I HATE MICRO SD CARDS...DO YOU?

Pistnbroke

Now the word is that dual card slots means adding a Micro SD slot. Personally I have never had any success with Micro SD whatever brand I use . These seem to be the most faked item on the planet.
Anyone have any long lived Micro SD and if so what Brand ?

retread

The only micro sd card I have is in my phone. Don't touch it. I don't want one in a camera just because they are too small to handle and easy to loose.

mhedges

Totally agree. They are terrible. Super flimsy, so easy to lose. They will slow your camera down compared to just using the XQD. And yes there are fakes everywhere. I have bought 3 micro SD cards and one was fake (or defective, not sure).

I don't consider the addition to be a value add at all. I would almost certainly just stick with XQD only.

ggbutcher

I use them in tablets and phones because none of these devices seem to come with a SATA port for a hard drive... They're a bit slow for access (even the so-called high speed devices), but to me better that than relying on the internal device media...

I've had failures with them in writing Raspberry Pi disk images, but not in normal subsequent use. They are a PITA to handle; I think I've picked larger things out from between my teeth than these...

Pistnbroke

It seems strange to match the best (QXD ) with the worst (micro SD) in a camera maybe if its a Z3 the owner will not even take out the card but for a Z9 which is the proposal it seems strange. XQD +micro SD is what I reading for the Z dual card models.

mhedges

I read that as only being for the lower end Z, and any Z9 type camera would have dual XQD/ CFe

PB_PM

I have a bunch of micro SD cards, other than one that was dead on arrival they have been fine. All of the cards are used in continuous loop recording video cameras, that run at least 1 hour a day. I have Lexar, which you cannot get anymore of course, Sandisk, and A-Data, at this point. Most are 32GB, and a few 64GB cards. Some are 3 years old and still going strong.

Are they small and a pain to use? Yeah, not my favorite card format, but smaller devices need smaller storage, no way around it without being forced to use cloud LTE based storage, which would be an endless money pit.

trolley

I have tw0 32Gb Lexar SD cards, used as in-camera ((D800) backups (in an adaptor).
Never had a problem. But I haven't used them much, except for a few videos & a raft of photos, presumably when my CF card was full & I didn't notice
Now residing in my D850 for the same purpose

NSXTypeR

As PB_PM said, I also am not a big fan of them as they're too small to be easily removed and replaced. Space is at a premium however, and I understand why they went with it. I think it's not really for storage you remove frequently, it's more for dashcams and phone external storage mostly.
I just put a 64 gig card in a new dashcam.

mhedges

Right - they are terrible for applications where you have to take them in and out all the time.

Maybe Nikon figures folks will just connect via USB and not use a card reader? Or use WiFi?

NSXTypeR

mhedges said:

Right - they are terrible for applications where you have to take them in and out all the time.

Maybe Nikon figures folks will just connect via USB and not use a card reader? Or use WiFi?

I'm kind of curious, what happened to WiFi enabled SD cards like EyeFi? How come I don't see them being used as frequently as in years past?

MicroSD cards are super finicky. I was removing a microSD card from my dashcam and the tab on the MicroSD card was so small I couldn't get it out because I had just cut my nails.

donaldejose

REMOVABLE media must be finger friendly so it can actually be removed and reinserted easily. MicroSD cards are not finger friendly; they are too small. The SD card is the smallest form factor which is finger friendly.

sport

I use micro SD on my GoPro cameras and have not had any reliability issues. All the main action cameras use them and I haven't heard of any major issues with them. I see the small size as an asset, getting two memory cards to fit where one SD card was before is a plus. That is especially true when everyone is bemoaning about only having one card slot.

The one thing that I always do with mine is put them in a SD adapter right away when I take them out of a GoPro. It makes keeping track of them the same as my photo cards. Once I get my camera back from Nikon repair I will try using them in the D750 to see how they work out. It would be nice to have one type of card that works in both rigs.

mhedges

sport said:

I use micro SD on my GoPro cameras and have not had any reliability issues. All the main action cameras use them and I haven't heard of any major issues with them. I see the small size as an asset, getting two memory cards to fit where one SD card was before is a plus. That is especially true when everyone is bemoaning about only having one card slot.

The one thing that I always do with mine is put them in a SD adapter right away when I take them out of a GoPro. It makes keeping track of them the same as my photo cards. Once I get my camera back from Nikon repair I will try using them in the D750 to see how they work out. It would be nice to have one type of card that works in both rigs.

I used micro SD cards in an adapter in my D5500. They worked fine except for the one bad card (likely counterfeit) I mentioned above. I still don't like them for ILC though. I think they are fine for applications where they are basically used as a small SSD, like on phones or other handheld devices. I don't think they are a good solution for cases when you have to take them in and out a lot. You haven't had any trouble with them bending?

sport

I have not had any issues with micro SD cards. With the Hero 6 I expect to have a broken one at some point but so far so good. On my raspberry pi devices I swap them out all the time and haven't had any issues there either.

FreezeAction

donaldejose said:

REMOVABLE media must be finger friendly so it can actually be removed and reinserted easily. MicroSD cards are not finger friendly; they are too small. The SD card is the smallest form factor which is finger friendly.

That's why I like XQD even better.

NSXTypeR

FreezeAction said:

donaldejose said:

REMOVABLE media must be finger friendly so it can actually be removed and reinserted easily. MicroSD cards are not finger friendly; they are too small. The SD card is the smallest form factor which is finger friendly.

That's why I like XQD even better.

It still boggles my mind that so few cameras use the XQD format. Seems like a slam dunk common sense decision to make.

FreezeAction

NSXTypeR said:

FreezeAction said:

donaldejose said:

REMOVABLE media must be finger friendly so it can actually be removed and reinserted easily. MicroSD cards are not finger friendly; they are too small. The SD card is the smallest form factor which is finger friendly.

That's why I like XQD even better.

It still boggles my mind that so few cameras use the XQD format. Seems like a slam dunk common sense decision to make.

And is there not a faster yet card coming that has the same contacts as an XQD card? Memory is vague but not long back there was speculation that Nikon would possibly update their XQD models to utilize it if memory hasn't entirely gone on the blink. I have only filled a D500 buffer maybe 3 times and it didn't make a difference because Murphy was on vacation.

I dug deep enough to verify CFexpress and XQD share the same form factor. So Speed, some larger but more rugged perhaps than SD, and much better than the larger CF cards. I am sure they will come at a price but as image size increases two of those will not break the bank and at least my fingers can hold on to them.

tc88

NSXTypeR said:

It still boggles my mind that so few cameras use the XQD format. Seems like a slam dunk common sense decision to make.

Value proposition. I just checked on Amazon. A 256gb Sandisk Extreme Pro SD costs $69. A 240gb Sony XQD costs $383. If this gap does not narrow significantly, the XQD will never have a future.

donaldejose

And if more cameras used it the price would drop because of economies of scale. But actually XQD is a "transition technology" now. It will be replaced soon by CFexpress. We may well see more manufacturers adopt CFexpress because it will make the buffer size relatively irrelevant.

mhedges

tc88 said:

Value proposition. I just checked on Amazon. A 256gb Sandisk Extreme Pro SD costs $69. A 240gb Sony XQD costs $383. If this gap does not narrow significantly, the XQD will never have a future.

That's part of it, sure. Although not many folks really need or should use cards that big. It's too many eggs in one basket for stills, and for serious video most folks use external recorders.

The prices for the more typical sized cards aren't too bad. I think I got my 64 gb card off ebay (damaged box) for about $100, and got my 120 card when B&H was having that sale a while back for about $150. To me considering the performance those prices were worth it, but that's also with some shopping around hassle which a lot of people don't want to deal with.

donaldejose said:

And if more cameras used it the price would drop because of economies of scale. But actually XQD is a "transition technology" now. It will be replaced soon by CFexpress. We may well see more manufacturers adopt CFexpress because it will make the buffer size relatively irrelevant.

I would say XQD is already partially there when it comes to making buffer size irrelevant. The Z's have small buffers, but it is pretty hard to overflow them, especially on the Z6.

There is lots of talk that CFexpress will bring prices down, and I'm sure they will eventually, but I think they will always be a little more expensive than SD, and probably about the same price as XQD at first.

tc88

It's a chicken and egg problem for XQD. The price is high so not many people want to buy it. Since the volume is then low, the price stays high. Several years ago, we all thought the price gap would have reduced by now, but it hasn't happened. And if history is any indication of future, it's not going to happen in the future.

So I think the camera makers other than Nikon made the right decision. Had Z6 comes with 2 SD slots instead, I think it will be acceptable to a much wider audience and the sale will be higher.

donaldejose

"Had Z6 comes with 2 SD slots instead, I think it will be acceptable to a much wider audience and the sale will be higher." Lots of people think that. Certainly, the single card complaint would not have existed but it there also would be a complaint of slow buffer clearing speed. I think we really need to wait for a final judgment on Nikon's choice of media card until after the CFexpress card and software conversion is out. Remember, XQD can be changed to CFexpress but SD cannot be changed to anything.
The Z bodies are not yet "completed" cameras. Nikon added free eye AF and will add CFexpress software. About a year from now with a few more software updates the Z bodies will be completed and then we can judge Nikon's choices more accurately. I suspect at that time people will be praising Nikon's forward thinking in equipping the Z bodies with XQD rather than SD removable media. Meanwhile, we can expect that all these updates and more will be included in the Z8 or Z9 body. That will be the "complete package" Z body most of us will want. So I am expecting the Z body line will get much more praise by this time next year.

mhedges

It is a chicken and egg problem for sure. The introduction of CFexpress is similar. There are no cards out there because there are no cameras using it yet. The camera makers say they can't release the firmware updates without cards to work with.

As far as the Z's I think they made the right choice. These are supposed to be modern high end systems. Using crappy (in comparison) SD would have reduced performance, and required them to spend more money on buffers.

tc88

The issue with single XQD slot is that whoever buys XQD, money is less a concern. So they want absolute top end which means dual slots. So having a single XQD slot is in a no man's land. It does not cater to the money is no concern crowd, it does not cater to the value proposition population either.

So my take is that if it's XQD, it must be in a 2 slot configuration. If it's a single slot, it should be SD.

To say Nikon made the right memory choice for Z is like saying all other camera makers made the wrong memory choice since they all made the opposite decision, including the A9. I would think otherwise.

mhedges

Technically speaking single XQD slot makes much more sense than single SD though. Like, I can't see how you could sell a $2300 camera like the EOS R and give it single SD. SD sucks.

As far as Sony themselves not using XQD - I agree it doesn't speak well for the format. I think the reason they went with it was that they were doing everything they could to lower the entry barrier into their system. Nikon decided otherwise, and maybe they figured some of their users would already have XQD from the D500 and D850.