.

Personally, I'd take (c) or maybe (b).

Last weekend I had to throw out the bottle of sugar err, I mean .. honey! due to ants
Sand! .. yuk!

as for (a) .. sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, and if your choice is either one of those cheapo built in SD card readers, or an old USB2 card reader, then most modern cameras appear to do better as card reader.

Old(now very very old) D300 is very slow. about the same as a cheap Acer USB2 card reader.
D800E, still old, just old, not as very as the D300 tho .. much faster as a reader than the Acer USB2 card reader.

On my old PC I got a multimedia card reader, did many various card types, and it had some fan control for the PC too. Handy. But compared to the D800E useless as a card reader.
I usually recycle parts from one PC to the next, but this card reader/fan control add in thing didn't make it across to the current PC.
I got one of those flip up Lexar(USB and CF) card readers that hang off a USB3 cable.

More important is that JM gets as much info to make a more informed decision, and not get bits and pieces that ultimately don't do as good a job as they otherwise could.

as an example scenario:
JM walks into Officeworks, finds a semi decent (UHS-I) SD card for camera, it does the job. From my searching these cards do approx 80MB/s(sorry AM, you're right on too!) so in the camera the card works pretty good. I also found that the 90D can do 100MB/s so a better card will do better, but will he find that useful in some way?(for the cameras performance).
That's up to JM to decide.
Now, images need to come off card onto computer:
JM sees a $15 card reader, almost certain to be of rubbish capability and images will transfer to computer at about 15MB/s or so .. maybe 20-25MB/s max, but don't count on it. A good USB3(or better, USB-C) card reader will do much better. As they say .. 4-5x better.

On my PC, my D800E does about 60-ish MB/s as a card reader(depends on card too).
My Lexar flippy thing, can do 100MB/s with one specific card(Patriot) and about 80-85MB/s with my Lexar card. A lot less with any of my older gen Sandisk cards, and you'd expect that with older gen hardware.

The difference is: if I use the old Acer card reader(which I don't) or in the old days I used the add in card reader/fan control combo thingie, it'd take a long time to transfer 30(or so) gigs of image files from the D800E.
Using the camera as the reader made that a few minutes(maybe 10). So, in effect the handy card reader I built into my PC was useless. Used camera until I got the Lexar one.

[ameerat42]

AK. One [SALIENT] reason for your D800E to xfer FASTer than [some other things] is that it has a
USB3 port

[arthurking83]

AK. One [SALIENT] reason for your D800E to xfer FASTer than [some other things] is that it has a
USB3 port

Yes!
And the important point about this ... as I already said earlier in my long arduous diatribes ... not all USB3 ports are created equal.
(remember my other posts about that horrendous docking station?)

So D800E is USB3, but as a card reader it's slower(about 50ish %) than the Lexar card reader.
But still 4-5 times faster than the built in card reader I used to have in old PC.

To note USB-C is overall the better connection type, and from trying to find more info on all the various chips available, there doesn't appear to be any horrendous chips out there that cause issues(like in my docking station)
If JM has a computer with USB-C, this is the better connection type to go with, both in terms of speed but also in terms of futureproofing.
Also handy if at any point JM may ever wanted connectivity to a phone/tablet/fridge/dishwasher/etc too .

[jmurph]

Im looking at getting 1-2 Sandisk Extreme Pro's UHS-11 300MB/s 32GB. They are currently $99 [Moderation: store name removed per site rules re new users].

[arthurking83]

Im looking at getting 1-2 Sandisk Extreme Pro's UHS-11 300MB/s 32GB. They are currently $99 at ...

decent price.

What card reader, if you have one?
What computer specs(Win or Mac), make/model, etc. Do you have?

Do you have good computer/parts knowledge and/or experience?