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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
How to organize CF cards with 2 cameras.
Nic Coury, Photographer
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Monterey | CA | | Posted: 3:00 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> So I picked up a D300 today to adjoin my D700.
I used SanDisk III 8GB on my D700 and SanDisk II 2GB on my D2H and they were marked well and organized.
Now that I have two similar cameras, I'm finding it harder to organize my CF cards with both cameras. I'm only going to use the SanDisk III 8gb on both, but my question is this:
1.) Do you just throw whatever card you grab in whichever camera or
2.) Do you have a stack of cards specifically for each separate camera?
I think I just need to sleep on it...
Thanks,
~ nic |
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Jeff Bennett, Student/Intern
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Livermore | CA | USA | Posted: 3:37 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> I have a D200 and D300 and just grab cards at random and format them before use.
If you want to go the way of organizing cards I would buy two different card wallets and make one of them for D300 and one for the D700. |
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Joshua Brown, Photographer
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Waynesville | NC | USA | Posted: 3:51 AM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> I have a D200 and D700 and use the cards interchangeably between the two cameras without any problems. Just like Jeff, I format the cards in camera prior to shooting. I have a friend however, who likes to keep the separate. One set of cards have a sharpie with an "X" drawn across and the others are unmarked. Seems to work for him. |
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Tim Casey, Photographer
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Gainesville | FL | USA | Posted: 4:28 AM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> I format them before shooting, so I just use them in the order I have them labeled, regardless of which camera they go into. Never had an issue with it, I ingest them into Photo Mechanic and sort by the time they were shot. |
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Colin Heyburn, Photographer
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ARMAGH | NI | United Kingdom | Posted: 7:00 AM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> This may not be of much use but I have 2 cameras and 2 CF cards and a laptop. I shoot and when I get the chance I download to laptop. I then take CF card out of card reader and reinsert into camera and format and repeat until end of fixture. Whatever works for you. |
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Mark Peters, Photographer
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Highland | IL | USA | Posted: 8:10 AM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> Format twice and make sure that my file names (in 1d series) are distinct to make sure that I don't end up with duplicate file names. Other than that, its just whatever card is handy. |
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Chuck Liddy, Photographer
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Durham | NC | USA | Posted: 8:42 AM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> I kind of do what mark does. I like the big card (8gig) for my MarkII5D since it shoots huge files (and I might have to do video) but the real key is to have the file numbering system on the three cameras I use different. I use my three initials at the front of one file, the end of the other and just two letters on the third. I also reformat every time I replace the card, well not everytime, sometimes when I'm in a hurry I'll start shooting and end up with the files from the day before but I just delete them in photo mechanic so I don't have duplicates |
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Brian Cripe, Photographer, Assistant
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Palm Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 10:37 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> Since both cameras have similar file sizes, it really shouldn't make a difference. You might be more concerned if you were shooting a D3x and a D700, wanting the extra file space for the bigger D3x files, but with the cameras you have I wouldn't worry about it.
Cards are fairly inexpensive (look for rebates - Sandisk has one right now - I'd call the sponsors and ask them). I shoot mostly with 4gb cards, with some 2gb and a few larger ones in there also (large cards mainly for underwater work). With a good organizer (I like the ThinkTank Pocket Rocket) you can keep shot and blank cards separate and be good to go all day long. |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 10:37 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> I use a D3 with two CF card slots. I use one slot for RAW, one slot for JPEG. In my card wallet I keep pairs of cards ready - 8Gb for the RAW slot, 4Gb for the JPEG slot. After cards are transferred to the laptop, I rotate them back to the card wallet to use as a backup until I have a chance to back up the laptop. The backup usually happens quickly (end of the day), so I don't have tons of cards tied up as backups.
Once the laptop is backed up, the card sets are put into either camera, formatted, and returned to rotation.
A handy way to keep filenames unique is to rename them by serial number as they are ingested into Photo Mechanic. A rename string such as "slug{iptcyear4}{iptcmonth0}{iptcday0}_{serial}_{seqn}" gives you a filename like "slug20090801_12345_0001", where 12345 is the camera serial number. Since the serial numbers will be different, the filenames should be unique. |
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Chuck Steenburgh, Photographer
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Lexington | VA | USA | Posted: 11:32 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> As long as you're using good-quality, UDMA-enabled cards, it doesn't matter which card you use in which. One thing I do on all of my cameras is to use a digit in the custom filename (in-camera setting) to differentiate them. So my D2H numbers files _CS1XXXX, while my D300's are CS3 and CS4 (CS2 used to be my D200 but that's been sold).
DON'T use the Ultra II card in the D300/D700. It's way too slow.
For those of you shooting with D700/D3/D300 and a non-UDMA camera like the D2H or D200, you'd be smart to use only UDMA-enabled cards in the former. You can use UDMA-enabled cards in the latter, and they'll download to your computer faster (if you're using a UDMA reader, anyway) but you get no benefit in-camera. |
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Nik Habicht, Photographer
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Levittown | PA | USA | Posted: 11:44 AM on 08.28.09 |
->> I used to format upon insertion --- and for most of my digital career carried cards in different capacities, due to price. (Anyone else remember paying $300 for a 512 meg card?)My only concern was differentiating shot cards from ready to be shot cards --- and I solved that by flipping over the shot cards.
Label up -- ready to insert and format; label down -- shot and waiting for ingestion/archiving. I never reformatted cards until I had verified the existence of images on my computer's hard drive and in the archive at the paper. |
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Brett Groehler, Photographer
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Duluth | MN | USA | Posted: 12:00 PM on 08.28.09 |
->> I use a D3, D2x and D200 sometimes at the same event. I have used the file naming feature in the camera setting to be unique to each...ie Nd3, d2x,D200..
Even if you switch cards back and forth between cameras the file keep the name made by that camera.
Hope this helps. |
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Nic Coury, Photographer
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Monterey | CA | | Posted: 1:33 PM on 08.28.09 |
->> Thanks everyone.
I think I'm just going to go with a batch of 8gb cards and just have two pouches for empty cards and full cards.
Cheers,
~ nic |
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Philip Johnson, Photographer
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Garland | TX | USA | Posted: 1:53 PM on 08.28.09 |
->> Hi Nic,
That is one way to go. What i do is in my CF wallet put all the cards in facing one direction, with the name of the card showing. When I finish with a card I insert it backwards into the wallet. That way I know what cards have been used and which one are ready to go. |
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Michael Maano, Photographer
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Jacksonville | FL | USA | Posted: 1:54 PM on 08.28.09 |
| ->> I sometimes use 3 Nikon cameras to cover an event and I have a different prefix to the file names for each camera . I don't specifically set aside a card for each camera but I make sure that I have the largest card in the camera that I'll be using the most. Now what I find important is to sync the time on the cameras so when I ingest them into photo mechanic I can sort by capture time and all the files will be in the chronological order that I shot them. |
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Dennis Wierzbicki, Photographer
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Plainfield | IL | USA | Posted: 9:08 AM on 08.29.09 |
| ->> FWIW, I also use the trick Philip mentioned to tell me which cards are used and which aren't while they're in my card wallet. I reformat each card in camera prior to use, and something else I learned to do is to take an image simultaneously with all my cameras at the beginning of the game (if using more than 2, you may need to enlist a volunteer to mash the shutter on the 3rd and 4th bodies). Then after ingesting the cards, I synchronize the times of all the cameras in PhotoMechanic. This way, when I switch to "Sort by Capture Time", the images are sorted correctly. Not a big deal unless you're constantly swapping back and forth between bodies and need an accurate chronology of shots. |
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Samuel Lewis, Photographer
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Miami | FL | USA | Posted: 8:19 AM on 08.30.09 |
| ->> The D700 and D300 allow you to change the file prefix. I set a different prefix for each of the cameras I'm using so that I can identify which camera produced which image (and to track any problems back to a particular camera). Then I grab a memory card depending upon the size (most of my cards are 2gb, 4gb or 8gb); however, I don't dedicate certain cards to certain cameras as there's really no reason to do that. Once I insert a memory card, I let the camera format the card and shoot with it. |
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