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Maximum SD card size for A7RIII and A9

2xbass

By 2xbass,
in Sony Alpha Full Frame Cameras

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Chrissie Proficient

Chrissie

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I have a 128 GB card in my A9, so cannot report actual experience. No issues with the 128GB card so far.

From a technical point of view:

Since the technical specification of SD cards v2 is from 2007, v3 from 2011, and both a9 and a7riii are from 2017, I would naïvely assume, that both cameras implement the full SDXC standard, which allows for up to 2 TB. I'm not aware of any additional (lower) limit imposed by Sony.

From a practical point of view:

  • why would you want to use such a huge card anyways? a 512GB card is more expensive than 2  cards of 256GB, which are more expensive than 4 cards of 128 GB, and so on.
  • 64 GB is sufficient for 1.000 images of uncompressed raw + jpeg. By extension, 512 GB would be good for 8.000 images.
  • You run an extended risk of loosing up to 8.000 images, if something goes wrong with one huge (521GB) card.
  • Continuous video recording is limited to a maximum of 29 minutes, because of the 4GB file size limit, and a 64GB card provides already for up to 1 h 15 Minutes of video at the highest quality settings.
  • And then there is the overheating problem when continuously recording video for an extended time.

I'm honestly curious about your use case.

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2xbass Contributor

2xbass

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Thanks for your reply. I meant to write “slot 2” in my original post. I use 64 GB cards in slot 1 but keep backing up to slot 2 across multiple shooting sessions where I might not have a chance to otherwise backup to another device. I currently use. 128 GB card in slot 2 of one of my cameras and recently filled it after a couple of sessions of wildlife shooting. 

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    • Richard A
      ISO Bracketing

      By Richard A · Posted

      ISO 320 is the A7R5's second base ISO setting. You will find at ISO 320 you will get better results than even ISO 200. I normally take a set of shots at 1600, 3200 and 6400 ISO. I am taking 60 light frames and 10 dark frames. I don't do any adjustments to the files before stacking. I really need to get organised and do some bias frames now. Here is pretty much my first successful Milky Way shot from a few months ago. I was combatting a bit of ambient light and quite a lot of cloud but I'm pretty happy with this. It was shot using my Sigma 16-28 f2.8 which is better at astro than I had anticipated, at ISO 1600.

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    • popeye10
      ISO Bracketing

      By popeye10 · Posted

      Thanks for the information. Since my original post, I did some "experiments" at different iso settings. Best results were obtained at iso 320, and then increasing the exposure by four stops in Lightroom. The biggest difference compared to using a higher iso was that there was detail in dark foreground areas, while at high iso the dark areas were blocked. This is consistent with articles I've read about ISO invariance.
    • Richard A
      ISO Bracketing

      By Richard A · Posted

      I do a bit of astro photography and do a lot of research etc. on best settings to use. I have never heard of anyone using ISO bracketing! Typically, higher ISO settings such as 1600, 3200 or 6400 are used and multiple light and dark frames are stacked to reduce noise. If you are worried about noise in dark foreground areas then just use a seperate exposure for them then blend the exposures in post processing. By the way, I also have an A7R5.

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