Much like a hammer for a carpenter; if you’re a video shooter or photographer, you would know how essential memory cards are to your craft. They’re those
pieces of gear that often go overlooked just because of how basic they are. You put it in your camera and almost forget about it till it’s time to transfer all the footage you’ve shot.
For something this important, you’d want to make sure that it works reliably and consistently. But sometimes it doesn’t. Some of us have been plagued with memory card failures, lost footage, capacities that are too small for what we’re shooting, or even too slow to process what the camera is recording. None of which are good, especially if you do professional work in that field. Read on below for a few things you should keep an eye out for when shopping for memory cards.
Speed
Read & Write speeds are just as important in SD cards as they are in hard drives. Assuming that you’re shooting at least 1080p video at 24 or 30fps: a card classed as V30, UHS-I and with a read speed of 95 MB/s will be much more than capable for your needs. And if you decide to shoot in 4K at 100mbps these cards will be fine as well.
Capacity
Opinions will vary widely when it comes to what capacity you should get. Some will swear by buying one huge capacity SD card and use it solely. On the other hand, some prefer multiple small capacity cards to shoot on with the others being used as backups in case one card crashes. Which route you decide to take is up to you. But as with anything else, knowing your needs should come before making a decision. If you plan on shooting lengthy conference meetings, weddings and the like, larger cards would be the way to go… having multiple wouldn’t be a bad idea either. If you’re shooting a few short clips to put together a highlight reel, you may not want to invest in one 256GB card.
Brand
Not every memory card is created equal despite having similar sizes, speeds and more. Some SD card brands have developed a reputation for being reliable, which is what you want. Brand names like SanDisk, Lexmark, Lexar and Angelbird are a few of those that you should look out for. Other brands like Transcend or Sony aren’t bad but they’re not as popular, so therefore their reliability may still be in question.
Carrying out more research on what your camera needs in a memory card is advised too, but for now, these are the basics to get you started.
