What's the largest SD card the Q2 can take?

[Leica Guy]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

9 hours ago, Cheesehead said:

You mention that while traveling you transfer from SD card to SSD.  I have tried that method but have not found a satisfactory way to transfer to SSD without also bringing a computer.  In the end I usually just have my single copy on an SD until I get home and can move to my hard drive.  Every month I also back up from my hard drive to a second physical drive that is not generally attached to the computer, as well as a cloud backup.

Some have mentioned the problem with changes in technology.  Some of you, like me, once saved computer files to cassette tapes and recorded the tape counter position to have easier access.  Every 3-5 years when my computer gets updated, I also copy my entire archive onto whatever the new format is.  Generally a new computer will be access data from a singe generation of formats ago, but it becomes hit and miss trying to read anything older than that.  I now need external devices to see what is on my CDs.  Floppy disks would require major resources and punch cards (which will last 100+ years in a cool dry room) pretty much need to go to the recycler.

I should have mentioned I do take along a laptop that runs Lightroom. I use that to import photos and I use an external SSD as the location of the catalog and photos. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to bringing a laptop. I use a MacBook Air so it’s not overly big or heavy. 
At one time I owned a dedicated device that I could plug in an SD card and It would copy to its own internal drive. I finally gave up on that. Fairly expensive and the internal drive was not SSD. I’ve not looked recently at what’s available. 

[iRandom]

I haven't taken a vacation longer than week in quite some time. If I did, I think I'd probably go with a combination of multiple SDs and maybe one of the backup drives that have an SD reader in order to have a second copy. I prefer not to travel with a laptop since I don't like to leave anything valuable in the hotel room and I've never been the iPad type.

I've given up on longterm offline storage since nothing is future-proofed. Longterm HW compatibly aside, it seems like most of the media requires it to be plugged in every so often to refresh or some just degrades over time. Since storage capacity continues to increase I've decided to just keep everything live. My primary library lives on my laptop and is mirrored in the cloud for access on all my devices. My laptop is backed up to a fire-hardened locally connected HDD and also has online backup. I used to also have a bootable backup, but the latest MacOS has made that tricky. My photos (library, digital negatives & archive) are additionally mirrored to a little RAID drive. 

I've been lucky in that all the photo software I use is able to read the RAW format for any digital camera I've ever used (that is commendable of the SW companies) and that JPEG doesn't look like it is going anywhere anytime soon. If I ever need to change the format I can easily do a bulk conversion since everything is stored locally.

[marchyman]

23 hours ago, Leica Guy said:

The only medium that will survive for 100 years or maybe even more than 20

20 is too low.  I have in my on-line and in computer collection digital images that are more than 20 years old.  Will they last another 20?  Don't know.  They aren't very good images given the low resolution and limited dynamic range of 1990s era digital cameras.  They are family snapshots that are cherished nevertheless. 

[vedivv]

I normally use a 32GB card in my Q2,  but use a 512GB card when I am vacationing (shooting DNG+JPG). Had not ran out of space on long vacations yet. Carrying a laptop with Lightroom is very helpful, as the software can provide 50% space saving with lossless compression.  

Have requested lossless compression for DNG and low quality JPG multiple times, but never saw implementation.  Hopefully we can see that in future firmware update.

For backup purpose, cloud and local RAID are much better options.

[PhotoCruiser]

When I travel then I carry always a laptop, my Surface Pro or now a MacBook Pro M1 to be able to do my daily Computer tasks and see the photos I shot.
I had several LaCie Rugged HDD drives and they never failed, but now I made a external drive with a SSD as they are much more sturdy than rotating platters and moving  heads.
For my use is a 32GB SD card enough to save the daily photos on them and save them in the evening to the Laptop and make a backup on the external drive.
For extended travel or extreme conditions I would carry a second SSD external disk and maybe a bunch of SD cards

Chris