No, not political or moral corruption. It’s even worse than that (slight exaggeration there)- we’re talking corruption of TECHNOLOGY, when a piece of equipment no longer works as intended! **DUN DUN DUN!**

Want to know one of my biggest wedding fears? Getting home from a day of photographing nuptials, uploading my memory cards, and seeing these orange and purple stripes of death. This actually happened to me this past Spring. I was culling in LightRoom and saw the photo below, and I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

The file was damaged and there was no salvaging it- something had gone amiss internally with the memory card, and I had no way to fix the problem.

Fortunately for me, it was somehow [miraculously] limited to two photos I would have tossed anyways as they were duplicates… but what if the entire card of bride & groom portraits had been lost?! That would have been a disaster!!

So I immediately tossed the faulty card, and went out and purchased not only a replacement CF card, but a BACK-UP 64gig SD card as well. My main camera body is a Canon 5dmark3, and one of the features on the mk3 is a DUAL card slot- you can have both a CF and an SD card in the camera at the same time.

My SD card (THIS one, in case you’re wondering*) is used purely as a back-up. I have my camera writing the large RAW files to my CF card, and large JPGs to my SD card. My RAW files are what I edit and deliver to my clients (as final JPGs), so that’s what I’m actually importing into my hard drive at the end of a wedding.

But, worst-case scenario, if a CF card fails? I now have a useable back-up on my SD card! After those two corrupted files in June, I never clear my SD card until after I’ve confirmed that all the RAWs are in perfect condition. The JPGs are just as easy to edit as my RAWs, so if I need to rely on the back-up, I know my clients will still receive the quality of photographs they’re expecting.

My 64gig SD card is large enough to fit 2-3 ENTIRE weddings, so I don’t even have to think about switching out my back-up card throughout the course of a wedding day. It’s the perfect back-up! 

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