[paulh]

You can often find smaller capacity cards for sale on fleabay. I recently found some Sandisk 4 gb compact flash cards for my *ist D. Just check for a reputable seller.

[photoptimist]

I have to admit that I decided about eighteen years ago that I wouldn't purchase a digital camera until I had established some type of backup capability; at the time, I was thinking of using CDs - but hard drives have continue to progress. As a computing professional, I would have never saved something on digital media without this capability, and I did have that by the time I switched to digital in 2007.

I was immunized against photolossophobia by living with film for a couple of decades. Backups were impossible and every image from a trip was subject to the whims of a failed camera, aggressive airport X-ray, corrupted film lab chemistry, loss, or theft. Despite the risks, I never lost an image.

P.S. the largest capacity image storage device most people used back then was 36 exposure rolls! (That's only a 0.72 GB card if images are 20 MB a pop.)

[kwb]

I use 8, 16 or 32GB card in Q7, they all work fine.

I was immunized against photolossophobia by living with film for a couple of decades. Backups were impossible and every image from a trip was subject to the whims of a failed camera, aggressive airport X-ray, corrupted film lab chemistry, loss, or theft. Despite the risks, I never lost an image.

Lucky you, photoptimist!

In my case, the first digital camera I owned (Olympus Camedia something) suddenly decided to go crazy. The very first day's worth of pictures of my second child, then-newborn, were all lost! Memory card technology was still in its infancy, SD card didn't exist (OK it might have existed when this happened, but not when I bought the camera), and my camera used SmartMedia. If you don't remember, they looked like thinner but longer SD cards, the memory card adapter had the exact shape of a 3.5" floppy disk, you would insert the card into the adapter and then stick the adapter into the 3.5" floppy drive to read the data out from PC! Later I have found that SmartMedia is notorious for corrupting its own file system.
SmartMedia - Wikipedia

Because of this, I and my wife became digital photolossophobic for quite some time and went back to film P&S for a year or two for kids' pictures, though we continued to use that camera for things of non-critical importance.

Fast forward 7 or 8 years, my daughter asked for her babyhood pictures for a school project. "Um, important pictures like that are only PRINTED on PAPER (what a concept), and most of those prints are at your grandparents' house in Japan, but let's see what we have on my PC." "Hey dad, you have more pictures of big sis than mine!" "Um, yes, that's because the digital camera used to work before you were born, but it happened to fail right after that, since then we mostly used film camera for some time", and as I spoke I was feeling as if I'm making some really lame excuse.


Fortunately there was at least one good picture that she thought was OK , but needless to say that I made sure to visit my parent's house on summer (or was that winter?) vacation to dig out old photo albums.

[dean45]

I have a 32GB in both my Q10 & Q7.
If you have a bigger blank SD card you want to use put it in & format the card. If the capacity is too great it will not format or
it will format the maximum amount. I found this out with a 2005 vintage Nikon P&S, it would not format a card bigger than
4GB, the instruction book did not say anything since there were no SD HC cards when the camera was made. The Nikon website
only listed older SD cards for the camera I guess they did not care to provide information for their older cameras.

[Erich_H]

I only use 8G SD cards for my Q, K100D Super and X-5.
I don't shoot long video clips, so it doesn't matter much that they are a bit slower than larger capacity cards. Also, if a card should die or disappear there is not too much lost. Naturally, if I take a lot of shots in a day, or important ones, they get backed up to hard drive.

I don't think I could live with a full 64G card getting corrupt or lost. Just imagine the amount of work it would need to try to sort it out after recovery. I once had to do it on an 8G Card from my Sony A290. Half full, not SanDisk.

I bought a whole bunch of SanDisk 8G cards on sale some years ago but they are almost finished now, so I'll have to rethink soon. I don't think I'll be able to find new ones.

Explanation: I never erase full cards. I archive them like negatives of old.

Thanks/Erich

[barondla]

I only use 8G SD cards for my Q, K100D Super and X-5.
I don't shoot long video clips, so it doesn't matter much that they are a bit slower than larger capacity cards. Also, if a card should die or disappear there is not too much lost. Naturally, if I take a lot of shots in a day, or important ones, they get backed up to hard drive.

I don't think I could live with a full 64G card getting corrupt or lost. Just imagine the amount of work it would need to try to sort it out after recovery. I once had to do it on an 8G Card from my Sony A290. Half full, not SanDisk.

I bought a whole bunch of SanDisk 8G cards on sale some years ago but they are almost finished now, so I'll have to rethink soon. I don't think I'll be able to find new ones.

Explanation: I never erase full cards. I archive them like negatives of old.

Thanks/Erich

I know others that save memory cards full of pictures. Card manufacturers state that their memory isn't archival. Always figured they said this so as to not be liable for any lost images.

In another forum I posted about using 30 SD cards (some have stored files for ~10 years) to show in photo class. I found this year 5 cards wouldn't play their pictures back on camera screen. 3 of those will play in a laptop. Obviously degradation has set in. Recommend checking your cards and making sure there are back ups.

Thanks,
barondla

[photoptimist]

I know others that save memory cards full of pictures. Card manufacturers state that their memory isn't archival. Always figured they said this so as to not be liable for any lost images.

In another forum I posted about using 30 SD cards (some have stored files for ~10 years) to show in photo class. I found this year 5 cards wouldn't play their pictures back on camera screen. 3 of those will play in a laptop. Obviously degradation has set in. Recommend checking your cards and making sure there are back ups.

Thanks,
barondla

Yep! Flash works by inducing a tiny electrical charge into a floating gate (a patch of insulated metal). That charge will slowly leak over time (a year or two) and lose data unless that card is periodically powered-on and all the data is refreshed.

Flash is not for archival storage.

[Erich_H]

Yep! Flash works by inducing a tiny electrical charge into a floating gate (a patch of insulated metal). That charge will slowly leak over time (a year or two) and lose data unless that card is periodically powered-on and all the data is refreshed.

Flash is not for archival storage.

Thanks. I didn't know that (meaning: haven't been bothering to find out for myself).

This is a lot like during the Bronze Age when you periodically had to fast forward and rewind your ZX81/Speccy computer cassette tapes to prevent "magnetic degradation".

My routine usually works like this:

Card full.
Dump to minimum two hard drives (one or more removable USB hard drives / computer I'm using).
Then archive cards.

I'll have to check/power up my cards in archive binder.

I'll get back to you on the results. I don't think I have any SD cards that are 10 years old. I remember using CF, Memory Stick, SM cards.

Thinking back to the silver oxide days when you only had to regulate the archive climate...

Thanks/Erik

[Erich_H]

I know others that save memory cards full of pictures. Card manufacturers state that their memory isn't archival. Always figured they said this so as to not be liable for any lost images.

In another forum I posted about using 30 SD cards (some have stored files for ~10 years) to show in photo class. I found this year 5 cards wouldn't play their pictures back on camera screen. 3 of those will play in a laptop. Obviously degradation has set in. Recommend checking your cards and making sure there are back ups.

Thanks,
barondla

It was with great trepidation I inserted the oldest memory card I could find, a Kingston Compact Flash from July 2008, into the card reader.

It contains pictures from the Minolta Dimage 5, my first "real" digital camera.

And it still works.

I'll now have to go through the rest of my cards, and hope I'm as lucky with them.

And start refreshing every second year, waiting for laser digital imaging crystal engraving technology.

Thanks/Erik

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