Sony "Tough" SD cards to reduce risk of card failure?

[Frodo]

I am considering purchasing a Sony "Tough" SD card as a way to reduce failure of the single SD card slot. My concern is that SD cards are physically fragile and I once had an SD card split, rendering it inoperable. The Sony Tough cards are one piece and do not have a potentially vulnerable write protect tab.
It does not appear that I will gain much from the higher speed of the UHS II card, so the main benefit is physical robustness.
Your thoughts?

 

[privatebydesign]

I'd look at it like this.
1: How many times have I personally lost images on SD cards that are truly unrecoverable.
2: What was their value.
3: What is the industry standard for failure rate.
4: Is the Sony failure rate appreciably improved on the 'standard' failure rate.

Answer those four questions and you have some data to do a calculation of value to your personal situation.

For me the answers are
1: Never.
2: See 1
3: See 1
4: See 1

So for me the equation is simple, I buy Sandisk memory and SSD's when they are on specials always from a reputable dealer, not Amazon affiliates or the like.

Now that doesn't mean I haven't done stupid things with SD cards, I have run them through washing machines and yes I have broken them, but on each occasion I have got the data off of it. Didn't help when I lost one once but having a better card wouldn't have helped then either.

 

[Bennymiata]

UHS-ll cards will only improve your speed if your camera is UHS-ll compliant.
Otherwise it's a waste.

 

[privatebydesign]

UHS-ll cards will only improve your speed if your camera is UHS-ll compliant.
Otherwise it's a waste.

Or your card reader, ingress can be time consuming especially with big cards with a lot of data.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Or your card reader, ingress can be time consuming especially with big cards with a lot of data.

Or the camera you get this Christmas, or next year. I bought a R last year, so I have a bunch of older cards that I don't want to use and bought two new ones.

That was a waste.

 

[privatebydesign]

Or the camera you get this Christmas, or next year. I bought a R last year, so I have a bunch of older cards that I don't want to use and bought two new ones.

That was a waste.

I end up buying whatever capacity of cards I need and keep them for each camera, that way you get the right speed and capacity for the current camera, I then pass those cards along with that camera when I sell it/give it away so I don't end up with a frustrating array of comparatively small capacity and slow cards when I get a new body.

I am not an especially high volume shooter so each camera will have one or two dedicated cards. My M5 has a single Sandisk 128GB SD card, my 1DX MkII's have single 64GB capacity CFast and CF cards each. I like to KISS

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

We have multiple devices that use cards, my 5D MK IV, my wife's compact camera, and several other cameras that I just keep around. I tend to collect old cameras, I still have my first one, a Olympus that used a Smart Card which is long gone from modern cameras, but I have a few because I keep them. I still have a type III PCMIA card, I may yet find a vintage camera that needs it. I sold my old Kodak DSLR and included one of my cards.

 

[mkamelg]

I am considering purchasing a Sony "Tough" SD card as a way to reduce failure of the single SD card slot. My concern is that SD cards are physically fragile and I once had an SD card split, rendering it inoperable. The Sony Tough cards are one piece and do not have a potentially vulnerable write protect tab.
It does not appear that I will gain much from the higher speed of the UHS II card, so the main benefit is physical robustness.
Your thoughts?

This is what a SDHC 32GB Sony SF-G TOUGH UHS-II memory card looks like after six and a half months of daily use.



There are abrasions visible as bright spots in the corners of the card. How were they created? I would like to know myself. The housing of this memory card is very stiff, it is probably even stiffer than those used in Delkin Devices memory cards. Probably something in the memory card reader works like a file and "attacks" the memory card housing.

You have five years warranty (it says so on the back of the box in its upper left corner) on this memory card. Yes, there's no lifetime warranty here.

You have access to two very usefull applications https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/memory-cards-sd-cards/sf-g32t/downloads

A few days ago I had the opportunity to use this Memory Card File Rescue application because I accidentally deleted one file in the CR3 raw format and I was able to recover it without any problems.

Personally, I can't imagine working with EOS R without UHS-II speed class memory card (regardless of the brand), this type of memory card is the "key to success" when working with this camera.

"It does not appear that I will gain much from the higher speed of the UHS II card, so the main benefit is physical robustness."

Do you really think so?

Canon EOS R Fastest SD Cards UHS-II vs UHS-I comparison of Write Speed in the EOS R Mirrorless Digital Camera - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards

Canon EOS R SD card speed comparison. Recommended memory cards for the fullframe mirrorless digital camera for fast continuous shooting. Which Secure Digital memory cards to buy for the EOS-R.

www.cameramemoryspeed.com

 

[Frodo]

"It does not appear that I will gain much from the higher speed of the UHS II card, so the main benefit is physical robustness."

Do you really think so?

Canon EOS R Fastest SD Cards UHS-II vs UHS-I comparison of Write Speed in the EOS R Mirrorless Digital Camera - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards

Canon EOS R SD card speed comparison. Recommended memory cards for the fullframe mirrorless digital camera for fast continuous shooting. Which Secure Digital memory cards to buy for the EOS-R.

www.cameramemoryspeed.com

Thanks for sharing that link about memory card speed. There is no real difference between the best UHS-I cards and UHS-II cards until the EOS R buffer fills up. Indeed that report states: "UHS-I cards can provide decent performance in the EOS R for short bursts of photos, up to around 20 shots in RAW". I can not remember ever (including previous cameras) shooting a burst of more than 20 images. Hence my conclusion about speed not being of much benefit for me.

Your photos do show the 1 piece nature of the Sony Tough cards. The only SD failure I've experienced was when the two halves of an SD card separated and I've noticed that this and the plastic strips between the contacts on other cards appears to be vulnerable to physical damage. Privatebydesign has also broken them.

Your experience indicates that the Sony cards are built tough.

 

[Frodo]

An interesting snippet in a report linked to the article mkamelg circulated.
This shows that the UHS-II performance is very good (even though it doesn't reach the UHS-II theoretical maximum), beating the Sony A9, which prides itself with speed.

Sony SF-G 300MB/s UHS-II 32GB Tested in Camera	Write Speed (MB/s)
Canon EOS R	176.5
Fuji X-T3	160.1
Sony A9	146.3
Panasonic GH5	86.5
Nikon D7500	81.2
Canon Rebel T7i	81.1
Canon 77D	80.8
Canon EOS M5	80.1
Nikon Coolpix P1000	34.0

 

[koenkooi]

Thanks for sharing that link about memory card speed. There is no real difference between the best UHS-I cards and UHS-II cards until the EOS R buffer fills up. Indeed that report states: "UHS-I cards can provide decent performance in the EOS R for short bursts of photos, up to around 20 shots in RAW". I can not remember ever (including previous cameras) shooting a burst of more than 20 images. Hence my conclusion about speed not being of much benefit for me.[..]

I went with UHS-II for everything because my cardreader can actually achieve the 300MB/s read speed, which is like 10 RAWs per second. Very nice if you return from a day of shooting with a 1000+ images on your card

 

[Frodo]

See this post here for a physical problem with a Lexar card that may have caused focusing problems with my R: https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/i...ocusing-whats-the-deal-with-that.36625/page-2
The little used Lexar has gone in the trash and I have ordered replacement Sony Tough cards without the fragile ribs.

 

[SecureGSM]

See this post here for a physical problem with a Lexar card that may have caused focusing problems with my R: https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/i...ocusing-whats-the-deal-with-that.36625/page-2
The little used Lexar has gone in the trash and I have ordered replacement Sony Tough cards without the fragile ribs.

I suggest you could remove the card and enable release shutter without card option. Then take some photos and observe EVF behaviour when shooting without card. Personally,I do not see how the card can affect focusing. Card is engaged only for writing of the taken exposure.

 

[Frodo]

Hi SGSM, yes I couldn't see the link between the broken card and the AF behaviour. But, I'd never experienced that before in 10,000 exposures and never used that card in the camera. I hope it is the cause because its the first time my EOS R has let me down. I'm open as to what else caused the AF problem.

 

[Frodo]

Scrub my last post. The problem happened again with a Sony card. I thought a card was unlikely to cause this, but a coincidence. My current thinking is that it is a mechanism built into the camera to protect the sensor when shooting wide apertures in bright sunlight. Still a bit of a pain as it seems to reduce focusing accuracy.

 

[briangus]

Looks like an issue with some of these Sony Tough cards.
Luckily all mines are TR's

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/memory-cards-sd-cards/sf-m128t/articles/00246463

 

[Frodo]

Thanks for that. Both my Tough cards are affected and the Sony people will replace them.

 

[Random Orbits]

Looks like an issue with some of these Sony Tough cards.
Luckily all mines are TR's

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/memory-cards-sd-cards/sf-m128t/articles/00246463

I bought one because they were highly recommended. Mine is a TR, but over the last week, I've lost 4 images from a couple sessions from it. Low level format between the sessions did not fix the issue. I wouldn't be surprised if the "bad cards" range is increased in the future. I had a really bad experience with a Sony DLP TV and now this card. I'm going to avoid Sony stuff like the plague unless it's something I consider "disposable." This is the main reason why I've stuck with Canon. Canon is better with warranty repairs and they actually support their equipment longer.

 

[briangus]

I bought one because they were highly recommended. Mine is a TR, but over the last week, I've lost 4 images from a couple sessions from it. Low level format between the sessions did not fix the issue. I wouldn't be surprised if the "bad cards" range is increased in the future. I had a really bad experience with a Sony DLP TV and now this card. I'm going to avoid Sony stuff like the plague unless it's something I consider "disposable." This is the main reason why I've stuck with Canon. Canon is better with warranty repairs and they actually support their equipment longer.

As a rule I never buy Sony but at the time in Singapore nobody was selling anything other than Sony UHS-II cards.
I'm not sure if I have lost any photos but what I have observed is that not all photos are imported.
Sometimes just random raws missed but latterly only about 3/4 of the raws were imported.
Was blaming the C1 importer and a high number of raws on the card.
I ended up copiyng the missing raws into the folder and then re importing into C1 - that worked.

 

[SteveC]

As a rule I never buy Sony

So if you come on here some day griping about Canon cameras and announce you're buying a Sony...we can assume your account has been hacked?