I’m in the process of choosing a new laptop with photography driving the specs of what I choose. I’ve been finding that a large number of current laptops come equipped with MicroSD card readers instead of SD card readers. I know I can get an external SD card reader to circumvent this, but that’s a pain in the butt.
Is anyone aware of a “serious” camera (other than a drone) that uses MicroSD? We are now seeing some cameras that have gone in the opposite direction and including CF card slots. It seems to me that the manufacturers are inconveniencing a lot of potential customers in the name of miniaturization.
It’s possible to put a MicroSD card into an adapter, and in fact that’s what I do with my IR-modified A6500 at work, but in my experience Micro cards are always slower and more expensive than full-size SD cards in real world applications, regardless of them advertising similar specs. Just like CFExpress-A is slower and MUCH more expensive than CFE-B.
I just checked, my Windows workstation laptop at work is full size SD, my Linux laptop (much smaller model) is Micro. It doesn’t really matter in my opinion because I’ve found that built-in SD readers are often EXTREMELY unreliable. The one in my Windows laptop interprets all cards as being write-protected no matter what I do.
Similar situation here, I use a microSD card with an adapter with my backup a6000 but mainly just because I happened to have a microSD card available (doesn’t hurt that my laptop also just has a micro slot).
Would not perhaps buy one unless read/write speeds and/or card size were not an issue, which might be the case if you are just taking a small amount of pictures and do not have use for speed/size. In that case small & slow cards probably don´t cost much, so do whatever is most convenient.
@Entropy512 Offtopic, but what does it take to make an alpha camera IR modified or B&W (by removing bayer matrix)? Do you think it’s worth it just for fun?
Yeah, many MicroSD cards actually come with the adapter to fit them into a SD card slot. But I’m looking at the opposite situation: I have cameras that use SD cards, and I have enough SD cards for my shooting needs, but I’m looking at laptops that come with MicroSD slots. I don’t have a pile of MicroSD cards lying around, and I don’t want to buy a bunch of them to in effect downgrade my media, just to satisfy the card reader choice in a laptop. I should have tagged this thread “rant”.
Yep, the question is why there are only microSD slots because it should not take too much space to put a full SD slot there. I wonder for whom the microSD slots even are, because it’s not like even phones have microSD slots anymore.
I brought it up with one vendor, and got this answer:
At this time, we’re somewhat limited on port options by our chassis supplier. I would say that micro SD is more prevalent for booting on SBCs, but would tend to agree with you that a full size slot generally makes more sense for a laptop, as most micro SD cards come with an adapter in the box anyway.
I use a 512gb samsung microsd card with the adapter it ships with, works fine for 4k@200mbit/s on the X-T3, and best of all it was only 30€ on an amazon sale. Unbeatable in price when on sale(which happens often at amazon.es).
EDIT: While the card is big I only use it for convenience, since I bought it to use in my DAP but ended up getting another one for that effect. I would never keep more than one session or a few hours of photos in it due to the dangers of losing it all. I use it on the second slot on the X-T3 so all videos end up there, and then photos after the main, faster card is filled up.
For the most part, the camera now sits in a drawer or has an IR blocking filter installed for typical documentation. For the IR uses, we found that putting a visible blocking filter on top of a Realsense D435 sensor was superior. Despite the smaller sensor the quantum efficiency is superior. And that in fact has been superseded in nearly all use cases by https://www.sick.com/us/en/catalog/accessories/further-accessories/alignment-aid/p/p599546
(Our primary use case was improving our methods for aligning LiDAR scanners. The original method which was “put a short object and make sure it’s not detected, put a slightly taller object and make sure it’s detected, rinse and repeat” could take 45+ minutes - now with the alignment tool or IR-sensitive camera it takes a minute or two at most.)
Note that this is the #1 reason my A6500 at work has a microsd in an adapter - we do a lot of embedded device development and EVERYTHING uses MicroSD for that purpose, so we have piles and piles of microSDs - I buy 16 and 32GB cards in batches of 10 at a time. The A6500 is basically the only thing that uses a fullsize SD card. It’s semi-different at home - 50/50 mix. Fullsize SD in cameras, micros in various Pis, my Switch, my phones and tablets.
@ofnuts is right, there are many cameras using CFExpress cards (mostly full frame or larger). In APS-C land, FujiFilm X-H2 and X-H2S take CF in one of their two slots.
quote=“elGordo, post:6, topic:40029, full:true”]
I brought it up with one vendor, and got this answer:
At this time, we’re somewhat limited on port options by our chassis supplier. I would say that micro SD is more prevalent for booting on SBCs, but would tend to agree with you that a full size slot generally makes more sense for a laptop, as most micro SD cards come with an adapter in the box anyway.
Their own support seems to agree with me.
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You now most users of laptops don’t walk around with system cameras with full-size SD cards, but rather with mobile phones wit microSD. When readers for full-size SD take somewhat more space (in cramped laptops), probably cost a fraction of a cent more to produce and the overwhelming majority of user’s don’t need it, I guess the choice is simple for the manufacturers of laptops …
If its important for you to avoid using an external SD card reader, you may buy a slightly older laptop as some fo them have full-size card readers.
So, of course he support agree - they can’t anyhow do anything with it, and you are a more satisfied customer if they agree. …
Another thing, though, is that internal card readers often appeear to be slower than an external USB3 based reader.
Absolutely true, but it’s also true that the vast majority of said mobile phone users never transfer their photos to their laptops…they just get posted from the phones straight to the apps.
I’ll probably get a current generation machine and wind up getting an external SD card reader, muttering under my breath.
My $10 USBA/USB-C adapter from Amazon is 20% faster than my built-in SD card reader (on a Lenovo P53 so normally not too shabby either).
The main problem with the external adapter is that you forget to pack it up with the PC or the camera when going on vacation (but given the price you can have one in every bag).
Over the years I’ve had multiple micro-SD cards completely fail, but I’ve yet to experience a single full size SD card to fail. Even though it is possible to use a micro-SD card in a camera with an adapter, I wouldn’t trust them. I use micro-SD cards only if that is the only option, as with phones and Raspberries.
Many SD card readers are the size of a USB dongle or stick. Get one of those.
Could this be a case of buying higher quality cards for cameras and lower end sd cards that end up failing? Afaik the flash itself inside the cards ends up being the same size, only one has a larger enclosure than the other.
Or maybe it’s the handling of the tiny card that damages it more compared to the full sd card enclosure protecting it more. Would be fun to have some durability tests of same quality sd/microsd cards, except the microsd is kept inside its SD enclosure all the time.
At least many cameras now have USB3 ports so aren’t dog-slow at doing a read-copy operation now.
Sonys lagged forever due to their multifunction port (extra nonstandard pins on the microUSB port used for triggering shutter, etc.), now they have the legacy MFP in addition to USB-C for power delivery/USB3.
I’ve had higher-end Sandisk micros die in a Raspberry Pi, same for a Moto X Play with a SanDisk card - although the Pi is kinda notorious for having SOMETHING in its SD implementation that leads to a much higher failure rate of cards.
Last fullsize SD failure I had was PNY - which was the second time I’d had a PNY product die within a week or be defective on arrival, I haven’t bought their products since then. I’ve never had a fullsize Sandisk fail.
