I just ordered a R6Mii this morning. Do i really need a V90 card? Ive read that unless i am doing serious video work or continuous shots that a V30 will work just fine. Anyone have a R6 and use a V30?
I have an R6 and use Sandisk Extreme Pro SD cards labeled 95MB/sec and v30. I believe the V rating is for video use and represents the minimum continuous write speed. I can shoot 4k/60 with no issues. I shoot cRaw and can basically shoot bursts as long as I practically need. Your buffer will be a little smaller on the Mk2 due to the slightly higher megapixel count. I have some older cards that only write 30MB/sec and they are definitely much slower to clear the buffer from a burst.
Years ago, on a GH1, you supposedly needed faster cards for video. But it turned out you really needed them on raw files much more than video.
So I can't comment on this exact camera, but it might not be a bad idea to get V90 if you're seriously using 40fps a lot of the time and shooting raw. Doesn't hurt to try the V30 though, cant imagine it not working. Might be fine on lower framerates.
When I bought an R6 MK II a couple of years back, I owned several old V30 cards, and they worked fine for short bursts and 4k/30 video. I eventually bought a mitt full of V90 cards when the price started drifting down. V90 are a lot more expensive now than they were a couple of years back.
Gochugogi wrote:
When I bought an R6 MK II a couple of years back, I owned several old V30 cards, and they worked fine for short bursts and 4k/30 video. I eventually bought a mitt full of V90 cards when the price started drifting down. V90 are a lot more expensive now than they were a couple of years back.
Yeah cost is always a consideration. Faster cards also tend to be only available in higher capacities which further increases the cost difference. If super cheap UHS1 32 GB cards will keep you happy for several years, why buy 128GB UHS2 cards today?
I buy minimum v60 cards for R6II. That's the sweet spot for bursts in RAW and 4k/60.
The benefit of v90 cards for R6II is a faster transfer only. when you use a fast card reader.
If you're not shooting fast action where you need to fire off 10fps+ continually, then V30 cards are perfectly fine.
The RAW size of files are around 30MB per photo. Regardless of what's written on the card, UHS-I cards max out at about 70MBps. That means you can write about 2 images per second to a card. Taking an educated guess the R6II can buffer at least 50 images in memory. If you filled the buffer 50 x 30MB = 1,500MB / 70MBps = ~21 seconds to write it out to a card.
If you're just doing some family pictures, travel / landscape, street, etc. it's unlikely you'll even notice a slow down. If you're doing anything with a flash or strobe I wouldn't expect you to exceed 2 shots per second for any extended length of time. I use V30 cards all the time still and it's not really an issue.
Another point I can bring up is that the older Canon 5DIV is a higher resolution and has files closer to the 40MB size. That camera only has a UHS-I interface, so anyone using SD cards was limited to what you are on your R6II with V30 cards. If people were fine using larger files sizes at that time on SD, then it shouldn't be an issue now for those same use cases.
There's one weird limitation for the cards: SD HC (up to 32G) won't give you the high frame rate no matter how fast that card is. I think it's gotta do something with FAT32 vs exFAT.
I got high frame rate on slower SD XC card but did not get it on super fast SD HC card.
Ovacheerdad wrote:
I just ordered a R6Mii this morning. Do i really need a V90 card? Ive read that unless i am doing serious video work or continuous shots that a V30 will work just fine. Anyone have a R6 and use a V30?
With regard to stills and the R6II, if you plan to shoot in e-shutter at 20 or 40fps, the V90 cards will clear the buffer the fastest to allow you to resume shooting, or continue shooting. V30 cards will do this much slower. V90 cards are also much faster to download with a suitably fast card reader. This becomes relevant if you're filling 64, 128, 256GB and larger cards and need to offload the files quickly.
If none of this applies to you and you are not in a rush to download images from the card, then V30 will be fine.
I use V30, V60 and V90 in the R6II for various purposes and all have worked well. V60 are kind of a compromise solution. They're more expensive than V30 but will download at similar speeds to V90. V60 card write speed is usually somewhere in between and certain cards might be closer to V90 yet are usually much closer in price to V30. I used V60 cards primarily to shoot 4K video where the V30 would not sustain the minimum required write speed.
I added V30 cards for specific high volume stills situations where I would not be hitting the buffer limit and could accept the lower download speed. At the time, 256GB cards were only around $25 on sale for Sandisk Extreme (non-pro) and I got 10 for a little more than a single V90 (prices have since gone up due to the global flash memory shortage). For these kinds of events I shoot mirrored to both card slots. I put a V60 or V90 in one slot and a V30 in the other as back up. I then use the V60 or V90 to benefit from the faster download speed and it lets me stretch out my more limited number of V60 and V90 cards by using V30 in the second slot because the V30s are only needed for redundancy in case of a problem with the faster cards. Of course if I'm shooing something like sports that requires fast buffer clearing, then it's V90 in both slots.
Ovacheerdad wrote:
I just ordered a R6Mii this morning. Do i really need a V90 card? Ive read that unless i am doing serious video work or continuous shots that a V30 will work just fine. Anyone have a R6 and use a V30?
UHS-I cards give me all I need with the R6 Mk ii, but, like others have written, a lot depends on your use cases.
Gochugogi wrote:
When I bought an R6 MK II a couple of years back, I owned several old V30 cards, and they worked fine for short bursts and 4k/30 video. I eventually bought a mitt full of V90 cards when the price started drifting down. V90 are a lot more expensive now than they were a couple of years back.
128GB UHS-II half-duplex were $110-120 a few years ago, but now are 50% higher.
Fortunately I only need them for the R7 and have enough for that. UHS-I is too slow for 15 or 30FPS.
Sony also uses Type A and I have a bunch of Type B for the good Nikon and Canon bodies.
