I'm going to start out with an SD card.....

Whiskeyman

Senior Member
I've used both and don't think I've come close to needing the speed of the XQD card, Pete. I might have saved myself some money and waited until they went on sale before I purchased one, but it is, as they say, water under the bridge.

Wayne
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Cant understand you Pete your always swapping, changing and buying cameras, mind you it does remind me of someone, i cant think who:D.

If i was on DX the D500 would be my choice from what i have read and seen, good luck mate.
 

csgaraglino

Senior Member
I did buy the XQD, but my main reason was for dual card backup - not so speed. Some of the benefits I have received, downloading for the XQD is 1/2 the time and shooting 4k Video seems less troublesome. But all could just be a physiological effect :)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I think i know his guy, lol

I think i may be going to do it again,just got the new Panasonic G80 on loan,now as we all know mirrorless cameras cant do AFC ::what::,so i was a little surprised when i did 36 shots of a car driving away from me at 25/30mph got 30 pin sharp and 6 useable.

To be fair though i need some good light to see if i get similar results with BIF,i do doubt it will do that well but could be very good.
 

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
I think i may be going to do it again,just got the new Panasonic G80 on loan,now as we all know mirrorless cameras cant do AFC ::what::,so i was a little surprised when i did 36 shots of a car driving away from me at 25/30mph got 30 pin sharp and 6 useable.

To be fair though i need some good light to see if i get similar results with BIF,i do doubt it will do that well but could be very good.

its about time you bought again. lol
 

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
I did buy the XQD, but my main reason was for dual card backup - not so speed. Some of the benefits I have received, downloading for the XQD is 1/2 the time and shooting 4k Video seems less troublesome. But all could just be a physiological effect :)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
ok...when I bought my camera, I decided to buy a few XQD cards too. So to back up my files it seems crazy to put a slower Sandisk card in the other slot. Won't that slow the buffer down? Just wondering as using two different cards is a little bit confusing. I'll reach out to Jake here too for his explanation, thanks @BackdoorHippie
 

480sparky

Senior Member
than see how that goes. In the D500 review from the Steve Perry video, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ComPpr0bniM) he mentions that even with just an SD card you can get 40 RAW files before the card's limitation hits in.
I don't ever remember needing that much, but I'll see and go from there.

A lot of it depends on the camera settings. I know you'll need to turn off things like Noise Reduction, Active D-Lighting and Lens Corrections. And shoot 12-bit instead of 14.

And it's not just the card's write speed. The camera can only shovel out the data so fast. So if an 80mbps card can store 40 shots before things slow down, upping to a faster card isn't going to help any. You've reached the limit of the camera itself.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
ok...when I bought my camera, I decided to buy a few XQD cards too. So to back up my files it seems crazy to put a slower Sandisk card in the other slot. Won't that slow the buffer down? Just wondering as using two different cards is a little bit confusing. I'll reach out to Jake here too for his explanation, thanks @BackdoorHippie

It depends on how you have the 2nd slot set.

If you have it set to use slot 2 as overflow and then back up when you're not shooting (i.e. go to the menu and copy everything from the XQD card to the SD card) you'll get not just the speed of the XQD card when shooting and the full, dedicated capacity of the buffer to feed that card.

If, however, you set it so that slot 2 gets a copy then you're taking a double hit because you're now limited by the speed of the SD card (you can get some really fast ones these days) and hurt by a processor that must now manage 2 cards simultaneously. I've not tested how much this impacts write speeds, but I know that when I set my D610 and D750 to use the second card slot as anything other than overflow the time it took to clear the buffer almost doubled, even if I wasn't writing anything to the second card!! That was the weirdest thing about it - set Slot 2 to JPEG but only shoot RAW and the buffer cleared slower because the code doesn't check if you're actually going to have JPEG's to write to the card, it just reserves the processing power just in case.

I roll the dice and don't back up as I shoot, but if I wanted to I'd go with scenario 1 instead of shooting to two sources simultaneously. The D500's buffer is so huge that I don't feel like firing off hundreds of shots to see the difference noted in the second scenario with the split processor. Honestly, I've never once experienced buffer clearing issues with this camera and I suspect if you have a 95Mbps SD card in the slot you'll likely never run into them unless you're looking to shoot 50+ frames in a burst and then want to do it again.
 

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
It depends on how you have the 2nd slot set.

If you have it set to use slot 2 as overflow and then back up when you're not shooting (i.e. go to the menu and copy everything from the XQD card to the SD card) you'll get not just the speed of the XQD card when shooting and the full, dedicated capacity of the buffer to feed that card.

If, however, you set it so that slot 2 gets a copy then you're taking a double hit because you're now limited by the speed of the SD card (you can get some really fast ones these days) and hurt by a processor that must now manage 2 cards simultaneously. I've not tested how much this impacts write speeds, but I know that when I set my D610 and D750 to use the second card slot as anything other than overflow the time it took to clear the buffer almost doubled, even if I wasn't writing anything to the second card!! That was the weirdest thing about it - set Slot 2 to JPEG but only shoot RAW and the buffer cleared slower because the code doesn't check if you're actually going to have JPEG's to write to the card, it just reserves the processing power just in case.

I roll the dice and don't back up as I shoot, but if I wanted to I'd go with scenario 1 instead of shooting to two sources simultaneously. The D500's buffer is so huge that I don't feel like firing off hundreds of shots to see the difference noted in the second scenario with the split processor. Honestly, I've never once experienced buffer clearing issues with this camera and I suspect if you have a 95Mbps SD card in the slot you'll likely never run into them unless you're looking to shoot 50+ frames in a burst and then want to do it again.
Thanks Jake....I guess I won't need to use the SD slot very much, if at all. Good thing I bought 2 XDQ's. By the way....my laptop has a built in card reader....will I still need to buy a reader for XDQ? I'm thinking yes.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Thanks Jake....I guess I won't need to use the SD slot very much, if at all. Good thing I bought 2 XDQ's. By the way....my laptop has a built in card reader....will I still need to buy a reader for XDQ? I'm thinking yes.

The Sony card I bought from Amazon came with a reader. The other option would be to transfer from the camera with a USB cable if you don't want to buy the separate reader.
 

sonicbuffalo_RIP

Senior Member
The Sony card I bought from Amazon came with a reader. The other option would be to transfer from the camera with a USB cable if you don't want to buy the separate reader.
That gave me a good idea...trying to get Adorama to throw in a free reader since they screwed up my order. USB cable as you know, would totally slow things down. Why couldn't Nikon just stick to SD cards? I have pretty fast ones.
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Just to update my original post. I'm still using a lone Lexar UHS-I 32gig 95Mb/s SD card and I don't feel it lacking in any way. (I normally shoot short burst when doing BIF shots)
However since I have to order a few things anyway, I'll get an XQD card along with my order as well.

I didn't realize the Sony ones came with a reader. Thanks for that info @BackdoorHippie.:encouragement:
 

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
i have been using my 16GB lexar card with no problems so far, i will try the XQD card tomorrow and see what happens?
 
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