Handy Thing About Dual Card Slots

[rpcrowe]

I seldom use the dual card slots on my A7iii for the original reason for the 2-slots: backup in case of failure...

However I found that dual slots was handy in one case. Since I never write to Card-2, I never remove it from the camera, which was handy today.

My wife and I visited our daughter and son-in-law for a Christmas Dinner. As we were leaving our house, my wife said, "Please take your camera and tripod because I want a family group Christmas picture."

Well in the midst of packing presents and food for the visit combined with getting the three dogs we were taking ready, I got a little flustered and didn't check if the A7iii had an SD card... It didn't have a card in slot one but, since I never remove the card from slot 2; it was sitting in the camera ready to shoot. my professional pride was saved

I am usually more careful regarding memory. In fact, I have been carrying a memory card wallet with memory cards in the glove box of my car for years. Just in case I forget to bring a card. However, we were driving my wife's car, not mine, for the visit...

It would be easy to beat myself up for the memory lapse but, it ended up as no problem...

Solution 1: Try to do a better job packing
Solution 2: An extra memory card wallet with an SD card in my wife's car

[Val Mansfield]

I'm glad it doesn't only happen to me! At least my Canon is now set up so that it tells me there is no card and doesn't let me make a complete fool of myself.

[davidedric]

Well, I don't have dual memory slots. My routine is simply:

Take card out of camera, copy images to computer and check a few, make a back-up copy, put card back in camera and format.

So basically my camera on the shelf will always have a card in it.

A fully charged battery though, that's a diferent matter

Hope that you had a good visit.

Dave

[Shadowman]

Well, I don't have dual memory slots. My routine is simply:

Take card out of camera, copy images to computer and check a few, make a back-up copy, put card back in camera and format.

So basically my camera on the shelf will always have a card in it.

A fully charged battery though, that's a diferent matter

Hope that you had a good visit.

Dave

I follow a similar routine although quite a few times I've forgotten to delete images and started shooting another sequence, luckily I have two slots on my main camera so its less of an issue. On my backup camera I only have one slot so if that's the only camera I'm carrying and I forget to delete previous images; it can lead to card at full capacity pretty quickly.

[Manfred M]

Even though my main camera has dual card slots, I follow Dave's routine and re-insert the card I have downloaded immediately after doing so.

With batteries it is even simpler; I use a camera with a battery pack, so there are always two fully charged batteries in my camera and I will swap out the battery I was using and charge it with a new one immediately after a shoot. I have 5 batteries for the camera.

[DanK]

I also follow Dave's process

[zen]

Me too!

Happy New Year all!

Zen

[bje07]

The same method as Dave, I also have 3 or 4 spare batteries in my bag (which I recharge or check from time to time).

[shreds]

Dual card slots....brilliant and wouldn’t be without them having used them for so many years. Similarly, always remove card(s) back at base and immediately back up results and clear the cards then format them.

Batteries check fully charged and backups in bag day before any outing and recharge upon return. With a dead battery you are stuffed so its a good process to adopt and ensure there is redundancy in your workflow.

(At a recent charity event I attended, the woman doing the pro group photos suddenly went bright red and said ‘take five’. One flashgun and five dead batteries. My thought was empathy as I know things go wrong but equally she was ill prepared and had no backup solution to instantly switch to. That to me was obvious. (Another loaded strobe in the kit bag would have avoided the embarrassment).

Unfortunately too many people think they can pull off such events without adequate prep or experience. She would also have produced better results with OCF on a stand or two, and a suitable backdrop, but I was not there in lecturing/teaching mode.