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How Do You Manage Your SD Card Library?
txmadman writes "Like a lot of my colleagues and all of my three children, I have several SD , mini-SD, and micro-SD cards for various purposes: cameras, cell phones, my laptop, etc. These things are handy to have around, offer easy and significant storage, but are very easily lost. We have also have run into some instances where it wasn't clear whose SD card was whose, and have also started to see a need for a storage mechanism. I have seen SD card 'wallets' and such, but have never seen anyone actually use one. So: How do you manage and keep track of your SD cards?"
holds a whole bunch of them.
I keep the cards with the device I use them most with.
MicroSD - my phone or GPS
SD - Point and click camera
CF - SLR
Oh and chuck smaller capacity cards as you replace them (like the ones that they ship with cameras and fit 3 images). They're worse than useless - they're a distraction (possibly at a crucial time in photography).
I find I don't need thousands of SD cards. I probably have 20 SD cards and 10 CF cards.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Fire safes are generally designed to keep their contents below the combustion point of paper. Hard drives will melt at much, much cooler temperatures.
4 gig cards are not that expensive and they hold an amazing amount of stuff. Probably 8 gig cards will be pretty standard in a year or two. So just get the largest cards you can afford and you won't need to have lots of extra ones lying around.
My camera case has about 5 SD cards ranging from 512 megs to 2 gigs, and I really could replace them all with one or two 4GB cards. That's a lot of pictures (but we take a lot of video clips too).
Why someone needs extra SD cards for a phone is beyond me. My 512 meg micro sd is larger than I would ever want in my flip phone. I guess a smart phone with a 3 megapixel camera would warrant something more capacious. So a 4 gig card should do it.
This is really not rocket science. It's like those people who used to ask, how large a hard disk should I get with my new PC? Well, the answer was, and still is, as large as you can afford.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Don't flame me but... have you ever thought of actually trying one of those SD card "wallets" you mentioned? o.O
It seems to me that you posted a possible solution along with your question...
All of my various memory cards and flash drives, when not actively in use in a device, reside in a giant coffee cup on my desk.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I have several SD , mini-SD, and micro-SD cards for various purposes: cameras, cell phones, my laptop, etc. [...] How do you manage and keep track of your SD cards?"
I have a two-stage plan, which I thought was a fairly common technique:
1. Make sure my flash cards have sufficient memory that I will not need to switch between cards for the same device. You know, 1000 full quality photos or whatever.
2. Leave the cards in their devices and keep track of the devices by normal means.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
For some of the larger schools, you're looking at 2,000 kids, and you want a minimum of four to six good photos of each kid. 2,000 times 4 is 8,000 photos.
The only way to handle that amount of pictures is to shoot tethered. That is, directly into an attached computer. Most pro-bodies can do this and You can get wireless kits (wifi) to get rid of the cable.
Happy shooting
TCAP-Abort
I have a little SD card case (from www.7dayshop.com) which is about the size of a cigarette case that can hold 8 cards but I use some of the space in it hold my blue tooth adapter.
The good thing about it is that it is nice and durable which you want when you are lugging them about with your netbook.
When I get to more than 8 cards I probably choose to upgrade some of my older cards to bigger faster versions and not bother carrying the older ones around with me.
I agree that keeping track of memory cards isn't that difficult (I even actually use a card wallet for some of them - they work fine), especially if you label the cards....
On the other hand - the rest of your argument is fairly meaningless given the basic question as you don't know the usage patterns of the person asking the question (and which unfortunately wasn't supplied) - and just assume things.
For one thing - 'on 8 2-gig cards' kind of warrants the question on the best way to organise them as you are talking about sizable number of cards.
On the other side - you just say '800 20 megapixel RAW images on 16GB(8*2GB)' sounds like an 'impressive' number, but it really isn't - for one thing the size of the raw images depends on more than just 20megapixel - I get ~1000 12megapixel RAW images on 2 8GB cards (at 14bpp). And while even a 1000 images sounds an impressive number - my 5 8GB cards weren't quite enough for a week in Istanbul (in total there I took about 55GB worth of photos). How much you can fit on what cards really depends on the actual usage pattern. Just that I shoot almost exclusively in RAW doesn't mean everyone else does...
The only good tip I could give someone who juggles around with many cards - apart from labelling them, is to use card wallets and place cards depending on whether they are ready to use (empty) or full: simply put them with the label facing towards you if the cards are empty, and with the label facing away from you if they're full. That way it's easy to keep track of which cards in your wallet you can still use to take more images, and which cards are already full...
I shoot raw + jpeg on a 12 megapixel Nikon, so I blow through memory space very quicky. I use 8 gig high-end cards (I paid about $100 each for them) at the moment, and some of my collegues laugh at me for putting so many eggs in one basket with those giant cards. They still use 1-4 gig cards so they won't lose so many pictures if a card fails.
Even raw + jpeg, I'll get about 250 images on a 4 gig (still a good 8 rolls of film before a change), so I don't see why you seem to think professionals want larger cards.
High speed is the reason to pay so much. In burst mode shooting raw, my camera's good for about 8 pictures with it's buffer and then I'm at the mercy of the SD card. Even a 20 MB/s card limits me to a couple of pictures per second.
I *really* need raw mode, and I also bring my notebook with me everywhere for backups during a shoot. 2 cards and the hard drive device works perfectly.
The bottle idea isn't so good because you have to remember which shoot those full cards are from. And your microSD super cheap cards are so slow I wouldn't even think of putting them in my camera (and my camera will buffer 8 raw images before memory speed is even an issue).
So where do the socks go - do they hide in the washing machine? The drier? In someone else's sock drawer?
The dryer does actually eat them. Some years ago, our drier died. I thought..."ok, I'll take it apart and salvage any useful parts. motor, pulleys, etc".
Upon taking the drum out...there was literally a double handful of singleton socks inside the box, and a coupla dollars in coins.