SD Card Question

[ndstate]

Hello,

 

I recently bought the Samsung EVO 64GB 48MB/s sd card to go with my new a6000... But after reading http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/sony-a6000/sd-card-comparison/ I am a bit concerned because the tested 32GB model is near the bottom in speed. Should I be worried? I assume I would only run into problems if I am shooting continuously or perhaps shooting video? Any help deciphering all of this?

 

Thanks!

[Moody]

Hiya,

 

I wouldn't be too worried about your card speed as long as you aren't capturing long bursts. You won't be seeing any performance limits of your card except once you've ended up filling your A6000's buffer, which will be after a rather long burst (or quite a few shorter ones in a short timeframe).

 

Here a bit of number crunching:

 

The A6000's buffer size seems to be around 512 Mb, amounting to either 21 RAWs or 49 JPGs.

Until you have filled that buffer, you won't see any impact of your card's speed on your camera's fps.

 

What you will see, is an impact on operation that you might want to do just after shooting bursts, as the camera won't let you access different functions (as the picture review for example) until the buffer has been transferred to your SD card. Your wait time will increase with a decreasing SD card write speed. It could take you a minute (or slightly more) once the buffer has filled up to access some menu functions (you still can change aperture, speed, etc though), while the fastest cards will let you access those functions in half of the time (20-30s, depending on the tests out there).

 

Once your camera buffer has filled up, your fps will drop dramatically as it will be reduced to the write speed from the buffer to your card.

Regardless of your card's write speed, the maximum write speed of the A6000 seems limited to around 36 Mb/s. This is indeed what your mentioned test is saying: "The difference between cards was greatest after the buffer had filled. In RAW+JPEG mode the frame rate dropped to 1 fps using the fastest cards, while slower cards dropped to as low as 0.3 fps. In RAW mode the range was 1.5 fps to 0.4 fps. Surprisingly, the frame rate with the buffer full in JPEG mode was about the same for all cards at 1.2 fps and the number of JPEG images captured in 30 seconds was nearly the same regardless of card. The write speed in JPEG mode was considerably lower than RAW."

So you would basically see a drop of your frame rate to around 0.75 fps if shooting RAW (instead of a 1.5 fps performance on the fastest cards...) and no impact at all if shooting JPG.

 

In conclusion, you won't see any difference while shooting (well, it depends a bit on your shooting style), but you might be feeling a difference in performance mainly in reviewing pictures or accessing menus after shooting bursts.

 

As for video, no idea at all...

I found this interesting statement concerning video though:

"If you want to buy a 32GB version of any of these cards they pretty much perform the same. However, 32GB cards and smaller are SDHC meaning they are formatted Fat32 instead of exFat64. You don't need an SDXC card for the Sony A6000, but if you plan on staying in the Sony ecosystem you'll want to buy SDXC for now on. The reason is the XAVC video codec Sony is slowly putting into all of its cameras requires SDXC cards or exFat64.

You won't be able to format an SDHC card to exFat64 and be able to record to the XAVC video codec either."

 

Hope it helps.

[ndstate]

Hiya,

 

I wouldn't be too worried about your card speed as long as you aren't capturing long bursts. You won't be seeing any performance limits of your card except once you've ended up filling your A6000's buffer, which will be after a rather long burst (or quite a few shorter ones in a short timeframe).

 

Here a bit of number crunching:

 

The A6000's buffer size seems to be around 512 Mb, amounting to either 21 RAWs or 49 JPGs.

Until you have filled that buffer, you won't see any impact of your card's speed on your camera's fps.

 

What you will see, is an impact on operation that you might want to do just after shooting bursts, as the camera won't let you access different functions (as the picture review for example) until the buffer has been transferred to your SD card. Your wait time will increase with a decreasing SD card write speed. It could take you a minute (or slightly more) once the buffer has filled up to access some menu functions (you still can change aperture, speed, etc though), while the fastest cards will let you access those functions in half of the time (20-30s, depending on the tests out there).

 

Once your camera buffer has filled up, your fps will drop dramatically as it will be reduced to the write speed from the buffer to your card.

Regardless of your card's write speed, the maximum write speed of the A6000 seems limited to around 36 Mb/s. This is indeed what your mentioned test is saying: "The difference between cards was greatest after the buffer had filled. In RAW+JPEG mode the frame rate dropped to 1 fps using the fastest cards, while slower cards dropped to as low as 0.3 fps. In RAW mode the range was 1.5 fps to 0.4 fps. Surprisingly, the frame rate with the buffer full in JPEG mode was about the same for all cards at 1.2 fps and the number of JPEG images captured in 30 seconds was nearly the same regardless of card. The write speed in JPEG mode was considerably lower than RAW."

So you would basically see a drop of your frame rate to around 0.75 fps if shooting RAW (instead of a 1.5 fps performance on the fastest cards...) and no impact at all if shooting JPG.

 

In conclusion, you won't see any difference while shooting (well, it depends a bit on your shooting style), but you might be feeling a difference in performance mainly in reviewing pictures or accessing menus after shooting bursts.

 

As for video, no idea at all...

I found this interesting statement concerning video though:

"If you want to buy a 32GB version of any of these cards they pretty much perform the same. However, 32GB cards and smaller are SDHC meaning they are formatted Fat32 instead of exFat64. You don't need an SDXC card for the Sony A6000, but if you plan on staying in the Sony ecosystem you'll want to buy SDXC for now on. The reason is the XAVC video codec Sony is slowly putting into all of its cameras requires SDXC cards or exFat64.

You won't be able to format an SDHC card to exFat64 and be able to record to the XAVC video codec either."

 

Hope it helps.

 

Awesome, thanks so much. That was very helpful!