7D MK II Question

I just ordered a 7D MK II to replace my 60D for shooting action sports. I've never had a camera with dual card slots. What's the best way to use the dual slots - RAW to CF and JPEG to SD?

Normally that is what I do on my 5D3 as well, but to answer your question, it depends. I mean if you intend to shoot for sports then performance is very important and I would either shoot with one card slot or both with the same type. Mix matching RAW+JPG usually tax the camera more and slow down the writing process. RAW to one card at a time would be the faster than RAW+JPG. That is what I have experienced on my 1D3 and 5D3, and I would expect 7D2 is no differ in this matter.

I don't think anybody can tell you what's the best configuration. It depends on the specifications for your shoot and your post processing plans.

I've only had my mk2 for a short time. I've used both card slots with both recording raw and jpeg. Shooting soccer has not run out the buffer yet. Supposedly the mk2 records faster than both the 60d and the 70d and supposedly the cf card records faster than the sd card. I think that eventually I'll just use the cf card. and do both raw and jpeg.

I feel like I posted this a few days ago, but it must have been a different thread!

Dual cards has been around since 2003 or so, and I have been luck enough to be taking advantage of it the whole time. Options have grown, but the answer to your question

....remains the same;

"It Depends"

- Most often I use "autoswitch" so i can keep shooting when the first card is full.

- I also use "RAID-1" a lot, ie: duplicate the information on both cards for redundancy. I always use this for paid gigs,despite the fact that I've never had a card die on me.

- On occasion I am shooting performances for people that need images of decent quality right out of camera, in this case I shoot RAW to one card and Jpeg to the other and hand over the jpegs (more common file type, on SD card also more common card type) They get instant gratification, I get the RAW files to look for masterpieces!

So, again, it depends.


For causal hobby shooting I'd start with "auto-switch" unless you see a value to getting the jpegs on your SD card fro ease of copying to devices that don;t read CF or RAW.

I use RAW for the CF card and JPG for the SD card or JPG to both. I use the SD card as a fail-safe in case the CF card gets corrupted. That was one of the big attractions to the 7D II for me. I shoot a lot of events where you can't recreate it. If a CF card were to fail and I didn't have a redundant copy, I would be out of luck. Until I bought my 5D III last summer, the concern of a card failure was always in the back of my mind. Now, I'm covered with both bodies.

I use RAW in RAID 1 setup like Jake does when I'm shooting spendy weddings. When I shoot sports, I turn off the SD card and just use autoswitch for the rare times my 64gb cf isn't enough. If you still want redundancy to a certain degree without slowing down write speeds, you'll need to do RAW to CF and JPG to SD because the card slot is UHSII, not III. III is insane fast, too bad it isn't in the 7DII. The other day, Lexar 1066x (150MB/s read/write) 128gb went on sale under Amazon Goldbox deals for $60. Insane. And unfortunate that we can't use them to just do dual RAW for sports shoots.

My bad, I meant UHS I and UHS II, not III.

Since they neglected to put WiFi in the camera, I shoot RAW to the CF card, and use an EyeFi Mobi Pro in the SD card slot with jpegs so I can quickly transfer a shot to my phone for sharing. The parents love it when I live post shots from games to our FB group.

Are you a parent or a professional hawking prints? Just curious. Really cool idea though. If I were a parent at the game, I'd definitely appreciate instant uploads.

prime80 wrote in post #17517473
Since they neglected to put WiFi in the camera, I shoot RAW to the CF card, and use an EyeFi Mobi Pro in the SD card slot with jpegs so I can quickly transfer a shot to my phone for sharing.

Sweet. I learn so much on this forum.

I know we already have a thread to post photos from the mark 2 but we could use a thread with just questions and individual procedures that we use to get the most out of the camera.

When I'm shooting sports for the local university, I shoot Raw + jpeg. The Raw is for me and goes to the CF card. The jpeg is for the Sports Information Director and goes to the SD card. The SID is wanting the shots as soon as possible so I take the SD card out of the camera and hand it to him. He plugs it into his laptop and uploads them to it.

I later upload the raw files to LR5 and play with them to my heart's content.

Shooting raw + jpeg and sending them to different cards does not appear to slow down the processing on the 7DII at all to me.


Doc

Well, I recently had a problem where a particular computer could not read the 64GB ExFAT filesystem on the SDXC card. This was somewhat annoying, but then I recalled that the 7D Mark II could copy between slots. So, after putting in a 64GB CF, I copied from one to the other, and was then able to get the data into the particular desktop machine.

On another note, it's almost arguable that GPS was the wrong choice for the 7D Mark II; WiFi would have been significantly more useful. I totally miss that feature, which I use a lot on the 70D. No matter, I have found the EyeFi Pro X2 card really darn useful on the 7D Mark II.

I don't invest in CF anymore, because that format is incompatible with direct interface to the iPad; I don't do creative edits with Photoshop anymore, I only use the iPad. No more obsolete overpriced Adobe treadmill. My desktop machine is merely a cycle server to networked Cloud storage and for local mass storage, it is not a creative tool.

Hence, I find the Transcend 64GB 300x SDXC cards wicked fast enough for endless bursts of up to 10FPS for hours and hours of bellydance show fotos. There are faster CF cards, but I have not felt limited by either buffer or SDXC write speed.

My workflow is all-SD, in normal circumstances. I consider CF to be a vestigial, but mostly obsolete media.

raksphoto wrote in post #17517689
Well, I recently had a problem where a particular computer could not read the 64GB ExFAT filesystem on the SDXC card. This was somewhat annoying, but then I recalled that the 7D Mark II could copy between slots. So, after putting in a 64GB CF, I copied from one to the other, and was then able to get the data into the particular desktop machine.

On another note, it's almost arguable that GPS was the wrong choice for the 7D Mark II; WiFi would have been significantly more useful. I totally miss that feature, which I use a lot on the 70D. No matter, I have found the EyeFi Pro X2 card really darn useful on the 7D Mark II.

I don't invest in CF anymore, because that format is incompatible with direct interface to the iPad; I don't do creative edits with Photoshop anymore, I only use the iPad. No more obsolete overpriced Adobe treadmill. My desktop machine is merely a cycle server to networked Cloud storage and for local mass storage, it is not a creative tool.

Hence, I find the Transcend 64GB 300x SDXC cards wicked fast enough for endless bursts of up to 10FPS for hours and hours of bellydance show fotos. There are faster CF cards, but I have not felt limited by either buffer or SDXC write speed.

My workflow is all-SD, in normal circumstances. I consider CF to be a vestigial, but mostly obsolete media.

iPad for editing over Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, no to CF? I mean, I guess I would do the same if I just shot for fun, but there's a reason CF and CFAST and Photoshop CS are industry standards. Are you shooting RAW?