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SD Cards for Leica M8?


jsrockit

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I belong to the school of believing that 2gb cards are ideal. (197 exposures with raw capture only; equivalent to more than five 36-exposure films). I use Sandisk Ultra II and III. Perfect and inexpensive.

 

Think about it. Unless you are a pro-shooter one card is usually more than enough for a day's shooting (and thinking about the shooting!). On travels, take enough cards to provide one per day plus spares according to your calculation. If you are unfortunate enough to lose one, you minimize the risk. Lock the used ones in your safe in the hotel. Back up for extra insurance if you deem that worthwhile (I do).

 

If you are a pro-shooter, different advice applies. Lots of sequence shooting obviously consumes more memory and more cards. Larger capacity cards then make sense.

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I belong to the school of believing that 2gb cards are ideal. (197 exposures with raw capture only; equivalent to more than five 36-exposure films). I use Sandisk Ultra II and III. Perfect and inexpensive.

 

That doesn't seem right. I use a 4gb Transcend card that gives me 198 exposures with RAW only.

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That doesn't seem right. I use a 4gb Transcend card that gives me 198 exposures with RAW only.

 

I get 187 RAW images on each 2Gb Sandisk Extreme. Your 4Gb issue could be related to the M8's counter rather than the real number of exposures. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the M8 counter is bad at maths above a certain value and only starts counting down again once it's own artificial maximum display value is passed. Try a clean 4Gb card and fire off a few shots - does the counter still read 198?

 

With regard to the original post, I am another adherent to the '2Gb is big-enough' philosophy. 2Gb cards are cheap and it is easy to carry many with you. If one fails you haven't lost nearly as much as you might with a larger card and anyway, how painful is it to change cards only once every 180 exposures?

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I get 187 RAW images on each 2Gb Sandisk Extreme.

 

With regard to the original post, I am another adherent to the '2Gb is big-enough' philosophy. 2Gb cards are cheap and it is easy to carry many with you. If one fails you haven't lost nearly as much as you might with a larger card and anyway, how painful is it to change cards only once every 180 exposures?

My mistake; my apology; I meant to write '187' NOT '197'. But that is often more than I shoot in a day.

 

May I add one more point? If I am traveling and I don't quite fill a card in a day, I always start a new card the next day. It saves changing memory cards when least suitable and reduces risk or loss if any trouble is encountered.

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I have been using SanDisk Extreme III 2Gb cards on an M8.

The original card that I purchased worked fine but the latter

two cards reset the L number which was a pest. I discovered

that it can be cured by inserting the card in a card reader

and formatting it in a computer and subsequently reformatting it

in the camera. There must be some hidden code on the card that

resets the L number and formatting initially removes it.

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Thanks Nicole, I was unaware of that as I believed that the upper limit with M8 was 4Gb.

 

Bruno

 

Hi Bruno, I'm happy to have helped. :) Early firmware versions limited the M8 to non-SDHC cards, and 2GB was the standard limit, with a few special 4GB cards available. This restriction was removed some time ago, and if you are using the current firmware you can in theory use any SDHC card available. However, anything over 8GB will mean that your frame-counter reads 999 until you take enough pictures to get below that. This may take a long time on a very large card. :) It's always good to use a small standard SD card for firmware updates though. Just in case something goes awry and your camera forgets it can use SDHC cards.

 

p.s. Genova is a lovely city. I drove down there in the 'Bitchmobile' for my summer holiday this year. :cool::)

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I recently bought a M8.2. I live in Hong Kong. In doing some research and looking around I decided to use an "Extreme 32GB SDHC @30MB/s". Lots and lots of storage for traveling and really fast as well. No issues to date....well one tiny thing I noticed the available pictures in the little window show 999 until you use enough memory to get below the camera 999 top limit set by the camera counter.....once below 999 it will show how many pictures you have left.....for me that is not an issue though as knowing I have greater than 999 available pictures is comforting.

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I recently bought a M8.2. I live in Hong Kong. In doing some research and looking around I decided to use an "Extreme 32GB SDHC @30MB/s". Lots and lots of storage for traveling and really fast as well. No issues to date....well one tiny thing I noticed the available pictures in the little window show 999 until you use enough memory to get below the camera 999 top limit set by the camera counter.....once below 999 it will show how many pictures you have left.....for me that is not an issue though as knowing I have greater than 999 available pictures is comforting.

Wow! You must be an extremely prolific shooter! I am afraid I am rather more conservative, not the least because the hidden time cost of processing so many similar images. Even simply reviewing and deleting them on a computer takes time. Just think of the mounting file storage requirement. But we all have our individual ways of capturing what we see. Please don't think I am being critical; just cautious by nature!

 

[32gb x 180 = >5,760 raw pictures; a lot more if they are JPEGs. That is a lot of priceless material to risk losing if the card proves faulty or you should lose it]

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I'll be honest and say I don't find any real difference with SD cards between SanDisk Ultra II or Extreme III cards in general use on any camera.

 

I did make the recent mistake of buying a Toshiba SD card lately and despite it being classified as SDHC class 6 is the slowest card I've ever put in a camera - I know I'll stick to SanDisk next time.

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Wow! You must be an extremely prolific shooter! I am afraid I am rather more conservative, not the least because the hidden time cost of processing so many similar images. Even simply reviewing and deleting them on a computer takes time. Just think of the mounting file storage requirement. But we all have our individual ways of capturing what we see. Please don't think I am being critical; just cautious by nature!

 

[32gb x 180 = >5,760 raw pictures; a lot more if they are JPEGs. That is a lot of priceless material to risk losing if the card proves faulty or you should lose it]

 

Not really a prolific shooter....I shoot in Raw & JPEG. I think I would be more prone to loosing pictures if I carry multiple cards actually. This way I can travel and shoot as much as I like. Is there a risk sure. The only way I would loose the card would be if I loose my camera. What I also like is the high 30MB/s data transfer rate. Will I ever use the card to capacity? Most likely not, but having the comfort of never needing to swap memory cards when traveling is comforting. Probably not a bad idea to carry one extra 4GB or 8GB card though just in case the main card ever stops working.

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