rcrosby825 Loc: Western Maine

I have an 8GB Sandisk card in my Sony 500.
After a days shoot I save my shots to iPhoto and Picasa then to an external harddrive as back-up. Once I'm sure everything is safe in a couple of other places, I clear the card and get ready for the next day.
Is this a good practice, or will the quality of my pictures eventually go down as the age of the card increases?
Put another way, should I treat my sdhc cards as another backup medium and not try to "re-use" them until a problem arises?
Hope this makes sense.
Any and all comments greatly appreciated.
Rob

Jamers Loc: Michigan

Sandisk is a good card, that brand is all I have used for years with no problems. I down load them when I have completed a shoot, and prepare for the next day. I will use 2 and 4 GB cards, and carry several re-loading as they become full. Reason is, if for some unfortinate reason your larger card becomes corrupt, you may have a problem retreving your days of many shots, where as with several smaller cards, you have not lost everything. I don't shoot video, so this might not apply to those that do.

shadow1284 Loc: Mid-West Michigan

Rob, I use 16 gb CF cards, I've reused them hundreds of times, formating them after each use(after my pictures are secured elsewhere) and have not seen any degredation in quality or performance. That said; I always carry a backup card and pray I don't loose photos I've already taken.
There is of course retrieval software for corupted cards, but they don't always work. If worse comes to worse and a card fails with precious photos, you can always return to the site and try again. Yeaaa, another excuse for a vacation.

photocat Loc: Atlanta, Ga

I put a date on the card when I start using it and then after three years retire it to the trash.

Cards these days are more stable than in the beginning of all this electrical world.

My workflow is similar altho, i made four archival copies, Best Business Practice indicate 3

3 copies
2 media
1 off site.

ggiaphotos Loc: Iowa

I also prefer smaller cards. I have lost 4G worth of very important photos and ones that I will not have the opportunity to even try to duplicate. One corrupt card! It was a new Sandisk, however, I believe any of them can go bad. I download at the end of each day (even if only a few). I understand that there is a program that will retrieve the photos from a corrupt SD. (Any info on this ???).

Once my photos are downloaded, they are backed up on an external hard drive. Once a month I back them up again on a DVD. THEN I EMPTY THE SD card and format it for use in the camera again. Suspenders, belt, and elastic I guess....
:lol:

Iduno Loc: Near Tampa Florida

Small cards. Redundant backup. Format card in camera. That's the workflow I've adopted after a disaster with a 32gig card. I'll probably try a larger card again when I can afford a higher quality one.

rayford2 Loc: New Bethlehem, PA

Now you have me rethinking about using huge memory cards for still pix. Thanks to all for this advice.

mustfishjoe Loc: Naperville, Il

I like to use multiple smaller cards and did for years in a P&S. Just received a T3i for xmas and plan to continue the practice for reasons stated here in terms of losing a lot of pictures although I NEVER (thankfully) had that problem.

I'm an "Old Fart" and while I have and use computers all the time I just REFUSE to "trust" my pictures to one file source! I transfer my pictures after a shoot to the puter for editing and once done I save a set in my puter and then on an external junk drive and then on a back-up DVD and finally...yes finally...I even print hard copies. YUP! Got lots and lots of printed pictures all cataloged and stored neatly in Photo Binders.

I would have to experience a nuclear war to lose any given picture file and while what i do is probably over-kill my pictures mean too much to me.

Probably should have mentioned that I HAVE taken thousands of pictures on those cards without a card failure or lost of picture quality.

leadstory

I did save one Sandisk SD card labeled and in a safe place even after backing it up several times on computer and external drive and media. I saved that particular SD card because it was entirely of an important visit and speech of an important POTUS that could possibly be worth some money to someone
(maybe my kids?) someday.

photocat Loc: Atlanta, Ga

what is POTUS?

mustfishjoe Loc: Naperville, Il

"President of the United States"

photocat Loc: Atlanta, Ga

ah, thanks.

That never crossed my mind.

PJT Loc: Sarasota,Florida

I must say this. Unrelated but Related
During the Xmas holiday I watched as a friend took his wifes Sony camera(I didn't see the model) opened the camera and took out a Scandisk 8 gig SDHC card and inserted it into a photoplayback picture frame wich he had just bought his mom. The picture frame was turned on as he placed the card into the correct slot. It played back a few images then stopped playing.
He took out and reinserted the card into the frame which was still turned on.
Needless to say the card went south. She, his wife was so mad because all the xmas shots of the children,presents, and meal were all lost.
I have used scandisc cards for years and never had one go bad.
I' ve reused one card at least ten times ,after saving the images to my computer. I let my cameras reformat the disk.
All of the above happened so fast that I could not even tell anyone to shut off the viewer before inserting the card.
I believe that the end result was from operator error and not any fault within the card.
I told the both of them to reread the instructions for the viewer before loading a card. The power was to be off.
Just thought this info may cone in handy!
PS the photoviewer is working fine. Shee tried the card back in the Sony camera to no avail. She also tried another Scandisk card in her camera and both worked just fine!!

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

Quickly scanning the remarks the one thing I didn't see was the advise to reformat (NOT DELETE) the card(s) in the camera.

I am using the Nikon D7000, which has two SD card slots. I can select either using the second as a back-up or use it to record JPG on one and the RAW files on the other. Needless to say, the RAW and Video (should I use video) take a lot of space. I use two 16 gig cards to handle both the RAW and JPG pictures.

Slick50il Loc: North central Ill L-P area!

loser. like the cubs maybe! next year!!