Photography Life

PL provides various digital photography news, reviews, articles, tips, tutorials and guides to photographers of all levels

  • Lens Reviews
  • Camera Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • Compare Cameras
  • Forum
    • Sign Up
    • Login
  • About
  • Search
Forums
General
Open Talk
"Sharding" Mode wit...
 
Notifications
Clear all

"Sharding" Mode with Dual Memory Cards for 2x throughput

 
Open Talk
Last Post by Aaron_Feldman 2 years ago
1 Posts
1 Users
0 Reactions
584 Views
 Aaron_Feldman
(@aaron_feldman)
New Member
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 1
Topic starter May 8, 2023 9:57 pm  

Camera makers have gone to great lengths to deliver high performance camera storage. But I'm not aware of any cameras that utilize a seemingly simple technique that would improve write performance: Sharding. More specifically, a stream of photos could be split across dual memory cards, odd-numbered files to one card and even-numbered files to the other, to achieve double the total bandwidth of a single card. Why not use this technique? Could we dream of receiving this capability in a firmware update? Do any cameras have it already?

Better write performance would be particularly useful for high-speed cameras that aren't blessed with CFExpress cards or deep buffers. The Canon R7 shooting ~40 megabyte full raw files at 30 FPS has a few seconds of buffer at best. After that, it's bottlenecked by the ~300MB/s max throughput of a UHS-II card, equating to perhaps 7 or 8 FPS, back of the envelope. Sharding across two UHS-II cards could give it 15 FPS with a full buffer (assuming we shoot RAW only, no jpegs).

From a hardware perspective, the only bottleneck I can think of would be between the data buffer and the card bus controller. Even that link can surely handle more throughput than a single memory card, if the camera can already write RAW+Fine jpeg streams to dual cards at the same rate that it can write RAW to a single card.


   
Quote
Forum Jump:
  Previous Topic
Next Topic  
Forum Information
Recent Posts
Unread Posts
  • 24 Forums
  • 663 Topics
  • 5,628 Posts
  • 1 Online
  • 1,271 Members
Our newest member: sensapaura
Latest Post: Photo Theme Challenge, Week #110: Your City [Deadline: Saturday, July 12]
Forum Icons: Forum contains no unread posts Forum contains unread posts
Topic Icons: Not Replied Replied Active Hot Sticky Unapproved Solved Private Closed
Disclosures, Terms and Conditions and Support Options

Learn

  • Beginner Photography
  • Landscape Photography
  • Wildlife Photography
  • Portraiture
  • Post-Processing
  • Advanced Tutorials
Photography Life on Patreon

Reviews

  • Camera Reviews
  • Lens Reviews
  • Other Gear Reviews
  • Best Cameras and Lenses

Photography Tutorials

Photography Basics
Landscape Photography
Wildlife Photography
Macro Photography
Composition & Creativity
Black & White Photography
Night Sky Photography
Portrait Photography
Street Photography
Photography Videos

Unique Gift Ideas

Best Gifts for Photographers

Site Menu

  • About Us
  • Beginner Photography
  • Lens Database
  • Lens Index
  • Photo Spots
  • Search
  • Forum

Reviews

  • Reviews Archive
  • Camera Reviews
  • Lens Reviews
  • Other Gear Reviews

More

  • Contact Us
  • Workshops
  • Support Us
  • Submit Content

Copyright © 2025 · Photography Life