The problem with the new Nikon and Canon

Danno

Senior Member
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they went to one card in the mirrorless Nikon cameras or the D7500 for that matter. It makes no sense to me and here is that example that will linger in your mind when you consider the purchase.

I have a D700 that I love and it has only one card, but it is old tech and I do recognize the risk. I also do not make a living with my camera. Even so it does bug me a bit and I do think about it as I save for that coming upgrade.

Thanks for sharing @mikew
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they went to one card in the mirrorless Nikon cameras or the D7500 for that matter. It makes no sense to me and here is that example that will linger in your mind when you consider the purchase.

I have a D700 that I love and it has only one card, but it is old tech and I do recognize the risk. I also do not make a living with my camera. Even so it does bug me a bit and I do think about it as I save for that coming upgrade.

Thanks for sharing @mikew

I put it down to marketing ie making you buy the camera the manufacturer wants you to buy, if the D7500 had not had the omissions then it could have taken D500 sales, if Nikon and Canon only put one card slot in the current mirrorless cameras it protects the sales of the top end DSLRs, some will not agree but thats IMO.
 

Danno

Senior Member
I put it down to marketing ie making you buy the camera the manufacturer wants you to buy, if the D7500 had not had the omissions then it could have taken D500 sales, if Nikon and Canon only put one card slot in the current mirrorless cameras it protects the sales of the top end DSLRs, some will not agree but thats IMO.

You are probably right Mike. Differentiation is one of those things that Product Development does to try not to erode existing product markets. That is part of what I did for a living in the old days, but this one seems like taking a steady aim and blowing your foot off. If feels like they could have chosen something else.
 

Dawg Pics

Senior Member
2 cards isn't a deal-breaker for me on any camera. I lived with one for years and never needed the second, but it is nice to have the second slot. You can leave a card in it in case you forget the other.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I have no real opinion here, just a point of reference on a single card. Here's what Joe McNally said about the single card in the Z7:
Regarding single card - They screen captured McNally's opinion:



For the benefit of clarity for those that do not know he is a Nikon ambassador,so his opinion may not be 100% unbiased :D if i got from Nikon what he gets i would defend any thing.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/ideas-and-inspiration/joe-mcnally.html
 

Ad B

Senior Member
Hi,

Everybody took that "risk" in the past. Sending rolls of Kodachrome away.
We did it, without thinking: I don't have a back-up...
Everybody, with any Digital camera had óne CF, SD or whatever card in his/her camera.
So it doesn't matter if Joe McNally is a Nikon ambassador... Everybody had to deal with that "problem".
Okay, it's nicer to have two cards in your cam, like I have in my D850.
The XQD for the Nefs, the SD for the JPGs as a back-up.
In the nearly 20 years of my digital photography history, I never had a failure with memory cards. Never...
Two cards is a luxery, not a must.
In a perfect camera, it wouldn't stop me...
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
In reference to Joe McNally's comment about all the rolls of film, really old cameras, the full manual ones didn't have anywhere near the bells and whistles of today's bodies. They were mechanical, not digital. One thing I liked about those bodies is there weren't nearly as many things that could possibly get broken like we have on the latest models.

Sure you could still lose your film when sending it out, but his comment really isn't about the same thing. Having a card fail to write is a problem with the gear. Losing film in the mail didn't have anything to do with the gear. But with the advancements of today's equipment and all the electronic bells and whistles, it is much safer to have the backup of a second slot in my humble opinion.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Having one card on something like a wedding when you could use a body that takes two to me shows a lack of respect for the customer, yes in the film days it was the only way you could work,any self respecting photographer though would take a spare camera and lens, why because anything can fail. My wife used to take a spare camera and she was using Hasselblad, any thing can fail, you can't cover for everything but surely you cover for what you can.
 

Danno

Senior Member
I like the two cards. Given the fact that it has been available for several years now I can see no acceptable reason to delete it.

Every time I think about this subject I am reminded of a friend that was married in the mid-1950s. She and her husband renewed asked me to take photos when they renewed their vows for a very simple ceremony and I agreed.

When I was done and handed over the photos they were very thankful. They also shared a story with me. They explained that they had no photos of their original wedding because of the photographer. He claimed some strange excuse about the film and camera. They were very happy to have these photos.

I kind of took the two cards for granted and was thankful for them. Now Nikon keeps omitting them. It simply looks like a cost reduction to me and/or something to keep the D850 and 500 viable.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
I totally agree with Dan, Nikon omitted the second card on the D7500 mainly so the D7500 would not cut into the D500 sales. And yes, I shot for many years without the two card backup benefit with both film and digital, but now that I have had the advantage of it, I don't ever want to go back.
 

Daz

Senior Member
The thing mostly to remember here is they are using PRE PRODUCTION cameras and thinking that they are going to perform like the release version, they did the SAME with the Nikon Z7 ... They are click baiters. Whatever they say about the Canon rep, I spoke to a Canon person that said there will be an update before the release ...

Nikon have got around this, they have given the camera its own processor to offload the files, they are also using a better and beefier card.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
The Youtube Gurus and 1-slot crying looks pretty silly to me. The one making a big deal are not pro photographers but are claiming to speak for them. Two points need to be kept in mind:
1. These Youtube photo gurus have a strong incentive you to to not consider the Nikon. Their income is from affiliate links and kickbacks from stores and in some cases, manufacturers. They lose income if you do not buy now, from their website/channel. If you decide on waiting a couple months they might not get the referral, so they only want to push what is in-stock now. Sony is well known for direct support of a few of these gurus since giving them a few thousand a month to hype the cameras they save hundreds of thousands a month on ads in the conventional web, Google, FB and print promotion.

2. They are intentionally distorting the case or are ignorant of the tech involved. Notice that "slots" are generic and not mentioning the fact that it is NOT a cheap consumer grade of media. They know everyone will buy the argument because slot means SD for 90%.

SD was designed as a very low-cost alternative to parallel bus CF cards and memory sticks. They were designed to be cheap enough to use in low-end consumer products and were never considered for pro applications. Why? Their serial interface is too fragile and it is not fault-tolerant. Everyone who has taken lots of photos knows that they are fragile mechanically and electronically. Everyone has 1 or many fail;. I have lost data on a number of them. Several manufacturers got together and proposed developing a card system designed from day 1 to be pro-grade, reliable, fault tolerant, rugged and rugged. The result was the XQD card. It has many advantages and a big disadvantage. The disadvantage is that they are expensive to make and buy, plus they are so reliable the sales volume will be lower than for SD cards which generate sales due to needing more for backup.

The card is really a system, a new data buss, new socket and more advanced interface chipsets. The result has been quite successful in meeting the design goals. Sony was one of the main developers and their MTBF rating on it is very long, and they use it on their pro products such as $50,000 cameras and controllers. It is too expensive to put in their consumer grade cameras, such as the relatively low cost a7 series that was designed to a price point. They also left out weather sealing and rugged construction suggesting that they will eventually come out with a pro line of cameras.
Reliable? As the main maker of XQD Sony says they have had 1 card fail, out of millions sold. That confirms the Mean Time Between Failure figures they were quoting before it was available for sale.
The odds of an XQD card failing with loss of data is lower than 2 SD cards!
I have been a moderator(inactive now) of the largest Nikon community and we did a survey asking people how they used their 2 slots on the cameras that had two. The vast majority of respondents reply Slot 1 NEF slot2 JPG. Few used the #2 slot for mirroring. More used it for overflow than mirroring. So when I read all the angst over 1 slot because "no pro can work without 2 slots for backup" I knew it was a bogus argument. Many of these reports were working pros.

The XQD has some real advantages for other camera function also. Remember when the "pro" Sony a9 came out, with 2 SD slots as Sony's only camera with 2 slots, it was promoted as a sports/action/BIF camera for the pros. One thing that they did not mention was if you filled the buffer, the camera was dead for up to 2 minutes that was required to clear the buffer into slow SD cards.
Others complained the Z was not pro, another Deal Breaker, because of the small buffer. It IS small, but since the bus and card is so fast(and can be partitioned) it clears the 47Mpx raw images in 1 second. That means if you were using burst mode, the longest time for dead time is 1 second. If you shot 1 less shot than full buffer, it will clear before you ever run out.
But all this assumes cards are the future for pro serious work. That clearly is not the trend and only Nikon addressed that in any of the new offerings on the market. They, rightly I believe, think pros and advanced amateurs alike with use RF links directly to storage devices, editing computers, networks etc. The built-in WiFi can deliver JPGs in almost real time but for pros, Nikon has the WT-7 adaptor that attached to the bottom of the camera and gives dual band 1Gigabit per second data transfer with error correction, to receivers within 660feet!. Need more backup? Bring 2-3, 12 laptops or a network drive and have real-time file transfers to a slide show computer(for events and weddings for example) or for commercial shoots using large monitors for the art director and as many as others need to monitor the progress. Or send the files to 1 or more editing workstations to finished image files are ready before the session is even finished....no card sessions.
Just a few years ago the debate between whether 3.5inch floppies were more reliable than 5.25 inch. That argument was the same as if the future was never to see thumb drives, (100 times faster and 1000 times more capacity or $3) or wireless networks. Who would refuse to buy a computer today that had only 1 floppy drive? For most its "floppy, what is that?" Nikon is the only maker who seems to remember why floppies are not a big deal and understand why SD will be obsolete long before the camera is.
The fast XQD card and buss of the Z7 is one of the 4 main reasons the only mirrorless I will consider has a "Z" first letter.

The other reason some are claiming pros will not buy Z cameras is that of not automatically tracking eyes. That is more revealing of the writer than a defect in a camera design.
 

Andy W

Senior Member
I have been a moderator(inactive now) of the largest Nikon community and we did a survey asking people how they used their 2 slots on the cameras that had two. The vast majority of respondents reply Slot 1 NEF slot2 JPG. Few used the #2 slot for mirroring. More used it for overflow than mirroring. So when I read all the angst over 1 slot because "no pro can work without 2 slots for backup" I knew it was a bogus argument. Many of these reports were working pros.

I assumed that most pros used slot two for mirroring. Compared to someone doing this for a living, my photos are rather unimportant. But I still have slot two set to mirror.
 
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Ironwood

Senior Member
I seem to be the odd one out here. I leave slot 2 empty. I tried slot 1 for RAW and slot 2 for JPEG, but I never used the JPEG file and it just made more work for me clearing two cards so I just use Slot 1 now. I replace my cards periodically and have never had a card fail.
 

singlerosa_RIP

Senior Member
OK. You guys scared me. I got into digital when there was only one piece of media and didn't get 2 slots until a D7000. I can count on both hands the number of times I've used both slots, and it hasn't been for redundancy. But why not? I've switched the setting on my bodies and will double format, just in case. I willing to bet I'll now have my first SD failure. :rolleyes:
 

pforsell

Senior Member
I still have the 0.25 GB, 0.5 GB and 1 GB CompactFlash cards that I bought with my D1H and D1X back in 2001. All work perfectly after hundreds of thousands images, after tens of thousands insertions and removals.

I've yet to have a CF card fail. What I hear in this forum is that SD cards fail all the time, but luckily the only camera that I have which uses SD is a p&s Leica D-Lux Typ 109.

It seems that everybody is shaking in their boots with sweaty palms whenever they go out with a camera having SD cards. Too bad such an inferior card standard was ever adopted outside the p&s category, but I understand some product segments and consumer segments are very cost conscious.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
Too bad such an inferior card standard was ever adopted outside the p&s category, but I understand some product segments and consumer segments are very cost conscious.
It is ironic that not having 2 SD is a deal breaker but using SD at all is not! If these "pros" crying over the lack of 2 SD slots were really that concerned about medium reliability why in hell are they using SD? It defied logic to insist on inferior systems as criteria for being "pro". They seem to think that we do not have it covered before the wedding with 2 rugged cameras per shooter.
I have to laugh at the so-called pros insisting the a7x is the pro-standard and the Nikon and Canon are not.....have they ever shot in uncontrolled conditions like a garden wedding? Or a dusty sports field or ever see what condensation does to an unsealed consumer grade body? They look at feature lists and judge on it having a long list. Experienced pros know that means nothing, the vast majority of work is basic exposure triad and focusing and everything else is lighting, posing, anticipation, rehearsal notes, experience, eye, and composition. A workhorse is needed not a gee-whiz gadget device that has piss poor ergonomics. Nikon has some distinct advantages for those shooters of pro sessions: ruggedness, repeatability, IQ/DR, battery ease of swapping, handling, control access at the eye, and the ecosystems...how well the body interfaces with industry externals...lighting, tethering, etc.
Notice flippy screens, 2 SD slots, or any of the other much cried over Deal Breakers. No flippy screen? Do those reviewers REALLY think pros or advanced amateurs are using their cameras for video selfies???
Maybe those reviewers are so focused on Youtube and not real world imaging that they think the million people looking for a new body are Vloggers. We already have far too many of them and if they were serious about video blogs they would have the Panasonic GH5 or others which do what the want far better than the Sony, Nikon, Canon or any full frame....and save $2000. But Panasonic is not blowing up sales records because very few DSLR or mirrorless photographers are intending to be actual video selfie stars.
They all seem to think the lack of SD and flippy screen is more important than the Z mount......which real photographers think is, or should, a very big deal.
There is another dynamic going on....a difference in product approach by both buyers and manufacturers. For many newcomers from the iPhone generation, electronics is disposable and it is natural to upgrade every model release simply because it is new. As a Sony user how long they have used a single body. Of all my friends using Sony, fairly new beginners, are on their 3rd 7ax camera in 4 years!! They also brag about features my OLD D800 lacks.....but why do that constantly ask me how to take a shot or how I got an image....or why my phone is 4 years old and why I still use a D7000 when newer models came out. This compulsion to upgrade long before they learn how to use what they have is very real and driving sales market. If an a74 was released tomorrow their new a7III would be put on the shelf and never used again. It is brilliant on Sony's part to churn the market bringing new models out every 14 months and getting 75% of their customers to upgrade. How many advanced amateurs or pros using Nikon's upgrade every 14 months? Sure there are some but many fewer. For those who don't a camera is not an iPhone that has 100,000,000 people buying the next model for the sole reason it is new.
Do any of these iPhone addicted buyers actually gain anything at all from the new features? I look at the images my friends who spend a lot on upgrades, produce and I see no improvement, the composition is still blah, the poses are still unflattering, the sports shots still don't tell a story, the street shooting still do not reveal anything to the viewer of why the photo was taken. When asked what use to their shots are the upgraded cameras and they list features but my question is how does that impact "this photo you are showing me....it could have been done on my phone?" What is the story, why as a viewer should I care about the person in the shot, why is the exposure weird and harsh shadows on the face? "Why is this image of the striker kicking the ball not telling me what happened" Timing and anticipation are everything sports shots.
Camera bodies have become the hobby itself, in itself for many people as demonstrated by the 1000 to 1 ratio in expenses incurred by upgrading $6000 in camera in 4 years but still have no reflectors, snoots, modifiers, flash/strobes, a poor selection of lenses, no grip, good bag,no tripod or monopod, no long glass, no fast glass.

It is time to start putting the videoblogger celebrities in proper perspective....don't show us feature lists, show the compelling image that blows us away. They are going to ignore you. It is funny, guys, and girl, who are panning the Z camera the most never show us how their images are so much better or show any images yet the few who have used it and presented their results seem to be really taken with it.. Also, if they are releasing 2-3 edited videos a day, are they REALLY pros that claim to be? One of them that trashed the Z the most never shows images because he is a piss poor photographer with no visual art talent. Talent is a factor, my GF shoots with Samsung phone and almost never uses my cameras or her V3 Nikon mirrorless and gets really good stories and compelling photos. A girl I know from here moved to Nevada from Russia a few years ago and only shoots with her phone but blows me away with her seascapes, mountain and wildlife image, stunning perfectly composes to give meaning, drama, and beauty.
A long post but a topic that should be discussed. Personally, I am intrigued by the options the Z mount gives. Lighter, smaller faster lenses with more edge sharpness wide open is possible with that wide throat and short flange distance. That combination offers lens designers a wider latitude in better lenses with fewer elements, smaller and lighter. The 85 1.2 due next year could be a really important often used lens that belongs in my bag. The 24-70 f/4 S lens is getting rave comments from users and it is so small.....
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
All of this reminds me of when I was doing a sports clothing shoot in college, and didn't finish the roll of film. So, I used the last few shots at a cross country meet in a big park the next day. When I rewound the film, I put it in my pocket, loaded another roll and kept shooting. Somewhere in that park, the roll of film fell out of my pocket. So part of the sportswear shoot was simply gone forever. Fortunately, the guy who owned the store was happy with the pictures I delivered, and I guess he didn't notice the missing shots. Being a shy 20 year old, I didn't have the guts to tell him, either. :)

A digital card that held hundreds of shots sure would have come in handy back then.

Meanwhile, I think two card slots are a good idea, and I really do understand that some photographers don't want to go with just one slot these days. That said, I've never used the second card slot for anything but overflow. To each his/her own, and I won't criticize either way of thinking.

Another thought came to mind. Remember the old VW Bugs that had a reserve fuel tank in case you ran out from the main tank? I heard lots of stories of people switching to the reserve, only to find little or no gas in the reserve tank.
 
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