My SD Card Journey with the Leica M8

[Range-rover]

Hi all,

Well I been enjoying my M8 camera but one thing still gets
me and I don't know if it's a small problem or not SD cards. I
been trying a bunch of them and here what I found out,

Sandisk Extreme 16gb good
Sandisk Ultra any card no good!
Lexar Platium II 8gb 300x good
Lexar Professional 2gb 133x good
Lexar Professional 8gb 400x no good
Transcend 4gb Good
Samsung 8gb Good

I haven't tried others like Extreme II or other but that's it, I did
talk to Leica and they thought it a bit odd, I did get the Lexar
Professional 8gb 400 off ebay and when I put it in my mac it
kinda took awhile to download and that's odd.

Is the M8 a bit fussy with cards let me know.

Thanks
Range

 

[Ronald M]

My guess is this collection is from other cameras. I advise against, but in any case reformat the card in the camera before using it.

Sandisk card are frequently counterfeit. They perform poorly. Buy from a trusted source.

When I purchase a new camera, I buy new cards, usually a two pack from B&H unless it is a dual slot camera in which case I buy 4 cards.

Be sure to eject the download card from the Mac before removing. I was pressed for time last week and failed to eject. The Mac pro started to download very slowly, 4 min for a jpeg. 90 min for NEFs. Normally this take 5 min tops. A reboot cured the problem.

The M8 can not be set for mass storage and downloading is PTP which is slow as molasses. Downloading from M8 directly is painful at best. The more images on the card, the worse it is.

I use Lexar 16 GB 400x and they work fine.

Leica M8 firmware does not like fast cards for some reason.

Avoid cheap brand cards as they have poor performance and poor firmware. Stick to Lexar and Sandisk from trusted source, i.e. no ebay.

These are rules I follow with all digicams.

 

[Range-rover]

That's good advice Ronald, I did get one card for ebay the Lexar Pro 8gb 400x,
used it once and now can't be used don't know why something's up but have
enough of them now to keep me going.

Range

 

[-------]

which model Sandik Extreme 16gb for Leica M8 ?

which model Sandik Extreme 16gb for Leica M8 ?

@Range_Rover:
just for clarification purposes

you mentioned "Sandisk Extreme 16gb good" > which model did you mean precisely ?




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[-------]

which Sandisk Extreme 8GB card

which Sandisk Extreme 8GB card

Whether it's the
M8 ~ X1~ X2~ DP Merrills
I always use San Disk Extreme 8gb and have never encountered any problems

Would you please specify which Sd card you are using precisely - thx !

 

[jaapv]

If a card starts to misbehave, the best remedy is to format it using SD Formatter:

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

Essential precaution as well: When downloading to your computer: LOCK THE CARD !

There can be all kinds of dross written back onto it otherwise.

 

[LCT]

+1 and the M8 works at the same speed with slow and fast cards so no need to spend little fortunes on them. 30 MB/s is enough in my experience and a modest card like the Sandisk SDHC class 10 Extreme 30 MB/s will work perfectly