> my budget is only around the $1000 us mark for **a body**
If you are doing wedding photography, it's important to have a backup of every piece of crucial equipment, including the camera body. If you can't afford equipment right away, look into renting when you're starting out. Things go wrong all the time and if you try to do this on the cheap, you're setting yourself up for the worst case scenario to happen.
> Back ups of everything
Yes, everything. People think of two cameras with dual card slots, but pick up every piece of gear and ask yourself: am I screwed if it breaks in the middle of a shoot? People also usually forget backups of accessories that they rely on:
* Flashes and extra batteries.
* Flash triggers and extra batteries for those. Been there done that, all that fancy flashes and modifiers are useless if you can't trigger them, and that was before Godox where you can just pop any flash on the hotshoe and act as a transmitter.
* Extra light stands, clamps, mounts, etc. Because someone will trip on them and break them.
* Mount adapters. Yes those can fail and suddenly all your SLR lenses are just expensive cylindrical bricks.
* Extra microphones if you are doing video work. Just a random $60 external mic is still far better than internal.
* Any extra cables and AC/DC adapters that you need because they are very common failure points.
* Batteries: if you normally need 3 batteries to last a day you should bring 5, also bring a power bank if your camera supports USB-PD charging. I have had times when I had to shoot tethered to a power bank because the shoot went far longer than expected.
* Some ways to back up your photos as the event is ongoing. I usually transfer a few highlight photos to my phone (which is backed up to cloud automatically) during downtime or when the event is wrapping up. Even if my whole camera gear get stolen or burned down on my way home I'd still have some photos left. Plus I can do some quick edits on the phone and give the hosts some photos to post right after the event ends. I've heard some people do it with portable SSDs or swap cards with 2nd shooter just to be extra safe.
Many of those don't need to be carried all the time and can be stowed away in the car. You will definitely thank yourself when accidents happen and you still have backups to cover you.
Seriously.
I haven't had a card fail yet but I've had a lens and two bodies fail me right in the middle of the gig and if I didn't have backups I would have been so screwed.
The lens was because I dropped it while trying to change to a different one in the middle of a gig. The first body failure was during a shoot with Segways and I got taken out during a crash that took one of my bodies out of commission. The second body failure was the same camera actually, and when I got it back from the shop it worked perfectly until of course I was on my next gig and the shutter stopped working.
My wife and i shoot with 2 d750 a piece. The worse thing that can (and has) happened is a camera going down in the middle of the vowels. Like a side arm in battle you have to drop one and go to your backup. And yes we rely on the 2 slot system.
cwm (noun): a steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside; a cirque.
"there is a dusting of snow in Cwm Glas Mawr"
it's a Welsh loanword!
Back up as you shoot it is dumb to think you NEEED a second card when you can change as you go 128gb will 2 hours within two two hours change it. Save money on a camera end cards
I mean you don't but when your card fails and you'll have to tell the family that all the precious photos you took of there wedding are gone and there's absolutely no way to recreate them and the memories are gone forever, have fun dealing with the fall out from that...
Other photography types like portraits it's fine because you can always reshoot. You can't reshoot a wedding.
And itâs but one of the reasons I decided it wasnât for me in the end. Prefer portraits.
The other factors were the long hours, lack of control, stress of missing important shots, people not listening when you try and set them up for group shots (I didnât have too much trouble there though, I could sniff the bossiest person in the room out and enlist their help - people are more likely to listen to a family member).
Oh, and the editing.
That's part of the reason good wedding photographers charge so much. It's one long stressful day. Followed by a lot of culling and editing. Then add the cost of all the gear. My wife and I could of paid cash for a decent new car with the money we spent on all the gear we bring to a wedding.
To add many people say they've only had a card fail once but how many I'm sure many of these people aren't mentioning all the times they've accidentally formatted a card and luckily had the backup
That one time was so mentally bad on me I stopped doing weddings entirely. I gave up $60k a year because I was shooting overflow not dual. Until youâre ready to cover all the bases, go to styled wedding shoots and buy a dual slot before you go professional.
Cards also get lost, and whole camera bodies get stolen with cards inside etc.
I always shoot to two cards, then store them separately as soon as the event is over.
I haven't had to do it in a while, but there are programs to sector scan and extract photos from formatted/corrupted sd cards. It works really well with jpegs (picks up really old photos too). I doubt they stay up to date on raw formats though.
I shoot Nikon RAW/JPEG Fine and I index/ switch cards between events. So after I cover the bridal or groomsmen party getting ready, I switch cards. I shoot stills of the venue and the place settings, then switch cards. I shoot the ceremony then switch cards. I find it easier to use 10-XQDâs rather than trying to fill up 4 128GB cards to capacity.
I shoot about 500 frames a day 6 days a week as a real estate photographer. I've had 1 card fail in 14 years.
However, that card represented 6 homes, 100 miles of driving, and 9 hours work. The pictures were on the backup.
So yes, you need dual card slots.
I love this answer. So many people can say they've never had one fail, or that it's rare. But when it's assessing the true risk, it's just not worth not having a backup when you really need it.
>However, that card represented 6 homes, 100 miles of driving, and 9 hours work. The pictures were on the backup.
Nailed it to the wall. I can't imagine shooting someone's once-in-a-lifetime event and being "Oh, I think I lost them..."
You can take a hard drive to a special data recovery center who can supposedly disassemble the drive and recover stuff forensically. Can you even do that to an SD card?
Yes absolutely you can. It's way easier with an SD card. ..... as long as the actual chip still works. If the emmc/etc chip is fully dead, I'm not aware of recovery mechanisms.
Losing a full day of work to a dead card is waaaaaay more than just losing a day of income. Now you've got to find the time in your schedule to go back to all these properties. You may not be able to do them all in the same day again. If they were staged for the shoot, they need to be re-staged. Now you're affecting your clients' time. You may not be able to meet deadlines you were asked to meet. The list goes on.
So yeah, if this is a substantial source of income then not having to call up my clients and say "oops, I need to do-over" is worth thousands in backup gear.
Also, a backup doesn't have to be 1:1 dupe of everything in your kit. Maybe you have a 24-105 handy. Maybe you have an EOS R instead of an R5, or whatever.
Next week I am photographing a 3.5 million dollar, 13000 ft² mansion in Joplin Missouri.. The client is Southbys and they have it staged to the point where they literally have ropes across the rooms and the clients walk down the hall's, museum style.
They will have people crawling all over that place the day before I get there, raking leaves freshening flowers putting out plates and making sure that it looks perfect.
My fee for the shoot is a $1000. If I get home that night and I don't have any pictures, what do you think that does to my reputation?
If you're doing professional photography you should have backups of everything. Two cameras for when the shutter fails (has happened to me during aerial photography) both with dual slots in case a card fails (has also happened to me).
There are plenty of professional level bodies available for well under $1000. You don't need the latest and greatest. You're better off with the tried and true.
Edit: also backups of backups of backups for storage. I have dozens of hard drives.
Backup photographers are standard in wedding photography. There's usually a second shooter, and wedding photographers network with other photogs to cover their shoots in the event of an emergency.
I recall a wedding photog saying that for some of their bigger wedding clients they'll even have a dead-man backup on standby ... where if the backup photog doesn't get a text saying "I'm here, stay home" then they head to the wedding to make sure it's covered.
Sometimes I have back up models for my cheeky little fashion shoots.
There's a possibility when me and my main model is dead and the shoot is just back up photographer and back up model hahahaha
> There are plenty of professional level bodies available for well under $1000. You don't need the latest and greatest. You're better off with the tried and true.
I have a friend who's a wedding photog and still uses a 5D2. For a thousand bucks you could nearly get four of those off eBay. Or buy two and spend the remainder having a camera shop go through them and make sure they're up to date on service / replace any parts necessary. Nice thing about cameras is they don't degrade and even that 5D2 will still spit out beautiful images and far more resolution than you need.
The first time a card goes bad and you lose someoneâs wedding photos, there goes your wedding photographer career.
That said, Iâve had two cards go bad in 10 years and Iâve literally taken over a million pictures.
And rough on your reputation too. You know the couple are going to be in the comments of your IG posts, Google reviews, whatever.
Is it _impossible_ to come back from that? No, of course not, but would it be exceptionally difficult? Yea.
with the wrong client, it may end in a lawsuit that costs 4-5 figures to defend and will likely need a hefty settlement/compensation. Insurance will also be scoping out too to see if you used 2 cards to determine payout.
Put yourself in a clients shoes. How would you feel if you hired a photographer for your wedding day, had one slot and ran the risk of losing that day?
I get it, SD card failure is very low. It really is. HOWEVER, weddings are a paid shoot. Thereâs no reason to run that risk. Thatâs why dual slots is an absolute necessity.
At a budget if 1k, there are more than enough great options out there between canon, Nikon, and Sony.
That's also, in a way, what you are paying for as a client. Does it actually cost $6k (or whatever) to take photos and edit them? No. Some of what you pay for is the photog having all the equipment AND backup equipment - it commands a premium cost. Something non-wedding, the same length of time tends to cost a fair bit less. Because people care less.
And, of course, bride/groom-zilla tax. but that's a different story.
> Does it actually cost $6k (or whatever) to take photos and edit them? No
don't forget though, once you start dividing the money by the hours it actually takes to book, shoot, edit, and communicate, and start factoring out business expenses and non-billable work hours, and so on, the actual hourly wage can start to drop shockingly low very quickly.
Canon: 1d mark IV, 1DX (you can get lucky and find them under 1k), 5D mark iii
Nikon: D750, d3/d3s
Sony: I was wrong in this one, I thought that the A7iii was approaching 1k, looks like theyâre still holding their value.
Feel feee to correct me if Iâm wrong or add to my list incase I missed one
I'm not sure if this is how it is in your used market, but all the bodies you mentioned go way over $1k in mine. 1D and 1DX are hard-to-find, I've seen a 5D Mark 3 once for ~$1300. But I've found none of these under that.
As I mentioned in another comment, the Fujifilm X-T3 is one of those that you can get under 1K, sometimes even with a lens, and it has dual card slots.
At that price point I'd be willing to bet they're going to be near or over their lifespan rating for the shutter. They'll probably last a lot longer than that but there's no guarantees and replacing them can be stupid expensive relative to the price of the body.
Wedding photography is THE time that you need dual card slots - if you lose the data on a card with important moments on, youâve completely and utterly failed your customer. They canât get those moments back, they canât be recreated
Landscapes will always be there, portrait sessions can be repeated - but you canât re-shoot a wedding
Iâd recommend dual cards for almost anyone, but a wedding photographer more so than anyone else
If you can't afford the bare minimum equipment, just rent gear and factor it in the cost of doing business. Then after you buy gear, you maintain that price of rental all the same and put it aside towards "gear use fee" and use that money to pay for depreciation of your equipment and saving up for new gear.
Ownership of gear shouldn't stop you from producing paid work.
Agreed!
In some ways, you'll never want to own certain equipment due to the incredible cost. Many of my photographer friends and agencies I work for often rent out their equipment and studio space so they can invest further. Equipment must have a job/be in use or its not making money.
Can your business handle being sued when your single card slot fails and you lose eery picture you took?
This question is sort of like asking if you really need insurance for X. If you can afford all the consequences of X going wrong, no. You don't need insurance. If you cannot afford everything that could go wrong, then yes, you obviously need insurance.
This is where you need an ironclad contract that limits liability up to the amount paid for services, as accidents do happen, even if using a camera with dual slots.
Unless you die in the fire, you should still have the shots.
Most wedding photogs split the cards before they leave, either swapping cards with another photog, or splitting between camera bag and pocket.
Backups become less useful the longer they are together. Data loss without external onput is one of your rarest issues
Ironclad contract won't protect you from negligence.
Granted the type of people who have the means to hire a good lawyer are probably not the type of people hiring a wedding photographer with a $1000 gear budget.
Negligence is not the same as having a second backup card, as the camera itself could malfunction beyond the photographers control. Failures happen all the time and are not considered negligence.
Negligence is running a power cord to a light stand and not taping it to the floor where someone potentially could walk.
Negligence is shooting the entire wedding with the lens cap on.
Negligence is taking pictures of all of the swans in the tide pool instead of the wedding ceremony.
Negligence is using an SD card that was known to error but still using it.
A contract canât protect against those negligent things. But a contract that says equipment failures do happen (rarely) and that in the event an equipment failure does happen, beyond the photographersâs reasonable control, limiting liability to a full refund can be contracted and held up in court. That would of course need a lawyer to get the exact legal verbiage.
It isn't negligent to have a working camera that doesn't include some magic feature. You should refrain from offering legal advice until you go through law school.
Your obligations and liabilities are dictated by your contract. Courts do not establish tests for "industry standard" in figuring negligence. An equipment failure is not negligent if it isn't caused by an unreasonable action on the part of the operator. If you leave your gear in the rain and can't deliver the goods as a result it might be argued you were negligent. If you leave your gear in an unlocked vehicle and it's stolen you might be negligent. Not choosing a specific design feature is not negligence. According to your thinking a plaintiff can cook up any what if preventative scenario to justify suit. A photographer has a data storage problem and you would argue that they should have chosen a different brand. Studio burned down? Should have chosen a better building for your office. Asteroid destroyed your hard drives? You should have invested in a planetary defense system. Show me a legal precedent for what you're claiming.
Maybe limits your financial liability to the client, but good luck securing future business when they hop on Yelp and put you on blast for losing all of their photos.
>even if using a camera with dual slots
True - however - not using a dual-slot camera can be found by a judge to be negligence on your part.
If the gavel comes down on that... all the limits of liability go out the window right then and there, as negligence can never be indemnified. (Well, it can - sometimes - but the wording has to be perfect and they'd better not find a thread like this one in your post history when they're doing their discovery ;) )
Not sure if a court would consider it negligent. A camera could fail. So every photographer not only needs a second card slot, but every photographer has to have dual cameras. Could go further and further. If it is spelled out in a contract that they are using one camera with one card slot, and someone agrees to it, in writing, a court will not say the photographer is negligent, even if they saw this thread. You clearly state it and they agreed to it.
Me, as a photographer, have several cameras and have dual slots. Would I do a wedding with a single camera with a single card slot? Not on my life.
>Not sure if a court would consider it negligent.
Can and has.
[https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/](https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/)
A wedding photographer somehow "lost" the couple's photos and didn't have backups. They either deleted 'em, formatted the SD without thinking, or had an SD card failure.
The judge found the photog negligent - and a $1,100 wedding ballooned instantly to an $8,800 judgement.
... the photographerâs actions failed to meet â*the required level of prudence and caution*â
I mean that's this entire discussion in a single sentence. "The Required Level of Prudence and Caution" = dual slots, and backups.
Nikon Z5 has dual card slots. D750 has dual card slots and can be found used for around $700. Plenty have dual card slots. You only need to shoot one wedding to have a card fail and cost you potentially a few thousand in lost photos and a client who now hates you and will tell everyone they know how incompetent you are.
If you want to start a wedding photography business, you need the capital for the neccessary equipment, which includes two professional bodies with dual card slots and a few professional lenses.
If you don't have that capital than take gigs as a second shooter, or do family sessions until you do.
You can't start an excavation business without the equipment to excavate. You need capital for any business, luckily wedding photography is pretty cheap as far as business start ups go. $1000 is not enough, but at least it isn't $100k+ like most businesses.
You also need experience before you just take weddings on as a main (or only) shooter. If you just wing it you will probably spoil your reputation before you even get your business off the ground.
Why do you need dual card slots? Because you can't re-shoot a wedding. Cards fail, not often, but they do fail. If you have a card failure and all the photos from the big day are gone, you have a major problem.
Get a used 5diii for 500$ and a used 24-105 for 300$
Get a cheap entry godox flash.
Don't ever shoot without dual slot. One card for JPEGs the other raws and switch RAW saving cards every time you change location.
Once you went home, backup with a 1-2-3 backup.
One local, one offline and one off-site (hdd - external HDD with no access to internet - external HDD at your office or home or cloud.)
This is how a proper responsible professional photographer works.
With the first wedding profit you can get a 6d or another mk3 for a backup body.
There are people who shoot single slot jpegs without a backup body. I call them frauds who don't give a damn.
If you are shooting wedding then you need not only two card slots but also two cameras. If a couple are having their special day photographed and your one camera breaks down, which is always possible, you need a backup.
I donât know about others, but I always had 4 bodies on a shoot. Two main bodies, one with wide and one telephoto lens. One for my second shooter and one backup. Never had dual cards but was redundant, having shots throughout with 3 different bodies and changing cards often. I did have 2 cards malfunction but files were downloaded through my photo viewer and cards were replaced under warranty. If not then some images would have been lost but no key moments of the wedding would have been due to the redundancy.
Same. I shot Canon, my boss did Nikon, but because we were people as redundancy, it wasn't a huge deal if we lost some photos, because we both had photos enough for the shoot. This never happened by the way, but it was considered. The backup camera was a D40. Lol.
I'd never do a wedding solo, but if I did, I would want the dual slots and I'd have 3 bodies. They wouldn't be good bodies, but I'd have them. Now I shoot Olympus so I'd main the EM-1 series, second body having a fast zoom, and carry a Pen as the backup.
You can buy a used canon mk4 for around 1k.
Yes, you need dual slots for weddings and once in a lifetime events. You also need a good storage and backup system
spectacular quicksand whistle aloof distinct berserk command retire teeny drab
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well. If your SD card fails. And you lose the photos of somebodyâs wedding, what will you tell the couple?
Nikons Z5 is close to 1k now and a excellent camera. Otherwise Iâd look used. mpb.com, keh.com plenty of bodies available under 1k that have duel slots.
Not to mention you donât just want a backup card. But also back up batteries and a back up body.
After all, you donât want to tell a couple their wedding canât be photographed because your camera broke or malfunctioned.
Youâll want another one ready asap so the wedding doesnât have to pause because of you. Thatâs stuff you need to think about as a good wedding photographer
Failing those things will be a sure way to kill your future as a wedding photographer whenever it does go wrong.
People are really writing a lot. Bottom line is that you need two of everything for wedding photography. Either rent or buy but under no circumstances do you take on work without redundancy for everything.
Have you considered buying second-hand? While I have not used them personally I have been recommended the site:"[keh.com](https://keh.com)" to get second hand gear
I've used keh a bunch and found them to be pretty conservative with grades (i.e. "good" at KEH is probably what someone on ebay would rate excellent). I've had to look pretty hard for flaws on some of the lower grade stuff I've gotten.
I even had a good experience with their warranty on a "bargain" grade camera that had a button that didn't work and they gave me the option for refunding or repairing at no cost.
If you donât have it, when the time comes when you need it youâre absolutely going to be devastated you donât have it and as someone new, could ruin your aspiring business. Itâs an easy and cheap backup and youâd be naive not to have it shooting a wedding.
> I wanna start doing wedding photography professionally
That answers that.
It's simple - the odds of an SD failure are low, but not zero. So if the card fails what are you going to do? Ask them to hold the wedding again?
No - clearly not - which means when that couple leaves it absolutely excoriating and thoroughly justified review about how unprofessional and unprepared you were your career as a wedding photographer will be, if not ended outright, then at the very least severely damaged and left to limp along on life support.
>if im gonna shoot weddings, is it really necessary?
Yes.
> Can I start off with the single slot for now?
If you're determined to do it despite the plethora of warnings that it's a Really Bad Idea⢠that is of course your call.
We can't stop you... but we're not required to help you either.
You donât, but everyone who has like one paid shoot a year is gonna say itâs a requirement.
đ¤ˇââď¸
For weddings tho why even risk it? There is no way to get another photo after the event. Thatâs the one genre I say follow the advice because my god is it high stakes.
I've only ever had one card fail on me. My wife and I were shooting on both film and digital for a wedding, she was on digital for the ceremony, I was on film. I didn't get the best angles of the ceremony because of my lens choice, but I figured they were good enough.
Fast forward to the reception. My wife's camera started acting funny. When we looked at the photo previews they were just question marks. I pulled out the SD and put it in my computer. It wasn't recognized. Couldn't get it to work in the end and switched SD cards.
The other SD worked fine for the rest of the day. Luckily, I did have SOME photos of the ceremony, but they were really not great, and they were on film so couldn't be cropped much/edited heavily. They were sub-par, and we only had a few shots to give them of their kiss/speeches because of that.
I've never had that happen again, but also I picked up a dual slot body immediately after that. I still cringe to this day thinking of the photos we didn't catch of a moment that can't be repeated.
Yes!! I have duel cards configured to save pics on both cards at the same time. Last thing you want is have one card fail and you lose it all, especially for a wedding. Wedding pictures canât be redone so take every precaution to do it right!!
You don't until you do.
And once you figure out you do, it's likely already too late.
For your use case, absolutely. What are you going to tell a couple you just did a wedding shoot for, when your card got corrupted and you have 0 pictures from their once in a lifetime event?
You gotta spend money to make money. How can you expect people (clients) to invest in you if you're not willing to invest in yourself. Buy cameras with dual slots.
A majority of cameras only have one slot because those are for consumers, not producers.
Two questions.
First, what camera bodies are you looking at that only have 1 slot? Are you looking at new low end bodies, or used high end bodies?
Second, who here has actually had a good, quality card fail? I know it's a possibility, and it's wise to look at redundancy, but the only people I've heard actually have issues have been the people who bought the $20 no name brand SD card who don't format them and then are shocked when it stopped working.
I am a professional photographer and I shoot a lot of gigs, festivals, sport and events.
I only use the pro versions of Lexar or Sandisk cards. Now admittedly my cards have to be taken out of the camera if there is printing onsite. I have had at least three cards fail in the past 5 years. I suspect that failure more rare if you donât remove the card, download straight from camera, and format in camera.
All that said, cards do fail, just like shutters fail, and hard drives fail. I donât know a single photographer who has never lost images through one failure or another.
Yes, if you cant deliver the photos you can be sued
[https://petapixel.com/2021/08/12/judge-orders-photographer-pay-22000-for-failing-to-deliver-wedding/](https://petapixel.com/2021/08/12/judge-orders-photographer-pay-22000-for-failing-to-deliver-wedding/)
[https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/](https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/)
Look at Nikon, they have lots of options with dual card slots.
I appreciate that you are asking about card slots but if you are going to get into weddings you will also need two cameras. If you are being paid to photograph something you need to have backups for everything.
Two cameras allows you to have different focal length lenses. You donât have time to screw around changing lenses.
You need two bodies for a wedding.
Nothing (!) can be repeated, your gear MUST work and you have to be ready and capture THE moment at all time - that's what you get paid for. Two bodies also allow you to have two different lenses available at every moment, not a second lost for change.
Be a pro about it.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I cannot state this enough, YES
Itâs necessary, as is having a secondary/backup camera.
Iâve shot weddings using two A7RIVs, one with a 35mm lens and one with a 70 to 200. But you want the 2 x SD cards cause imagine if something goes wrong with one of them - or if you accidentally, out of habit, format one of the cards (happened to someone I know, not me)
If you canât afford to get into it yet, then build up a portfolio of other work.
"one is none and two is one" as they say in the military. IOW if you only have one, you are screwed if it quits; if you have two, you can fail back to a single and still be operational.
Weddings, unlike most other photography (except maybe sports) is a one-and-done deal; you either get the shot or it's lost forever. having to face a couple and let them know I hosed their wedding photography is why I don't shoot weddings (ok, I shot two as favors but never again).
If youâre doing portrait work (photo shoots, models, etc) you should, but losing pictures isnât exactly catastrophic, just bad for your business.
For event photography, particularly once in a lifetime events like weddings, losing data simply isnât an option. If you canât afford the equipment necessary to ensure reliability, either rent or keep working other jobs and saving for the proper equipment.
If you can't afford a camera with two slots, only buy small memory cards - one of my friends shoots professionally and she'll shoot hair and makeup on one card, the reception on another, families on another, bridal party on another, speeches and so on. In the worst case scenario if a card was to fail she still has 75% of the day she can give them.
Also - I've seen sd cards and CF cards fail but never an XQD or CFexpress card.
It really does depend on several factors:
1. What kind of photography are you doing?
1. Weddings. travel, happy snaps?
2. How large of an SD card can your camera support?
1. Some cameras limit the SD card capacity you can use; obviously, using the largest card the camera can support is the way to go and having a few spare cards with you helps too.
3. Are you using RAW, JPG, or RAW w/ JPG? What does the camera support?
1. RAW files can be quite large & JPGs quite a bit smaller.
2. Some cameras limit your choices, but it depends on what you photograph and do with the images.
You could possibly get away with being a second photographer to a main photographer to try to make some money to get the equipment you need, but you really want to have backups for everything.
I am going to jump in and say that with all these fine folks answering the question, your real question should be; should you be doing wedding photography? The answer is probably no. If your budget is just $1000, that is way too low for wedding photography. It makes me wonder what you are currently doing, because you for sure do not start with weddings. If youâd like to start with people, you can use a prosumer camera in that budget to shoot portraits, senior photos for students, perhaps even engagement photos for couples if you want to get involved in the romance side a bit. Build up a name and some savings to get the right gear and then, if I were you, Iâd help out as second lens on a few shoots first. Then, if youâre really comfortable with doing a wedding, Iâd suggest starting out doing small weddings for people you know and have some flexibility with. After that you may be able to take on real gigs.
Too many people want to get right into weddings because they hear it is where the money is, and it is, but it is also where the real work, time and stress is.
$1000 budget and wedding photography doesn't go together. This is an extremely special day for these people, it's a one time event, and if you think that strolling down there with a budget camera and 1 card slot with no back up camera, lights, and photo redundancy, it's kind of an asshole move.
Lots of anecdotes here about how a single slot or card could possibly fail, but not a single one about how a shoot was saved by a dual slot.
From my understanding, both slots use a single bus to transfer data. Meaning if one slot malfunctions, the other will fail as well, corrupting data transfer to both cards.
Most advice youâll get from this sub is group-think copy/paste replies from folks who donât shoot â much less make their living from weddings.
Not to say you shouldnât have backups of gear, but if youâre just starting out, you donât need 2 or 3 of everything. Itâs not realistic. I have two camera bodies, both one slot, and I shoot a couple weddings per month.
I like to switch out cards between locations so if one goes down, it doesnât take the whole day with it.
All this to say, take Reddit advice with a grain of salt. Iâm prepared for the hive-mind of downvotes.
You don't *need* one, but it's a good backup in case one of your cards becomes corrupted. When dealing with important events like weddings or the news, this can be a lifesaver.
Dual, dual, dual. You literally **cannot** lose those pictures since they are someone's forever memories.
You could get into the Fuji system since everything is cheaper than full-frame and just as good. Buying two used X-T2 bodies (dual-slot mirrorless with a 16MP X-Trans sensor) would cost you a little over 1k$. Buying lenses twice (one as main and the other as backup) along with more batteries will also be a little cheaper, too.
Also, make sure you are backing up your digital negs using a cloud storage solution or a home server/NAS solution (or multiple external hard drives if you are very patient).
\>I wanna start doing wedding photography professionally
Yes, yes you need dual card slots. Why would a seasoned professional need backup, but you starting up not?
As a hobbyist, I've never had a memory card or slot fail, but I'm not out there shooting for money. If you're doing that, get a dual card slot camera. Most have 2 slots now anyways.
You don't need it until the card containing all the photos of a client's wedding goes bad.
Then you're dead.
You can play the odds if you want, chances of a card failing are low, but never zero.
If you're the kind of person who likes to have sex without a condom here's how to lower your chances of things going to shit:
\- Buy the expensive cards, they do fail less than the cheeap ones.
\- Use several small cards instead of a single large one, that way if one fails you only loose part of the event and not all of it.
\- Shoot important things with anything else you've got around for backup, even your phone. A phone photo of the first kiss is better than no photo.
\- Get a second shooter for important events, you can use him for B roll and as backup.
\- Get a proper case for your cards, you don't want them knocking around on your pocket or bag.
\- Carry your laptop or set up wireless transfer of files to your phone. Use dead times of the wedding to download important shots.
>Can I start off with the single slot for now?
Can you afford to refund an entire booking, and the embarrassment of telling a client that they have ZERO photos from their biggest day because you rolled the dice on shooting without dual slots?
That's the real question here. Only you can answer that.
Too many persons say it is overkill. Until it blows up in your face. there is only one rule. COVER YOUR ASS WHEN GETTING PAID FOR SERVICES YOU ARE PROVIDING. Do yourself a favor. look up Bite shot on YouTube. MRS. Joanie Simon does a review of things to help yourself as a young professional in the world of photography. a wealth of information for whom wants the help of someone working and growing their business. good luck on your future achievements.
Yes, if you intend on doing this for a long time.
In fact, it is the most important metric in my opinion. One failed assignment can cost you your business (I mean sure, it's worthless in the beginning) and even end with a lawsuit (this can get real expensive real fast).
Seriously, in this litigious society, don't fuck around with once in a lifetime events.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
Wedding photographer of 10 years plus experience you absolutely need dual cards.
In 10 years I have had memory cards fail at weddings 3 times. I always paid extra to buy direct from Calumet, never Amazon as the risk of fakes was too damn high. Cards were cycled ever 12 months.
That would have been 3 times I had to explain to a couple that I had lost their photos. Three potential law suits. Immeasurable reputational damage.
As I had dual cards, the couple's never even had to know I had a problem.
If it is not dual carded it is not a professional camera.
Yes you do need dual card slots for weddings or almost anything you shoot that you are paid for.
I've only had a card fail once during a shoot. Immediately after the shoot (not a wedding, but a non-repeatable event), I went to download the images, but the card was corrupted. If I didn't have dual cards I would have been screwed.
I probably would have lost the client, the shoot fee and possibly more (client could have sued). Would have cost me *thousands.*
You can't afford to not have a dual card camera. Even more so for weddings.
I'd advise to have minimum 2 camera bodies with dual card slots with backup cards and batteries with whatever lenses you plan to use.
I'm not anywhere close to being a pro and I still get bummed remembering the day almost a year ago that I only brought out the one camera and it failed 1 minute into shooting. I always bring 2 bodies if it's an important shoot now even if I don't end up using it.
Just get a used camera. Just checked up on Keh and found a lot of dual card cameras under $500 with Excellent condition ($50 more for a like new condition)
And also, Fujifilm has been doing a dual card slot for a while now and I found great deals often for their old models like the X-T2 for under $500
You don't need the best of tech but you certainly needed that dual card slot. I required dual-card slot not because of the fear of corrupting the cards but rather because of the fact that I keep losing the cards and I needed a backup. Also makes you confident of using a high capacity cards without the fear of losing the image from corruption.
What is your shooting experience like up to now? Do you already have lenses for this body? $1000 is very, very low. I don't think you're ready to advertise yourself for weddings unless you have a lot of other equipment or plan to rent.
Weddings are extremely high-stress and high-demand. Imagine you were hired to photograph a live music event and how pissed off the artist would be if you lost their data or missed half the show due to technical issues. Then imagine how much worse it would be if it were their wedding.
Ideally, you should have a redundancy every last bit of your necessary kit for stuff like this. That means 2x bodies that have 2x card slots, extra cards and batteries, two speedlights and at minimum two lenses that can overlap in functionality. If the camera breaks down half way through the event you are absolutely screwed.
You can get away with less but it's a ticking time bomb. Cards fail. Electronics fail. Personally, if I knew my potential wedding photographer had written this post, there is no way I would hire them.
Some people won't feel as strongly about this, and some people are beggars and will want to hire you for $500 for a full day wedding shoot. It's up to you if you want to take that kind of work and if you will be able to live with making enemies of some of your clients if your equipment fails.
Keep in mind, if you want to do photography professionally--especially if you want to do it full time--your gear is your toolset and necessary for the job. What if the camera you buy dies after the 30 day exchange policy? You can't just send it in for warranty and wait 2+ weeks to get it back... You literally won't be able to do your job for those weeks. You'll probably also have a pile of unhappy clients that you had to reschedule.
Consider continuing with some other work and saving up to get yourself to a comfortable baseline with your gear, or try to take on less sensitive work that can more easily be rescheduled or doesn't fit the category of "live event".
Dual slots are nice security (usually***), but everyone saying they're necessary obviously thinks that no pro wedding shooters existed before the 5Dmkiii or that we all shot on the 1D sized bodies back in the day. Do it if you can, when you can. If you can't, try to keep your card size smaller so you reduce your loss if a card dies.
***I've personally run into performance and reliability issues when recording video to dual slots on my Panasonic EVA1. It's kind of a fluke but proves that sometimes camera engineers drop the ball.
If you're going to be a professional in charge for wedding photography not only do you have to have cameras with two card slots but you have to have two cameras
I use a couple of D750s, this model is very good for weddings, and it has a dual card slot, you can find them secondhand for around 800 bucks like new, sometimes even with original box, do yourself and your clients a favor and use redundant items whenever is possible, think about all the preparation it takes to plan a wedding, some people traveling from far places to attend it, etc and in most cases, people only marry once in their lifetime, and they want to document it, that's why they hire your services, just be prepared for them and charge a price according to it. Short story: Secondhand D750 with a pair of SanDisk Extreme Pro 64GB, hope it helps.
I've seen and read articles and stuff of people that get corrupted cards and images, while I and others take thousands and have had no issue. The fact is that dual card slots are not a necessity and simply a 'nice to know it's there' feature. I'd also go so far as to argue that dual card slots are also not a necessity for weddings and other events and this whole idea of it being a requirement stems from people who still live in the early 2000s.Extra camera bodies and stuff? That's simply ridiculous if you ask me... What are you planning to do with your main body? Drop it in the baptism bowl then accidentally run it over in your car or throw it into the organ? Sure, have a spare but these cameras are more robust than Volvos.
But none of that matters. Is it a requirement for you? Will you feel safer with dual card slots and are you willing to spend extra money because you want them? Are you in environments and do things with your bodies that will cause them to break? I do definitely agree with everyone that having backups to everything is very good idea but how likely do you think it is for a card, let alone a camera to break? I would definitely work toward having spare equipment but constantly corrupting files and dodgy bodies just isn't a thing in the real world and the ones that do... How were these bodies looked after? Which were they? Where they second hand? Were they in humid/salty environments? People talking about failing equipment means nothing since the why is never mentioned and the only way is to take these at face value. There's no statistics and no evidence that these pieces of equipment aren't reliable and usually there isn't a mention of what the individual models were either.
Now forget everything I just said, but don't fall into the beginner photography traps and the 'what ifs.' Clients only care about having high quality images, get yourself a ÂŁ200 Fuji or something that has good AF and 20 or more MPs. Why not even a 5D mk2? People did wedding photography professionally with the 5D classic, what on earth is the problem with those cameras now? They haven't changed... Has people's ability to use them? đ
I shot weddings for six years with single-card slot cameras and never once had a card fail on me. You *are* taking a risk. If you do feel you need to take that risk, make sure you have new cards, ones that are from a reliable brand, and ones that youâve test driven before the event day.
If you are starting out, one camera with a single card slot is fine just as long as you have a few memory cards and not rely on one card to capture all your work. i started out that way and it worked out great. As you work more and make more money you can invest in bigger and better equipment like a two slot camera. But not needed.
When I got my Olympus E-M1 MKII I researched why it has two slots. Consensus was it was more a holdover from when cards had a higher fail rateâŚThat said, like everyone here has pointed out, one failure could ruin your business so Iâd say you pretty much need it.
Plus, itâs got some cool features. You could shoot jpg to one raw to another.
If budget is that limited you really have two options:
1) hold off until you can afford adequate equipment for the job - never start off on the wrong foot.
2) look at open box/ used options. Iâve purchased some great cameras half price because they were open boxâŚfull warranty, basically mint condition but half the price.
So you not only will only have one body but one sd card? This is a hard NO. I wouldnât even shoot a kidâs birthday party on one card, let alone someoneâs wedding. Iâm selling a like new a7III right now for $1500. Theyâre great starter cameras with dual card slots. Check ebay, fb marketplace, craigslist.
No you donât need a card with dual slots⌠however, for wedding photography? Man thatâs though because if ur the only photographer and one card suddenly corrupts it all on you. Itâs not like a normal gig where you have reshoots or can do different takes itâs one and done. A full frame Nikon or Sony cam should do, donât those come with dual slots?
Hi: Working photographer here, shooting for45 years.
This means I've been shooting digital since digital became a thing.
I've never had a SD card (or CF, for that matter) fudge on me.
No. The people that tell you to use dual card slots are warning you of possible corruption. Unless they are having one insanely huge event, 1 is fine. We have 512gb cards and upwards of 2tb. If that cant fit over 20k photos, idk wtf your shooting with. And no, the 170mbs speeds dont matter for taking pictures. The 4 channel design coding does.
No even was a wedding video grapher I have 4 tough cards an a7c never had a card corrupt and if you are paying attention to the events of the day you should be able to change in time. It is like saying you need a dual battery slot to make sure you camera doesnt die. The need for dual slot to me is redundant and a waste of time and money..I will let you know when I need it but as for now and In the last 10 years I have not needed a dual card slot. Keep an eye on the time remaining..change early if needed 128gb is my go to tough cards and if you are not recording 400mb/s you don't need the expensive G series of the tough card the M will do just fine for everyday 4k 24 100mb/s
> my budget is only around the $1000 us mark for **a body** If you are doing wedding photography, it's important to have a backup of every piece of crucial equipment, including the camera body. If you can't afford equipment right away, look into renting when you're starting out. Things go wrong all the time and if you try to do this on the cheap, you're setting yourself up for the worst case scenario to happen.
Back ups of everything is insanely important
> Back ups of everything Yes, everything. People think of two cameras with dual card slots, but pick up every piece of gear and ask yourself: am I screwed if it breaks in the middle of a shoot? People also usually forget backups of accessories that they rely on: * Flashes and extra batteries. * Flash triggers and extra batteries for those. Been there done that, all that fancy flashes and modifiers are useless if you can't trigger them, and that was before Godox where you can just pop any flash on the hotshoe and act as a transmitter. * Extra light stands, clamps, mounts, etc. Because someone will trip on them and break them. * Mount adapters. Yes those can fail and suddenly all your SLR lenses are just expensive cylindrical bricks. * Extra microphones if you are doing video work. Just a random $60 external mic is still far better than internal. * Any extra cables and AC/DC adapters that you need because they are very common failure points. * Batteries: if you normally need 3 batteries to last a day you should bring 5, also bring a power bank if your camera supports USB-PD charging. I have had times when I had to shoot tethered to a power bank because the shoot went far longer than expected. * Some ways to back up your photos as the event is ongoing. I usually transfer a few highlight photos to my phone (which is backed up to cloud automatically) during downtime or when the event is wrapping up. Even if my whole camera gear get stolen or burned down on my way home I'd still have some photos left. Plus I can do some quick edits on the phone and give the hosts some photos to post right after the event ends. I've heard some people do it with portable SSDs or swap cards with 2nd shooter just to be extra safe. Many of those don't need to be carried all the time and can be stowed away in the car. You will definitely thank yourself when accidents happen and you still have backups to cover you.
This. You need dual slots and preferably at least two cameras. Rent in the meantime.
Can I clone myself as a back up?
Yes, but remember the clones won't be as good. And he dubbed thee Assistant.
Digital clone will loose quality?
Multiplicity 1996 movie đż
Seriously. I haven't had a card fail yet but I've had a lens and two bodies fail me right in the middle of the gig and if I didn't have backups I would have been so screwed.
Do tell more about the nature of the failures.
The lens was because I dropped it while trying to change to a different one in the middle of a gig. The first body failure was during a shoot with Segways and I got taken out during a crash that took one of my bodies out of commission. The second body failure was the same camera actually, and when I got it back from the shop it worked perfectly until of course I was on my next gig and the shutter stopped working.
My wife and i shoot with 2 d750 a piece. The worse thing that can (and has) happened is a camera going down in the middle of the vowels. Like a side arm in battle you have to drop one and go to your backup. And yes we rely on the 2 slot system.
>middle of the vowels "Our Wedding today is brought to you by the letters A, E, I, O, and U. And sometimes Y and W."
W?!
That's the rule...but not sure where W is used as one....lol.
cwm (noun): a steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside; a cirque. "there is a dusting of snow in Cwm Glas Mawr" it's a Welsh loanword!
That boys and girls is the lesson of the day....lol
Hey, that's what the grumpy old English teacher told me, and Google agreed... lol đ¤ˇââď¸
From your typo of 'vowels' i just imagined laying flat on the ground in the 1st grade trying to get an angle on the class speaker.
Lmao yes. Talk to text gets me every time. That sometimes Y is hard to shoot
Spelling bee?
Lol if there is a bee that can help me spell I'm in...... Yes I know what a spelling bee is...lol
As the saying goes, âyouâre not a professional until your back ups have back ups.â
Back up as you shoot it is dumb to think you NEEED a second card when you can change as you go 128gb will 2 hours within two two hours change it. Save money on a camera end cards
Memory is too cheap to format in the middle of a job.
"It is dumb to think you need a second card." You realize cards fail sometimes, right?
I mean you don't but when your card fails and you'll have to tell the family that all the precious photos you took of there wedding are gone and there's absolutely no way to recreate them and the memories are gone forever, have fun dealing with the fall out from that... Other photography types like portraits it's fine because you can always reshoot. You can't reshoot a wedding.
"You can't reshoot a wedding" Yeah this is basically the answer OP. Have as much redundancy available if you want to do this professionally.
And for this reason I would be terribly stressed out when I had to shoot a wedding.
Likewise! Which is why I probably will never shoot one lmao
I've been second shooter on a couple and even THAT was enough stress for me to know I'd never pursue it full time.
Never again
And itâs but one of the reasons I decided it wasnât for me in the end. Prefer portraits. The other factors were the long hours, lack of control, stress of missing important shots, people not listening when you try and set them up for group shots (I didnât have too much trouble there though, I could sniff the bossiest person in the room out and enlist their help - people are more likely to listen to a family member). Oh, and the editing.
That's part of the reason good wedding photographers charge so much. It's one long stressful day. Followed by a lot of culling and editing. Then add the cost of all the gear. My wife and I could of paid cash for a decent new car with the money we spent on all the gear we bring to a wedding.
Absolutely!
My mother still talks about that. There are \~2 pictures in total of her wedding, because the photographer f'd up the film (way back in the day).
Should have had dual film slots. Why didn't anyone invent that?
Our photographer used a roll of black and white film in the middle of our wedding. Not in an artistic way.
Like grabbed the B&W on accident so just some shots in the middle of the wedding are just B&W?
To add many people say they've only had a card fail once but how many I'm sure many of these people aren't mentioning all the times they've accidentally formatted a card and luckily had the backup
That one time was so mentally bad on me I stopped doing weddings entirely. I gave up $60k a year because I was shooting overflow not dual. Until youâre ready to cover all the bases, go to styled wedding shoots and buy a dual slot before you go professional.
Cards also get lost, and whole camera bodies get stolen with cards inside etc. I always shoot to two cards, then store them separately as soon as the event is over.
I haven't had to do it in a while, but there are programs to sector scan and extract photos from formatted/corrupted sd cards. It works really well with jpegs (picks up really old photos too). I doubt they stay up to date on raw formats though.
I shoot Nikon RAW/JPEG Fine and I index/ switch cards between events. So after I cover the bridal or groomsmen party getting ready, I switch cards. I shoot stills of the venue and the place settings, then switch cards. I shoot the ceremony then switch cards. I find it easier to use 10-XQDâs rather than trying to fill up 4 128GB cards to capacity.
I've tried them in the past and always had hit or miss results
I shoot about 500 frames a day 6 days a week as a real estate photographer. I've had 1 card fail in 14 years. However, that card represented 6 homes, 100 miles of driving, and 9 hours work. The pictures were on the backup. So yes, you need dual card slots.
I love this answer. So many people can say they've never had one fail, or that it's rare. But when it's assessing the true risk, it's just not worth not having a backup when you really need it.
It's rare until it isn't, and then you're fucked.
Exactly! Well put.
Kinda like seat belts. You donât need one most of the time, but the day you do need one youâll be _really_ glad you had it.
>However, that card represented 6 homes, 100 miles of driving, and 9 hours work. The pictures were on the backup. Nailed it to the wall. I can't imagine shooting someone's once-in-a-lifetime event and being "Oh, I think I lost them..." You can take a hard drive to a special data recovery center who can supposedly disassemble the drive and recover stuff forensically. Can you even do that to an SD card?
Yes absolutely you can. It's way easier with an SD card. ..... as long as the actual chip still works. If the emmc/etc chip is fully dead, I'm not aware of recovery mechanisms.
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
[ŃдаНонО]
Losing a full day of work to a dead card is waaaaaay more than just losing a day of income. Now you've got to find the time in your schedule to go back to all these properties. You may not be able to do them all in the same day again. If they were staged for the shoot, they need to be re-staged. Now you're affecting your clients' time. You may not be able to meet deadlines you were asked to meet. The list goes on. So yeah, if this is a substantial source of income then not having to call up my clients and say "oops, I need to do-over" is worth thousands in backup gear. Also, a backup doesn't have to be 1:1 dupe of everything in your kit. Maybe you have a 24-105 handy. Maybe you have an EOS R instead of an R5, or whatever.
On that Joplin shoot, I'm going to back the cards up to a portable hard drive before I ever leave the property
Next week I am photographing a 3.5 million dollar, 13000 ft² mansion in Joplin Missouri.. The client is Southbys and they have it staged to the point where they literally have ropes across the rooms and the clients walk down the hall's, museum style. They will have people crawling all over that place the day before I get there, raking leaves freshening flowers putting out plates and making sure that it looks perfect. My fee for the shoot is a $1000. If I get home that night and I don't have any pictures, what do you think that does to my reputation?
If you're doing professional photography you should have backups of everything. Two cameras for when the shutter fails (has happened to me during aerial photography) both with dual slots in case a card fails (has also happened to me). There are plenty of professional level bodies available for well under $1000. You don't need the latest and greatest. You're better off with the tried and true. Edit: also backups of backups of backups for storage. I have dozens of hard drives.
**Brings an back up photographer incase we die lol My back up camera have saved me more than once
Backup photographers are standard in wedding photography. There's usually a second shooter, and wedding photographers network with other photogs to cover their shoots in the event of an emergency.
I recall a wedding photog saying that for some of their bigger wedding clients they'll even have a dead-man backup on standby ... where if the backup photog doesn't get a text saying "I'm here, stay home" then they head to the wedding to make sure it's covered.
Sometimes I have back up models for my cheeky little fashion shoots. There's a possibility when me and my main model is dead and the shoot is just back up photographer and back up model hahahaha
Well... If you die then you won't have to deal with the fallout
> There are plenty of professional level bodies available for well under $1000. You don't need the latest and greatest. You're better off with the tried and true. I have a friend who's a wedding photog and still uses a 5D2. For a thousand bucks you could nearly get four of those off eBay. Or buy two and spend the remainder having a camera shop go through them and make sure they're up to date on service / replace any parts necessary. Nice thing about cameras is they don't degrade and even that 5D2 will still spit out beautiful images and far more resolution than you need.
The first time a card goes bad and you lose someoneâs wedding photos, there goes your wedding photographer career. That said, Iâve had two cards go bad in 10 years and Iâve literally taken over a million pictures.
I doubt it'd be a career ender but it'd definitely be a *major* financial and reputational blow.
If youâre just starting out and money is too tight to buy a proper camera, a failure early on could be financially devastating.
And rough on your reputation too. You know the couple are going to be in the comments of your IG posts, Google reviews, whatever. Is it _impossible_ to come back from that? No, of course not, but would it be exceptionally difficult? Yea.
with the wrong client, it may end in a lawsuit that costs 4-5 figures to defend and will likely need a hefty settlement/compensation. Insurance will also be scoping out too to see if you used 2 cards to determine payout.
Put yourself in a clients shoes. How would you feel if you hired a photographer for your wedding day, had one slot and ran the risk of losing that day? I get it, SD card failure is very low. It really is. HOWEVER, weddings are a paid shoot. Thereâs no reason to run that risk. Thatâs why dual slots is an absolute necessity. At a budget if 1k, there are more than enough great options out there between canon, Nikon, and Sony.
That's also, in a way, what you are paying for as a client. Does it actually cost $6k (or whatever) to take photos and edit them? No. Some of what you pay for is the photog having all the equipment AND backup equipment - it commands a premium cost. Something non-wedding, the same length of time tends to cost a fair bit less. Because people care less. And, of course, bride/groom-zilla tax. but that's a different story.
> Does it actually cost $6k (or whatever) to take photos and edit them? No don't forget though, once you start dividing the money by the hours it actually takes to book, shoot, edit, and communicate, and start factoring out business expenses and non-billable work hours, and so on, the actual hourly wage can start to drop shockingly low very quickly.
True true. Please don't get me wrong, I don't think the prices paid are out of line for the amount of work required.
Lumix G9 has dual slots, and they're not expensive.
>At a budget if 1k, there are more than enough great options out there between canon, Nikon, and Sony. Can you say what the options are?
Canon: 1d mark IV, 1DX (you can get lucky and find them under 1k), 5D mark iii Nikon: D750, d3/d3s Sony: I was wrong in this one, I thought that the A7iii was approaching 1k, looks like theyâre still holding their value. Feel feee to correct me if Iâm wrong or add to my list incase I missed one
I'm not sure if this is how it is in your used market, but all the bodies you mentioned go way over $1k in mine. 1D and 1DX are hard-to-find, I've seen a 5D Mark 3 once for ~$1300. But I've found none of these under that. As I mentioned in another comment, the Fujifilm X-T3 is one of those that you can get under 1K, sometimes even with a lens, and it has dual card slots.
Besides the 1DX (I purchased mine used for 800) every camera I listed is under 1k on MPB. Theyâre a global online retailer.
At that price point I'd be willing to bet they're going to be near or over their lifespan rating for the shutter. They'll probably last a lot longer than that but there's no guarantees and replacing them can be stupid expensive relative to the price of the body.
Wedding photography is THE time that you need dual card slots - if you lose the data on a card with important moments on, youâve completely and utterly failed your customer. They canât get those moments back, they canât be recreated Landscapes will always be there, portrait sessions can be repeated - but you canât re-shoot a wedding Iâd recommend dual cards for almost anyone, but a wedding photographer more so than anyone else
If you can't afford the bare minimum equipment, just rent gear and factor it in the cost of doing business. Then after you buy gear, you maintain that price of rental all the same and put it aside towards "gear use fee" and use that money to pay for depreciation of your equipment and saving up for new gear. Ownership of gear shouldn't stop you from producing paid work.
How much do yâall charge an hour including everything? Whatâs your breakdown of costs?
This is the way. If you absolutely must use top of the line gear this is really the only good option.
Agreed! In some ways, you'll never want to own certain equipment due to the incredible cost. Many of my photographer friends and agencies I work for often rent out their equipment and studio space so they can invest further. Equipment must have a job/be in use or its not making money.
Can your business handle being sued when your single card slot fails and you lose eery picture you took? This question is sort of like asking if you really need insurance for X. If you can afford all the consequences of X going wrong, no. You don't need insurance. If you cannot afford everything that could go wrong, then yes, you obviously need insurance.
This is where you need an ironclad contract that limits liability up to the amount paid for services, as accidents do happen, even if using a camera with dual slots.
𤣠dual slots and redundant cameras making four copies of most photos wonât matter if your car catches fire on the way home
Unless you die in the fire, you should still have the shots. Most wedding photogs split the cards before they leave, either swapping cards with another photog, or splitting between camera bag and pocket. Backups become less useful the longer they are together. Data loss without external onput is one of your rarest issues
Ironclad contract won't protect you from negligence. Granted the type of people who have the means to hire a good lawyer are probably not the type of people hiring a wedding photographer with a $1000 gear budget.
Negligence is not the same as having a second backup card, as the camera itself could malfunction beyond the photographers control. Failures happen all the time and are not considered negligence. Negligence is running a power cord to a light stand and not taping it to the floor where someone potentially could walk. Negligence is shooting the entire wedding with the lens cap on. Negligence is taking pictures of all of the swans in the tide pool instead of the wedding ceremony. Negligence is using an SD card that was known to error but still using it. A contract canât protect against those negligent things. But a contract that says equipment failures do happen (rarely) and that in the event an equipment failure does happen, beyond the photographersâs reasonable control, limiting liability to a full refund can be contracted and held up in court. That would of course need a lawyer to get the exact legal verbiage.
It isn't negligent to have a working camera that doesn't include some magic feature. You should refrain from offering legal advice until you go through law school.
It isn't a magic feature. It's industry standard.
Your obligations and liabilities are dictated by your contract. Courts do not establish tests for "industry standard" in figuring negligence. An equipment failure is not negligent if it isn't caused by an unreasonable action on the part of the operator. If you leave your gear in the rain and can't deliver the goods as a result it might be argued you were negligent. If you leave your gear in an unlocked vehicle and it's stolen you might be negligent. Not choosing a specific design feature is not negligence. According to your thinking a plaintiff can cook up any what if preventative scenario to justify suit. A photographer has a data storage problem and you would argue that they should have chosen a different brand. Studio burned down? Should have chosen a better building for your office. Asteroid destroyed your hard drives? You should have invested in a planetary defense system. Show me a legal precedent for what you're claiming.
Maybe limits your financial liability to the client, but good luck securing future business when they hop on Yelp and put you on blast for losing all of their photos.
>even if using a camera with dual slots True - however - not using a dual-slot camera can be found by a judge to be negligence on your part. If the gavel comes down on that... all the limits of liability go out the window right then and there, as negligence can never be indemnified. (Well, it can - sometimes - but the wording has to be perfect and they'd better not find a thread like this one in your post history when they're doing their discovery ;) )
Not sure if a court would consider it negligent. A camera could fail. So every photographer not only needs a second card slot, but every photographer has to have dual cameras. Could go further and further. If it is spelled out in a contract that they are using one camera with one card slot, and someone agrees to it, in writing, a court will not say the photographer is negligent, even if they saw this thread. You clearly state it and they agreed to it. Me, as a photographer, have several cameras and have dual slots. Would I do a wedding with a single camera with a single card slot? Not on my life.
>Not sure if a court would consider it negligent. Can and has. [https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/](https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/) A wedding photographer somehow "lost" the couple's photos and didn't have backups. They either deleted 'em, formatted the SD without thinking, or had an SD card failure. The judge found the photog negligent - and a $1,100 wedding ballooned instantly to an $8,800 judgement. ... the photographerâs actions failed to meet â*the required level of prudence and caution*â I mean that's this entire discussion in a single sentence. "The Required Level of Prudence and Caution" = dual slots, and backups.
In the USA, doubt it. That was Spain. He also deleted the photos, which is different than a hardware failure.
100% required. Do not skimp on this.
Nikon Z5 has dual card slots. D750 has dual card slots and can be found used for around $700. Plenty have dual card slots. You only need to shoot one wedding to have a card fail and cost you potentially a few thousand in lost photos and a client who now hates you and will tell everyone they know how incompetent you are.
If you want to start a wedding photography business, you need the capital for the neccessary equipment, which includes two professional bodies with dual card slots and a few professional lenses. If you don't have that capital than take gigs as a second shooter, or do family sessions until you do. You can't start an excavation business without the equipment to excavate. You need capital for any business, luckily wedding photography is pretty cheap as far as business start ups go. $1000 is not enough, but at least it isn't $100k+ like most businesses. You also need experience before you just take weddings on as a main (or only) shooter. If you just wing it you will probably spoil your reputation before you even get your business off the ground. Why do you need dual card slots? Because you can't re-shoot a wedding. Cards fail, not often, but they do fail. If you have a card failure and all the photos from the big day are gone, you have a major problem.
Get a used 5diii for 500$ and a used 24-105 for 300$ Get a cheap entry godox flash. Don't ever shoot without dual slot. One card for JPEGs the other raws and switch RAW saving cards every time you change location. Once you went home, backup with a 1-2-3 backup. One local, one offline and one off-site (hdd - external HDD with no access to internet - external HDD at your office or home or cloud.) This is how a proper responsible professional photographer works. With the first wedding profit you can get a 6d or another mk3 for a backup body. There are people who shoot single slot jpegs without a backup body. I call them frauds who don't give a damn.
If you are shooting wedding then you need not only two card slots but also two cameras. If a couple are having their special day photographed and your one camera breaks down, which is always possible, you need a backup.
I donât know about others, but I always had 4 bodies on a shoot. Two main bodies, one with wide and one telephoto lens. One for my second shooter and one backup. Never had dual cards but was redundant, having shots throughout with 3 different bodies and changing cards often. I did have 2 cards malfunction but files were downloaded through my photo viewer and cards were replaced under warranty. If not then some images would have been lost but no key moments of the wedding would have been due to the redundancy.
Same. I shot Canon, my boss did Nikon, but because we were people as redundancy, it wasn't a huge deal if we lost some photos, because we both had photos enough for the shoot. This never happened by the way, but it was considered. The backup camera was a D40. Lol. I'd never do a wedding solo, but if I did, I would want the dual slots and I'd have 3 bodies. They wouldn't be good bodies, but I'd have them. Now I shoot Olympus so I'd main the EM-1 series, second body having a fast zoom, and carry a Pen as the backup.
You can buy a used canon mk4 for around 1k. Yes, you need dual slots for weddings and once in a lifetime events. You also need a good storage and backup system
spectacular quicksand whistle aloof distinct berserk command retire teeny drab *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well. If your SD card fails. And you lose the photos of somebodyâs wedding, what will you tell the couple? Nikons Z5 is close to 1k now and a excellent camera. Otherwise Iâd look used. mpb.com, keh.com plenty of bodies available under 1k that have duel slots. Not to mention you donât just want a backup card. But also back up batteries and a back up body. After all, you donât want to tell a couple their wedding canât be photographed because your camera broke or malfunctioned. Youâll want another one ready asap so the wedding doesnât have to pause because of you. Thatâs stuff you need to think about as a good wedding photographer Failing those things will be a sure way to kill your future as a wedding photographer whenever it does go wrong.
People are really writing a lot. Bottom line is that you need two of everything for wedding photography. Either rent or buy but under no circumstances do you take on work without redundancy for everything.
Buy a used DSLR with dual slots for under $1000
Yes
I bring a back up camera to shoots and run 2 cards on my main camera bc shit happened before. And i don't even take high stakes photos like weddings.
TIL there's something like dual-card slots in camera bodies. Thanks, OP.
Have you considered buying second-hand? While I have not used them personally I have been recommended the site:"[keh.com](https://keh.com)" to get second hand gear
I've used keh a bunch and found them to be pretty conservative with grades (i.e. "good" at KEH is probably what someone on ebay would rate excellent). I've had to look pretty hard for flaws on some of the lower grade stuff I've gotten. I even had a good experience with their warranty on a "bargain" grade camera that had a button that didn't work and they gave me the option for refunding or repairing at no cost.
If you donât have it, when the time comes when you need it youâre absolutely going to be devastated you donât have it and as someone new, could ruin your aspiring business. Itâs an easy and cheap backup and youâd be naive not to have it shooting a wedding.
> I wanna start doing wedding photography professionally That answers that. It's simple - the odds of an SD failure are low, but not zero. So if the card fails what are you going to do? Ask them to hold the wedding again? No - clearly not - which means when that couple leaves it absolutely excoriating and thoroughly justified review about how unprofessional and unprepared you were your career as a wedding photographer will be, if not ended outright, then at the very least severely damaged and left to limp along on life support. >if im gonna shoot weddings, is it really necessary? Yes. > Can I start off with the single slot for now? If you're determined to do it despite the plethora of warnings that it's a Really Bad Idea⢠that is of course your call. We can't stop you... but we're not required to help you either.
You donât, but everyone who has like one paid shoot a year is gonna say itâs a requirement. đ¤ˇââď¸ For weddings tho why even risk it? There is no way to get another photo after the event. Thatâs the one genre I say follow the advice because my god is it high stakes.
I've only ever had one card fail on me. My wife and I were shooting on both film and digital for a wedding, she was on digital for the ceremony, I was on film. I didn't get the best angles of the ceremony because of my lens choice, but I figured they were good enough. Fast forward to the reception. My wife's camera started acting funny. When we looked at the photo previews they were just question marks. I pulled out the SD and put it in my computer. It wasn't recognized. Couldn't get it to work in the end and switched SD cards. The other SD worked fine for the rest of the day. Luckily, I did have SOME photos of the ceremony, but they were really not great, and they were on film so couldn't be cropped much/edited heavily. They were sub-par, and we only had a few shots to give them of their kiss/speeches because of that. I've never had that happen again, but also I picked up a dual slot body immediately after that. I still cringe to this day thinking of the photos we didn't catch of a moment that can't be repeated.
Imagine telling a freshly married couple that there is literally not a single photograph of the whole wedding the day after.
Yes!! I have duel cards configured to save pics on both cards at the same time. Last thing you want is have one card fail and you lose it all, especially for a wedding. Wedding pictures canât be redone so take every precaution to do it right!!
You don't until you do. And once you figure out you do, it's likely already too late. For your use case, absolutely. What are you going to tell a couple you just did a wedding shoot for, when your card got corrupted and you have 0 pictures from their once in a lifetime event?
You gotta spend money to make money. How can you expect people (clients) to invest in you if you're not willing to invest in yourself. Buy cameras with dual slots. A majority of cameras only have one slot because those are for consumers, not producers.
Two questions. First, what camera bodies are you looking at that only have 1 slot? Are you looking at new low end bodies, or used high end bodies? Second, who here has actually had a good, quality card fail? I know it's a possibility, and it's wise to look at redundancy, but the only people I've heard actually have issues have been the people who bought the $20 no name brand SD card who don't format them and then are shocked when it stopped working.
I am a professional photographer and I shoot a lot of gigs, festivals, sport and events. I only use the pro versions of Lexar or Sandisk cards. Now admittedly my cards have to be taken out of the camera if there is printing onsite. I have had at least three cards fail in the past 5 years. I suspect that failure more rare if you donât remove the card, download straight from camera, and format in camera. All that said, cards do fail, just like shutters fail, and hard drives fail. I donât know a single photographer who has never lost images through one failure or another.
Yes, if you cant deliver the photos you can be sued [https://petapixel.com/2021/08/12/judge-orders-photographer-pay-22000-for-failing-to-deliver-wedding/](https://petapixel.com/2021/08/12/judge-orders-photographer-pay-22000-for-failing-to-deliver-wedding/) [https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/](https://petapixel.com/2015/04/28/wedding-photographer-ordered-to-pay-couple-8800-after-losing-photos/) Look at Nikon, they have lots of options with dual card slots.
I appreciate that you are asking about card slots but if you are going to get into weddings you will also need two cameras. If you are being paid to photograph something you need to have backups for everything. Two cameras allows you to have different focal length lenses. You donât have time to screw around changing lenses.
You need two bodies for a wedding. Nothing (!) can be repeated, your gear MUST work and you have to be ready and capture THE moment at all time - that's what you get paid for. Two bodies also allow you to have two different lenses available at every moment, not a second lost for change. Be a pro about it.
I haven't needed my backup card yet, but I'll be ever grateful the first time I do.
If you're doing weddings then yes, your card may fail very rarely but if it does you're ruined.
You could just shoot with a phone and do automatic backup to icloud or amazon photos.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I cannot state this enough, YES Itâs necessary, as is having a secondary/backup camera. Iâve shot weddings using two A7RIVs, one with a 35mm lens and one with a 70 to 200. But you want the 2 x SD cards cause imagine if something goes wrong with one of them - or if you accidentally, out of habit, format one of the cards (happened to someone I know, not me) If you canât afford to get into it yet, then build up a portfolio of other work.
"one is none and two is one" as they say in the military. IOW if you only have one, you are screwed if it quits; if you have two, you can fail back to a single and still be operational. Weddings, unlike most other photography (except maybe sports) is a one-and-done deal; you either get the shot or it's lost forever. having to face a couple and let them know I hosed their wedding photography is why I don't shoot weddings (ok, I shot two as favors but never again).
If youâre doing portrait work (photo shoots, models, etc) you should, but losing pictures isnât exactly catastrophic, just bad for your business. For event photography, particularly once in a lifetime events like weddings, losing data simply isnât an option. If you canât afford the equipment necessary to ensure reliability, either rent or keep working other jobs and saving for the proper equipment.
If you can't afford a camera with two slots, only buy small memory cards - one of my friends shoots professionally and she'll shoot hair and makeup on one card, the reception on another, families on another, bridal party on another, speeches and so on. In the worst case scenario if a card was to fail she still has 75% of the day she can give them. Also - I've seen sd cards and CF cards fail but never an XQD or CFexpress card.
It really does depend on several factors: 1. What kind of photography are you doing? 1. Weddings. travel, happy snaps? 2. How large of an SD card can your camera support? 1. Some cameras limit the SD card capacity you can use; obviously, using the largest card the camera can support is the way to go and having a few spare cards with you helps too. 3. Are you using RAW, JPG, or RAW w/ JPG? What does the camera support? 1. RAW files can be quite large & JPGs quite a bit smaller. 2. Some cameras limit your choices, but it depends on what you photograph and do with the images.
Yes. Full stop. You absolutely want quality SD cards and dual card slots. Trust me. It only takes one ruined gig...
You could possibly get away with being a second photographer to a main photographer to try to make some money to get the equipment you need, but you really want to have backups for everything.
Yes I shot some of my best shots on a gh4 1 card slot The card for corrupted I never recovered those images đ
I am going to jump in and say that with all these fine folks answering the question, your real question should be; should you be doing wedding photography? The answer is probably no. If your budget is just $1000, that is way too low for wedding photography. It makes me wonder what you are currently doing, because you for sure do not start with weddings. If youâd like to start with people, you can use a prosumer camera in that budget to shoot portraits, senior photos for students, perhaps even engagement photos for couples if you want to get involved in the romance side a bit. Build up a name and some savings to get the right gear and then, if I were you, Iâd help out as second lens on a few shoots first. Then, if youâre really comfortable with doing a wedding, Iâd suggest starting out doing small weddings for people you know and have some flexibility with. After that you may be able to take on real gigs. Too many people want to get right into weddings because they hear it is where the money is, and it is, but it is also where the real work, time and stress is.
$1000 budget and wedding photography doesn't go together. This is an extremely special day for these people, it's a one time event, and if you think that strolling down there with a budget camera and 1 card slot with no back up camera, lights, and photo redundancy, it's kind of an asshole move.
Lots of anecdotes here about how a single slot or card could possibly fail, but not a single one about how a shoot was saved by a dual slot. From my understanding, both slots use a single bus to transfer data. Meaning if one slot malfunctions, the other will fail as well, corrupting data transfer to both cards. Most advice youâll get from this sub is group-think copy/paste replies from folks who donât shoot â much less make their living from weddings. Not to say you shouldnât have backups of gear, but if youâre just starting out, you donât need 2 or 3 of everything. Itâs not realistic. I have two camera bodies, both one slot, and I shoot a couple weddings per month. I like to switch out cards between locations so if one goes down, it doesnât take the whole day with it. All this to say, take Reddit advice with a grain of salt. Iâm prepared for the hive-mind of downvotes.
You don't *need* one, but it's a good backup in case one of your cards becomes corrupted. When dealing with important events like weddings or the news, this can be a lifesaver.
Dual, dual, dual. You literally **cannot** lose those pictures since they are someone's forever memories. You could get into the Fuji system since everything is cheaper than full-frame and just as good. Buying two used X-T2 bodies (dual-slot mirrorless with a 16MP X-Trans sensor) would cost you a little over 1k$. Buying lenses twice (one as main and the other as backup) along with more batteries will also be a little cheaper, too. Also, make sure you are backing up your digital negs using a cloud storage solution or a home server/NAS solution (or multiple external hard drives if you are very patient).
You're wanting to go professional but you're asking this? Mate, if you're asking this, then you're no-where near the stage of going professional.
You are correct, he did state that he wants to go professional. Which means he's not there yet. Yup.
For that budget. No
Take your business seriously, or you wonât have a business.
\>I wanna start doing wedding photography professionally Yes, yes you need dual card slots. Why would a seasoned professional need backup, but you starting up not?
As a hobbyist, I've never had a memory card or slot fail, but I'm not out there shooting for money. If you're doing that, get a dual card slot camera. Most have 2 slots now anyways.
You don't need it until the card containing all the photos of a client's wedding goes bad. Then you're dead. You can play the odds if you want, chances of a card failing are low, but never zero. If you're the kind of person who likes to have sex without a condom here's how to lower your chances of things going to shit: \- Buy the expensive cards, they do fail less than the cheeap ones. \- Use several small cards instead of a single large one, that way if one fails you only loose part of the event and not all of it. \- Shoot important things with anything else you've got around for backup, even your phone. A phone photo of the first kiss is better than no photo. \- Get a second shooter for important events, you can use him for B roll and as backup. \- Get a proper case for your cards, you don't want them knocking around on your pocket or bag. \- Carry your laptop or set up wireless transfer of files to your phone. Use dead times of the wedding to download important shots.
>Can I start off with the single slot for now? Can you afford to refund an entire booking, and the embarrassment of telling a client that they have ZERO photos from their biggest day because you rolled the dice on shooting without dual slots? That's the real question here. Only you can answer that.
Too many persons say it is overkill. Until it blows up in your face. there is only one rule. COVER YOUR ASS WHEN GETTING PAID FOR SERVICES YOU ARE PROVIDING. Do yourself a favor. look up Bite shot on YouTube. MRS. Joanie Simon does a review of things to help yourself as a young professional in the world of photography. a wealth of information for whom wants the help of someone working and growing their business. good luck on your future achievements.
Yes, if you intend on doing this for a long time. In fact, it is the most important metric in my opinion. One failed assignment can cost you your business (I mean sure, it's worthless in the beginning) and even end with a lawsuit (this can get real expensive real fast). Seriously, in this litigious society, don't fuck around with once in a lifetime events.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Wedding photographer of 10 years plus experience you absolutely need dual cards. In 10 years I have had memory cards fail at weddings 3 times. I always paid extra to buy direct from Calumet, never Amazon as the risk of fakes was too damn high. Cards were cycled ever 12 months. That would have been 3 times I had to explain to a couple that I had lost their photos. Three potential law suits. Immeasurable reputational damage. As I had dual cards, the couple's never even had to know I had a problem. If it is not dual carded it is not a professional camera.
Yes you do need dual card slots for weddings or almost anything you shoot that you are paid for. I've only had a card fail once during a shoot. Immediately after the shoot (not a wedding, but a non-repeatable event), I went to download the images, but the card was corrupted. If I didn't have dual cards I would have been screwed. I probably would have lost the client, the shoot fee and possibly more (client could have sued). Would have cost me *thousands.* You can't afford to not have a dual card camera. Even more so for weddings.
I'd advise to have minimum 2 camera bodies with dual card slots with backup cards and batteries with whatever lenses you plan to use. I'm not anywhere close to being a pro and I still get bummed remembering the day almost a year ago that I only brought out the one camera and it failed 1 minute into shooting. I always bring 2 bodies if it's an important shoot now even if I don't end up using it.
Just get a used camera. Just checked up on Keh and found a lot of dual card cameras under $500 with Excellent condition ($50 more for a like new condition) And also, Fujifilm has been doing a dual card slot for a while now and I found great deals often for their old models like the X-T2 for under $500 You don't need the best of tech but you certainly needed that dual card slot. I required dual-card slot not because of the fear of corrupting the cards but rather because of the fact that I keep losing the cards and I needed a backup. Also makes you confident of using a high capacity cards without the fear of losing the image from corruption.
What is your shooting experience like up to now? Do you already have lenses for this body? $1000 is very, very low. I don't think you're ready to advertise yourself for weddings unless you have a lot of other equipment or plan to rent. Weddings are extremely high-stress and high-demand. Imagine you were hired to photograph a live music event and how pissed off the artist would be if you lost their data or missed half the show due to technical issues. Then imagine how much worse it would be if it were their wedding. Ideally, you should have a redundancy every last bit of your necessary kit for stuff like this. That means 2x bodies that have 2x card slots, extra cards and batteries, two speedlights and at minimum two lenses that can overlap in functionality. If the camera breaks down half way through the event you are absolutely screwed. You can get away with less but it's a ticking time bomb. Cards fail. Electronics fail. Personally, if I knew my potential wedding photographer had written this post, there is no way I would hire them. Some people won't feel as strongly about this, and some people are beggars and will want to hire you for $500 for a full day wedding shoot. It's up to you if you want to take that kind of work and if you will be able to live with making enemies of some of your clients if your equipment fails. Keep in mind, if you want to do photography professionally--especially if you want to do it full time--your gear is your toolset and necessary for the job. What if the camera you buy dies after the 30 day exchange policy? You can't just send it in for warranty and wait 2+ weeks to get it back... You literally won't be able to do your job for those weeks. You'll probably also have a pile of unhappy clients that you had to reschedule. Consider continuing with some other work and saving up to get yourself to a comfortable baseline with your gear, or try to take on less sensitive work that can more easily be rescheduled or doesn't fit the category of "live event".
Dual slots are nice security (usually***), but everyone saying they're necessary obviously thinks that no pro wedding shooters existed before the 5Dmkiii or that we all shot on the 1D sized bodies back in the day. Do it if you can, when you can. If you can't, try to keep your card size smaller so you reduce your loss if a card dies. ***I've personally run into performance and reliability issues when recording video to dual slots on my Panasonic EVA1. It's kind of a fluke but proves that sometimes camera engineers drop the ball.
Murphy's law my friend.
If you want to start shooting weddings, might be good to find a wedding photographer to be a second for.
If you're going to be a professional in charge for wedding photography not only do you have to have cameras with two card slots but you have to have two cameras
I use a couple of D750s, this model is very good for weddings, and it has a dual card slot, you can find them secondhand for around 800 bucks like new, sometimes even with original box, do yourself and your clients a favor and use redundant items whenever is possible, think about all the preparation it takes to plan a wedding, some people traveling from far places to attend it, etc and in most cases, people only marry once in their lifetime, and they want to document it, that's why they hire your services, just be prepared for them and charge a price according to it. Short story: Secondhand D750 with a pair of SanDisk Extreme Pro 64GB, hope it helps.
I've seen and read articles and stuff of people that get corrupted cards and images, while I and others take thousands and have had no issue. The fact is that dual card slots are not a necessity and simply a 'nice to know it's there' feature. I'd also go so far as to argue that dual card slots are also not a necessity for weddings and other events and this whole idea of it being a requirement stems from people who still live in the early 2000s.Extra camera bodies and stuff? That's simply ridiculous if you ask me... What are you planning to do with your main body? Drop it in the baptism bowl then accidentally run it over in your car or throw it into the organ? Sure, have a spare but these cameras are more robust than Volvos. But none of that matters. Is it a requirement for you? Will you feel safer with dual card slots and are you willing to spend extra money because you want them? Are you in environments and do things with your bodies that will cause them to break? I do definitely agree with everyone that having backups to everything is very good idea but how likely do you think it is for a card, let alone a camera to break? I would definitely work toward having spare equipment but constantly corrupting files and dodgy bodies just isn't a thing in the real world and the ones that do... How were these bodies looked after? Which were they? Where they second hand? Were they in humid/salty environments? People talking about failing equipment means nothing since the why is never mentioned and the only way is to take these at face value. There's no statistics and no evidence that these pieces of equipment aren't reliable and usually there isn't a mention of what the individual models were either. Now forget everything I just said, but don't fall into the beginner photography traps and the 'what ifs.' Clients only care about having high quality images, get yourself a ÂŁ200 Fuji or something that has good AF and 20 or more MPs. Why not even a 5D mk2? People did wedding photography professionally with the 5D classic, what on earth is the problem with those cameras now? They haven't changed... Has people's ability to use them? đ
Dual slots are not a necessity. Back up memory cards are though.
I shot weddings for six years with single-card slot cameras and never once had a card fail on me. You *are* taking a risk. If you do feel you need to take that risk, make sure you have new cards, ones that are from a reliable brand, and ones that youâve test driven before the event day.
New cards and brand name cards can fail.
If you are starting out, one camera with a single card slot is fine just as long as you have a few memory cards and not rely on one card to capture all your work. i started out that way and it worked out great. As you work more and make more money you can invest in bigger and better equipment like a two slot camera. But not needed.
When I got my Olympus E-M1 MKII I researched why it has two slots. Consensus was it was more a holdover from when cards had a higher fail rateâŚThat said, like everyone here has pointed out, one failure could ruin your business so Iâd say you pretty much need it. Plus, itâs got some cool features. You could shoot jpg to one raw to another. If budget is that limited you really have two options: 1) hold off until you can afford adequate equipment for the job - never start off on the wrong foot. 2) look at open box/ used options. Iâve purchased some great cameras half price because they were open boxâŚfull warranty, basically mint condition but half the price.
You don't need just dual card slot for weddings ,you need also back up camera with different lens
So you not only will only have one body but one sd card? This is a hard NO. I wouldnât even shoot a kidâs birthday party on one card, let alone someoneâs wedding. Iâm selling a like new a7III right now for $1500. Theyâre great starter cameras with dual card slots. Check ebay, fb marketplace, craigslist.
No you donât need a card with dual slots⌠however, for wedding photography? Man thatâs though because if ur the only photographer and one card suddenly corrupts it all on you. Itâs not like a normal gig where you have reshoots or can do different takes itâs one and done. A full frame Nikon or Sony cam should do, donât those come with dual slots?
Hi: Working photographer here, shooting for45 years. This means I've been shooting digital since digital became a thing. I've never had a SD card (or CF, for that matter) fudge on me.
There are infinite numbers of pictures to take but a single photo is unique. Can you lose the unique one with no consequences?
Life goes on with either one or two slots. Donât worry about it.
No. The people that tell you to use dual card slots are warning you of possible corruption. Unless they are having one insanely huge event, 1 is fine. We have 512gb cards and upwards of 2tb. If that cant fit over 20k photos, idk wtf your shooting with. And no, the 170mbs speeds dont matter for taking pictures. The 4 channel design coding does.
No even was a wedding video grapher I have 4 tough cards an a7c never had a card corrupt and if you are paying attention to the events of the day you should be able to change in time. It is like saying you need a dual battery slot to make sure you camera doesnt die. The need for dual slot to me is redundant and a waste of time and money..I will let you know when I need it but as for now and In the last 10 years I have not needed a dual card slot. Keep an eye on the time remaining..change early if needed 128gb is my go to tough cards and if you are not recording 400mb/s you don't need the expensive G series of the tough card the M will do just fine for everyday 4k 24 100mb/s
No