DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

The 850 isn't exactly a super fast shooter for most unless the $1000 grip and battery are being used.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

They claim an increase of 2 shots per second from 7 to 9 with the grip and battery, which is around $600 for the pair. I can not distinguish the difference between grip and no grip speeds. I like the grip for the battery life of the EN-EL18b battery.

toxdoc42

I am an amateur, not a pro.do my love of my photos and desire to protect them is the reason I developed the following work flow.

I travel with a computer, a Microsoft Surface Pro and a hard drive. I have enough Cards to shoot thousands of photos on BOTH jpg and RAW. At the end of the day, when I return home or to my hotel, I copy all of the day work to an external hard drive. The cards are all 64 gig purchased at Costco. I do not erase the files, but the photos are all tagged by date and file number so it is easy to isolate and copy the photos of the day. Before I go to dinner, i start the process of uploading to my Microsoft "One Drive."

When I get home, I copy all of the files from the hard drive to my computer. I file them by trip and then date, each day is a separate folder. I back up all the files to an external hard drive attached to the computer. In addition, I have a subscription to Carbonite, which backs up all of thenfikrs from my computer and one attached hard drive.

Both Carbonite and one drive allow me to access the files from any internet connected computer.

Only after all files are backed up, Carbonite puts a little colored ball next to each folder and file to show its process. If green, the files are on their server.

It may seem like a lot of work, but it really isn't. The problem is on a cruise. The ship's Wi-Fi isn't up to the speed of a hotel or my home, so often it takes all night to upload, if at all. I find I may need to only upload raw via Wi-Fi to save total time and band width.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

The very fact that cards can fail, is that I will not use any card larger than 16gb. They are all either SanDisk or Lexar. I've never had a card go bad although I've been told many times that it is not a question of "if" but "when".
When traveling, I've got notebook (13") with me, as well as an external hard drive. Every evening I copy the images from the card to both the notebook and external drive.
The card then goes into my husbands luggage, the notebook and HD into mine.
A new card into the camera, is immediately formatted and ready for the next day.
So far, every time we've been away during the last 18 years, we've come home with three copies of each photo I've taken!

Pegasus Loc: Texas Gulf Coast

I'm very happy for you that you have all your pictures.

I'm still quizzical as to why you depend on the most fragile of medium to store your images thinking they are secure. An HDD is very fragile, regardless of who makes it; it has moving parts. You would be much better served with an SSD. I will also point out that you should buy much higher capacity cards for your camera. I NEVER want to have to erase or format my card while travelling. I back them up nightly to my laptop and on to the cloud. I also have backup storage on my smartphone (256gb SD card,) where I can transfer the file via USB or read the SD card of the camera with an SD-card reader attached to the smartphone.

When I get home, I have my images on 3 or 4 devices. When all is secure, then I think about reformatting the SD card in the camera.

Also, depending on 2 SD slots does not prevent the loss of pictures if you lose your camera.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1358091-REG/nikon_mb_d18_multi_power_battery_pack.html

Add the tax in and I'm over a grand.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

I forgot about the charger. I have them as they came with my D5.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Got to have that darn battery door too. I have not found it necessary to augment the speed and I do a fair amount of action shooting. I guess it's all in what we want! Nice to have choices! The D500 does it well enough for me as does the versatile 850.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

We have pretty much the same sequence. I use a Surface 4 Pro as well. The problem is the max size HD is 256gb. So I have a 4TB external to store my images on until I get home. I typically do not erase my cards until the images are safely on two internal hard drives, an external USB backup drive using Goodsync, and my cloud backup using Code42Crashplan for Business AND SugarSync. Lots of redundancy and layered backups in case of ransomware and also provides me with access to any of my files on any computer. It's not much work as its all automated. Only thing I have to do is upload my files to my Lightroom drive and the software does the rest. And I NEVER open emails from anyone I don't know. They go straight into the trash can. I thought I was pretty well protected and in fact, the second card slot saved my ass.

A.J.R. Loc: Devon, UK

Yes I'm afraid it was my fault for drifting off the topic somewhat, but thank you HT and others for your replies to my question. It did seem obvious to me that the speed can only be as fast as the slowest card but as I have never used a camera with two slots have never thought it through before.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

That would be a real bummer, losing my camera, for a whole host of reasons! I agree, mechanical HDD are a disaster waiting to happen. I have learned that SSD also fail, probably not as frequently as mechanical ones. I also think that it is easier to get files from a mechanical drive as the platters can still be removed and placed in a different drive, whereas, I cannot figure out how you retrieve data from an SSD.

Having said the above, I will buy a SSD drive in the near future. They are smaller and seem safer. Sandisk has come out with a 2TB USB drive that seems to fit the bill. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1380215-REG/sandisk_sdssde60_2t00_g25_extreme_600_2tb_ssd.html?ap=y&gclid=CjwKCAjwlejcBRAdEiwAAbj6Kemp0jEWZHzve1wWYgak6SlgQejw5izWDBoA5vHoFqC9yCIjHKeTiBoCBt4QAvD_BwE&smp=y

I carry about 6 XQD cards varying in sizes from 32gb to 64gb and a couple of 256gb SD cards for my D850 backup. I just ran out of space this trip so I had to erase a card, or not take any more pictures. That was not an option, so I took a shot. I have learned a lesson!

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Write speed time increases with the amount of info that needs to be transferred, thus the high megapixel cameras can use faster card,etc. I think that many buy cards that have faster capabilities then their camera is capable of achieving.

Pegasus Loc: Texas Gulf Coast

Oh, I totally get that. When you're out of space, you have to erase/make room, or you stop shooting. That's why I have a big card in my D7500 and a even bigger on my smartphone. My laptop has three drives; 1 HDD and 2 SSDs.

Yes, SSDs can fail, but they are far less susceptible to damage compared to an HDD. What will usually happen is the controller gets wacked. I've never had an SSD fail on me, so I do not know what is recoverable or how.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Okay. Looks like we have a little different idea of what’s a backup. To me, nothing’s backed up until it’s on two or more drives, and you would have lost your backup when you erased the first card if not for that second card - all your eggs would then have been in one basket. I bet you’ll take plenty of extra cards next time! Good to hear you didn’t lose anything.

toxdoc42

My original Surface Pro2 was only 128 gb, that one just died on me, inconveniently while on a cruise. I was able to use the PC the cruise line provided for my use in my cabin, but I had to figure out how to get around their setting it up for only internet use and not allow me to use it for "computing." I use a Seagate 2 TB external rescue drive to back up all of my daily work. I don't erase the cards until I see all of my photos safely in the cloud storage on One Drive and Carbonite. I just bought a Surface Pro with 256 gb. They don't call it 4 anymore. I really prefer the size of the new Surface Go, but it is limited to 128 gb and I really didn't want to be confined to such a small amount of storage, given that the software and operating system occupies almost 80 gb themselves.