Recommended SD cards?

[haydenc]

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If you insert a UHS-II card into slot 2, will it still work? I appreciate there's no benefit, but having two identical cards just reduces the chance of a cock-up (always on the cards).

Yes it works.

The UHS-II cards have extra connectors that work when used in a UHS-II slot.

If a UHS-II is used in a UHS-I slot, it just transfers at a slower speed.

What people found however was that some Sandisk UHS-II cards were much slower than the 95MB/sec you could get with the top UHS-I cards in UHS-I slots.

 

The only card I know that gets top performance in UHS-I and UHS-II is the Lexar x2000 UHS-II cards.

They are expensive and if you already have a swag of the Sandisk Expreme Pro 95MB cards, you will not see much real world improvement with going for the type II cards

[acapella]

Dear reader,

 

Just started to 'use 'Leica SL for the Leica look of the photo's and the minimalistic set. So in the midst of a learning curve (maybe the most pleasant period when using a camera).

 

So lots of questions; one related to speed. With a UHS ll  (SanDisk Extreme Pro 280 MB/s 64 GB) card what can I expect for time to  write a full buffer to the card. It seems to take about a minute. Cannot find any figures on this, so just asked myself if this is right or can be made quicker (card type?)

 

Thanks

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[steppenw0lf]

What did you do to fill the buffer ?  Filming is more demanding than photos.

As I concentrate on the pictures and not on the buffer, I do not know if I have ever filled it. But usually it takes only a few seconds to write the data.

How did you measure this "minute" ? This is incredibly long ...

 

The fastest card I have used until now is the Lexar 1000x , And it is plenty fast for me (photos). It is UHS-II and good enough for filming 4k .

The Lexar 2000x is theoretically even faster (that means I have not used it, and do not know if it makes a difference). No idea if the camera is as fast as the card.

 

Maybe concentrate more on the photos ? Or are you a web-tester and not really interested in taking pictures ?

 

And by the way, the numbers you mentioned are just the theoretical maxima (and probably for reading data only). No guarantee that in reality this is ever reached. (I would almost say, guaranteed that it is never reached in reality ;-)

For filming 4k e.g. a minimum of 30 MB/s write speed is guaranteed. So this is a realistic number, and maybe twice or three times that amount is possible.

Maybe test the card with your PC/Mac and see how much speed you get there. And clearly separate reading from writing.

Edited May 10, 2016 by steppenw0lf

[ramarren]

Dear reader,

 

Just started to 'use 'Leica SL for the Leica look of the photo's and the minimalistic set. So in the midst of a learning curve (maybe the most pleasant period when using a camera).

 

So lots of questions; one related to speed. With a UHS ll  (SanDisk Extreme Pro 280 MB/s 64 GB) card what can I expect for time to  write a full buffer to the card. It seems to take about a minute. Cannot find any figures on this, so just asked myself if this is right or can be made quicker (card type?)

 

Thanks

 

 

A full buffer on the SL the way I have it configured (JPEG+raw, JPEG Fine+full resolution) is 33 images. It takes the camera between 1.5-2 seconds to complete an image write to the card, based roughly timing the busy light, so it's no surprise that a full buffer's worth of images would take about a minute or so to complete writing to the card. 

 

I'm using a fast, UHS II  Lexar 128G card in the top slot for that timing. I think it's rated for 150Mbps write speed, but doesn't seem any faster than a Sandisk Extreme Pro 64Gb card rated at 95Mbps. It may be that that is simply how fast the camera's bus is. 

 

Since the SL writes are fully buffered and I only rarely do much in way of making 33 sequential exposures at high speed, as far as my use is concerned it writes to card instantaneously. 

[steppenw0lf]

Short plausibility check: 2 GB buffer divided by 33 results in about 60 MB per photo.

60 MB written in 1.5 to 2 seconds means   30-40 MB/s write speed. I would expect more for a fast card, but maybe it is safer first to measure the card speed at the PC or Mac.

Mine does not fully support UHS-II, so maybe somebody else with the latest equipment can do it  ...      

Edited May 10, 2016 by steppenw0lf

[haydenc]

Short plausibility check: 2 GB buffer divided by 33 results in about 60 MB per photo.

60 MB written in 1.5 to 2 seconds means 30-40 MB/s write speed. I would expect more for a fast card, but maybe it is safer first to measure the card speed at the PC or Mac.

Mine does not fully support UHS-II, so maybe somebody else with the latest equipment can do it ...

You would also need to take into account any processing of the files as they are captured/written out to card.

[ramarren]

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Short plausibility check: 2 GB buffer divided by 33 results in about 60 MB per photo.

60 MB written in 1.5 to 2 seconds means   30-40 MB/s write speed. I would expect more for a fast card, but maybe it is safer first to measure the card speed at the PC or Mac.

Mine does not fully support UHS-II, so maybe somebody else with the latest equipment can do it  ...      

 

I don't bother with "expectations". I just reported what I observed. 

 

You would also need to take into account any processing of the files as they are captured/written out to card.

 

 

Yes. I haven't done the tests, but it will be interesting to see what is observed in various cases: 

• raw only
• JPEG only at various combinations of resolution and quality
• JPEG + raw at various combinations of JPEG resolution and quality

To actually test practical read and write speed take a bit of time which I don't have at the moment. 

 

I do have a brand new Lexar USB3, UHS II compatible card reader right here.... I'll hook it up to my computer and do a quick test of that with the Lexar UHS II card.  Back in a few... 

[acapella]

Thank you all for the extensive answers. Observation seems to be right. No, I am certainly not a web tester but want to know my equipment, where applicable with some (rough) indicative figures.

 

Many thanks

[ramarren]

Here's some data. 

 

I took the Lexar UHS II card and formatted it in SD Card Formatter for each run. 

To establish card speed, I grabbed an image file directory from my repository, moved it to my computer's SSD, and tested both with the Lexar UHS II reader and with the Mac mini's built-in card reader. This is what I get in read and write speeds: 

 

5.53 Gbyte for 255 items

 

Lexar reader:

Outgoing to SD Card 1:17.5 :: .071 Gbyte/second write speed (71 Mbyte/sec)

Incoming from SD Card 0:43.0 :: .129 Gbyte/second read speed (129 Mbyte/sec)

 

Apple reader (2012 Mac mini i7 Quad, 16G RAM, 950T SSD internal, OS X v10.11.4): 

Outgoing to SD card 1:26.2 :: .064 Gbyte/second write speed (64 Mbyte/sec)

Incoming from SD card 1:03.2 :: .088 Gbyte/second read speed (88 Mbyte/sec)

 

Then I took out the SL and did three passes, firing it at high speed continuous until the buffer was full with JPEG+raw (JPEG fine, full resolution), then measuring the time until the busy light stopped flashing. I took the total number of files over to the computer and divided by three on data and items:

 

1.7 Gbyte for 64 items

 

Write time to end of flashing light:

1:12 .024 Gbyte/second

1:15 .022 Gbyte/second

1:11 .024 Gbyte/second

 

That puts the effective write speed in Leica SL in this configuration with this card to 23 Mbytes/second or 34% of card write speed as measured against the average between the Lexar and Mac mini card readers. 

[Big John]

Am using Lexar Professional HC I, 16GB 600x speed and couldn't be happier. Super fast. 

[vk2109]

I use the Sandisk Extreme Pro 64 GB 95mb/s they are rated for 90mb/s write as well.  The Slot one as per specs says 100mb/s so not much improvement with the UHS-II ones. 

only if you downloading to you computer. 

 

the Lexar 1000x ones are tempting too but their write speed is lower than the sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB 95mbs

[ramarren]

I have both the Lexar 128s and the Sandisk Extreme Pro 64s. Can't see much difference between them at all in use. 

[Kazuhikonakayama]

Leica Support tell me their "Official recommended SD Card for SL".

 

 

UHS-1: 

All UHS-1 SD cards

 

UHS-2:

Recommended cards*:

 

SANDISK

EXTREME PRO UHS2 CLASS3 [16GB] [32GB] [64GB]

 

LEXAR

PROFESSIONAL 1000x UHS2 CLASS3 [16GB] [32GB] [64GB] [128GB] [256GB]

PROFESSIONAL 2000x UHS2 CLASS3 [32GB] [64GB]

 

TOSHIBA

EXCERIA PRO CLASS1 [16GB] [32GB] [64GB] [128GB]

EXCERIA PRO CLASS3 [16GB] [32GB] [64GB] [128GB]

 

TRANSCEND

ULTIMATE UHS2 CLASS3 [32GB] [64GB]

 

*Leica performs ongoing compatibility tests of the latest cards available in the market. However, due to changes in production and software of the SD cards, Leica can not guarantee 100% compatibility of the recommended cards.

[wlaidlaw]

I have been using the Lexar Pro 1000X since getting the SL. These were on sale at a great price on Amazon UK but sadly due to our magic shrinking pound (Thanks Brexiteers!!) have gone up from £46 to £57 for a 128GB. 

 

Wilson

[steppenw0lf]

Leica Support tell me their "Official recommended SD Card for SL".

What a surpise.

But actually I never had problems with any "modern" SDHC or SDXC card with the SL or with any other (M, CaNikon, Sony) camera.

 

Too bad that they do not really add useful information, like saying you do not need the fastest cards (save the money), because the camera is not writing data that fast. (Well more than fast enough for me, but not faster than a Lexar 1000x)

Edited July 21, 2016 by steppenw0lf

[ramarren]

As you can see from my measurements above,,any card that can accept sustained writes of about 23-25 Mbytes per second will do fine. I have not tested 4K video performance...

[meerec]

These two cards have given me so much grief -- SL startup time is 7sec to 60sec -- pathetic, so bad ... I contacted Leica Australia about it back in December last year with no constructive reply.

 

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[wlaidlaw]

Usual question - did you format them in SD Formatter prior to use? For the first time do a full over-write format not just a FAT wipe. This seems to be an essential step. 

[meerec]

Usual question - did you format them in SD Formatter prior to use? For the first time do a full over-write format not just a FAT wipe. This seems to be an essential step.

 

There's no 'magic' in whatever that SD formatter is. I've formatted the cards a number of times on my MacBook with the disk utility. Some cards are just unusable in the SL.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[Arang]

I just format them in the SL and have no issues so far.