C100: What SD Card?

[Scott Squire]

I'm headed to the field shortly and will need several memory cards. Looking at 64GB. Can anyone share experiences with a card that's known performer with the C100 that also won't break the bank? I'm generally a brand name memory guy, but there's still quite a bit of variation in price, seems like.

[Gary Huff]

AVCHD is pretty small in size, so I think 64GB is overkill. I, personally, feel better about having a bunch of smaller 16GB cards than one big 64GB, given that SD card media, even the good ones, can go bad on you, and I prefer to limit the damage if that happens as much as possible.

I like

Sandisk

 

Sandisk

,

Transcend

 

Transcend

, and

Patriot

 

Patriot

, though my first replacement card I bought for the C100 when I accidentally dismantled my Transcend 16GB card (my fingernail actually slipped through the seam between the front and bottom plastic, opening the card physically) was a

16GB Hoodman Raw

 

16GB Hoodman Raw

.

I decided to go with the expensive Hoodman because they have a good reputation and I wanted something I could count on. Not that I'm going to switch out all my other cards yet, but we'll see how this one works out.

[Darren Levine]

im using a bunch of sandisk 32gb microsd cards with sd adapters. works perfectly. the only issue which seems to be a sandisk thing, is that in dual record mode we've found one slot will stop recording. hopefully will be a firmware fix

[Andy Wilkinson]

Using a bunch of Sandisk Extreme 16GB SDHC cards (Class 10), all bought from a reputable source. No problems at all with dual record with the C100 and these specific types of cards. And they only cost £10-12 area. :-) They also easily handle 1080p50 AVCHD2 at 28Mbps, although sadly that's in my Panasonic TM900, not my C100.

[John Gyovai]

I picked up locally (only option) some 64gb Lexar 400x cards and they seem to work fine. Did a dual record for over an hour with no issues. Starting shoots this weekend, so will see...

[Erik Naso]

I like SanDisk Extreme class 10 and Panasonic brand has also been very solid. Have 8 Panasonic cards that have never failed. I agree with Gary that you shouldn't risk it and spread your media out on several 16gb cards instead of one 64gb.

[John Gyovai]

I did the shoot over the weekend of capturing about 6 hrs of presentations. The schedule was pretty tight so I picked up two 64gb Lexar 400x cards locally and did dual record. No issues during the recording, but when I tried to offload the cards it would go about 40 percent then quit and shut down. I tried both cards and they acted the same way. I could see the clip where they would stop and tried the clip after, but the rest would not transfer either. I could play the cards okay in the camera, so I tried to connect the camera through USB and it transferred fine.

Has anyone had this experience? Could it be the speed of the cards? The 400x is a 20mb write speed. Is this fast enough? I might take these back and go to 32gb cards that are faster. I like the dual record and not having to deal with changing cards, but I don't think I will be shooting a lot of presentations in the future.

Thoughts?

[Erik Naso]

Try copying the entire card in its's native format. The contents folder to you desktop or external drive and see if it works that way. What brand SD card is it?

[John Gyovai]

They are Lexar. I did try to copy the whole folder and it stopped (twice). I tried going into the folder with the clips and just grabbing the ones that did not make it and they would not copy. Copied fine from the camera to the Canon utility program. Weird...

I have another shoot starting Friday and will see how it goes. Makes me a little nervous. Maybe I should bag the bigger cards and go smaller and faster. It just doesn't feel like a card issue? The only thing that might have happened during the break is the camera was turned off, but not while recording. For the rest of the clips to not transfer is funky.

Is everyone reformatting cards at every new use?

[Erik Naso]

Maybe your card reader has issues. If it transfers from the camera then that tells you something. I always reformat the card in the camera. Don't just delete the media from the card. Always better to start fresh.

[Victor Nguyen]

I like Sandisk Extreme Pro which is the fastest SD card that they have.

[John Gyovai]

I tried two different card readers and had same issue. Will see how things go with this weekends shooting.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Victor Nguyen

I like Sandisk Extreme Pro which is the fastest SD card that they have.

Which is shame because most card readers seem to be tied into the USB bus, even internal ones.

This seems like a great solution if you want to use the faster cards for quicker offloading. If anyone has any experience with this, I'd love to hear what they have to say.

[Erik Naso]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

Which is shame because most card readers seem to be tied into the USB bus, even internal ones.

This seems like a great solution if you want to use the faster cards for quicker offloading. If anyone has any experience with this, I'd love to hear what they have to say.

I have this Sonnet reader for my Mac Book Pro. It's fast but I also use a Sata ExpressCard for my raid drive so I end up not using the reader. Life with a laptop.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Erik Naso

I have this Sonnet reader for my Mac Book Pro. It's fast but I also use a Sata ExpressCard for my raid drive so I end up not using the reader. Life with a laptop.

Have you thought about adding the Echo ExpressCard? If you have Thunderbolt (I have the 17" 2011 so I have both Thunderbolt and ExpressCard) then you could run both at the same time.