Memory Cards

[KeithL]

I have a Sony A-6000 and wanted to see what memory cards are recommended?

What is the minimum specs on recommended cards?

 

Thanks

Keith

[Golem]

The camera can handle XC cards. Get whatever

size suits your needs. Skip the HS, get XC. The

price difference has dwindled.

[Moody]

I did find the following two sites quite interesting when it comes to that question:

 

http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/sony-a6000/sd-card-comparison/

 

http://alikgriffin.com/jan/13/best-sd-memory-card-sony-a6000

 

I remember using those numbers when discussing about burst rates and buffer clearing on the A6000.

 

You will see that there is no real "best" SD card for the A6000 as the internal transfer rate will be limited by the A6000 to something around a max of 35Mb/s. This transfer rate usually will limit you once you have filled up the buffer, this will be when you'll suffer most from a slow card. Or if you immediately try to play back photos before the buffer has been written to the card.

 

SDXC vs SDHC: with the firmware update bringing you XAVC S video recording, you'll need an XC card to use that codec. If you don't care about video (my case), it won't matter what type you choose.

 

The A6000 lacks a UHS-II interface und thus will use those cards as UHS-I, it makes no sense to buy UHS-II cards at all. Due to the limited internal transfer rate, it even barely profits from UHS-I cards...

You'll see benefits when transferring your photos to your computer via an USB-3 card reader though. Not sure it's worth the higher cost.

 

Interstingly, the second site also has a test for the A6300 and... the internal transfer rate seems to have the same limit :-(

No idea if the buffer got increased or not though.

[KeithL]

So I should look for SDXC Class 10 35Mb/s or faster and I wont have any issues keeping up with the camera?

 

Thanks

Keith

[wedge]

I have a Sony A-6000 and wanted to see what memory cards are recommended?

What is the minimum specs on recommended cards?

 

Minimum spec depends entirely on what you are doing with it.  Depending on what you're doing, speed might not matter to you at all, or it might be extremely critical to you.  Or most likely somewhere in between.

 

I've got a variety of different cards and did my own performance testing.  

I would set the camera to 11fps burst, in raw mode, set the focus and exposure to manual so it didn't affect the shooting speed.  Then simultaneously press and hold the shutter and start a stopwatch.  Release the shutter when the buffer fills up, and stop the stopwatch when the card finishes writing (aka when the buffer is empty again).  I also noted how many shots were in each burst before filling the buffer.

 

I don't have the exact numbers handy, but here's what I can remember:

 

Sandisk Extreme Pro 32gb 95mb/s - this was my fastest, but only by a tiny margin

Sony 128gb 94mb/s

Sandisk Pixtor 32gb 80mb/s  - I  was desperate one day while travelling, and picked this one up from best buy.  it actually turned out to be better than I expected.

 

Those were my top three.  They all emptied the buffer in 15 - 20 seconds.  I now know they were similar because they were limited by the camera itself.  

I also noticed that these ones were able to get 1 or 2 extra shots (most of the time) into a burst compared to the slower cards, because they could write a full photo or two during the burst.  The math works out on that too:  Lets say ~20 shots per burst, if it finished writing in 20 seconds, that exactly 1 shot per second written.  At 11fps the burst lasts almost 2 seconds.  So it makes sense that they could do 1 or 2 extra shots.

 

The slower cards were 2 different Sandisk Ultra's, a Samsung Evo, a Patriot, some no-name brand, a few others I forget, most of them were class 10 rated, but all of these took at least double the amount of time to empty the buffer.  The decent ones would empty in 30 - 40 seconds.  The bad ones were around 60 seconds.  The worst card I own took a whopping 90 seconds (I put that one into an old point'n'shoot that just lives in the car glovebox for emergencies).

 

Looking at the test pages linked above, I'd say my finding correspond to their findings.  But the real result of my test is that I KNOW which ones to use, and not to use when speed is important to me.

[KeithL]

Minimum spec depends entirely on what you are doing with it.  Depending on what you're doing, speed might not matter to you at all, or it might be extremely critical to you.  Or most likely somewhere in between.

 

I've got a variety of different cards and did my own performance testing.  

I would set the camera to 11fps burst, in raw mode, set the focus and exposure to manual so it didn't affect the shooting speed.  Then simultaneously press and hold the shutter and start a stopwatch.  Release the shutter when the buffer fills up, and stop the stopwatch when the card finishes writing (aka when the buffer is empty again).  I also noted how many shots were in each burst before filling the buffer.

 

I don't have the exact numbers handy, but here's what I can remember:

 

Sandisk Extreme Pro 32gb 95mb/s - this was my fastest, but only by a tiny margin

Sony 128gb 94mb/s

Sandisk Pixtor 32gb 80mb/s  - I  was desperate one day while travelling, and picked this one up from best buy.  it actually turned out to be better than I expected.

 

Those were my top three.  They all emptied the buffer in 15 - 20 seconds.  I now know they were similar because they were limited by the camera itself.  

I also noticed that these ones were able to get 1 or 2 extra shots (most of the time) into a burst compared to the slower cards, because they could write a full photo or two during the burst.  The math works out on that too:  Lets say ~20 shots per burst, if it finished writing in 20 seconds, that exactly 1 shot per second written.  At 11fps the burst lasts almost 2 seconds.  So it makes sense that they could do 1 or 2 extra shots.

 

The slower cards were 2 different Sandisk Ultra's, a Samsung Evo, a Patriot, some no-name brand, a few others I forget, most of them were class 10 rated, but all of these took at least double the amount of time to empty the buffer.  The decent ones would empty in 30 - 40 seconds.  The bad ones were around 60 seconds.  The worst card I own took a whopping 90 seconds (I put that one into an old point'n'shoot that just lives in the car glovebox for emergencies).

 

Looking at the test pages linked above, I'd say my finding correspond to their findings.  But the real result of my test is that I KNOW which ones to use, and not to use when speed is important to me.

 

Thanks for sharing, exactly what I was looking for.