Photography News Issue 44

Photography News | Issue 44 | absolutephoto.com

First tests

Accessories First tests We get our hands on the latest kit and share our first impressions – so you know whether or not to add it to your wish list

Reviews by Will Cheung, AdamDuckworth and Kingsley Singleton

SamsungEVOPlus 256GBmicroSD £172.99 For 4K video shooting this card is big enough for over 100 hours of recording. That’s immense. If I took the equivalent in 16GB cards I would need 16 individual cards, although to be fair that’s no physical hardship.

Specs

Samsung’s relentless drive to deliver bigger, faster and reliable memory cards is insatiable and the EVO Plus range has now been upgraded. The latest EVO Plus microSD cards now deliver a write speed of up to 60MB/s and a read speed of 100MB/s. The card supplied here was the largest capacity 256MBmicroSD card, the biggest that’s currently available in the series. Some photographers prefer to have several lower capacity cards rather than one or two big ones and there are definitely pros and cons to both approaches. Loading this 256MB microSD card into a Fujifilm X-T2 set to record Raws and Fine JPEGs gave me capacity to shoot 6880 pictures and over 9999 with Raws only. My tendency is usually to overshoot as I’d much rather fully exploit a scene – assuming time and circumstance allow – with different lenses, timing, changing light and so on rather than regret it later. Such a massive capacity means I can do this with joyful alacrity – perhaps too much alacrity because the downside is sifting through all the shots later, but that’s another issue. Back to this card then, it means if I’m on a full-on shooting trip capturing around 1000 frames a day, I have a week’s capacity in just one card.

Price £172.99 complete with SD adapter, 32GB £22.99, 64GB £39.99, 128GB £78.99 Capacity 256GB tested here. 128GB and 64GB sizes also available Class Grade 3, Class 10 Temperature proof Yes, operating temperature –25°C to 85°C Waterproof Yes X-ray proof Yes Magnetic proof Yes Durability 10,000 mating cycles Sequential read speed 100MB/s Sequential write speed Up to 90MB/s with 128GB and 256GB cards. 60MB/s with 64GB Contact samsung.com/uk

Of course the serious risk of relying on just one card is if that card corrupts then you are in deep trouble – especially if it’s at the end of your frantic one-week trip. But it is true that flash memory cards are remarkably reliable. In my years shooting SD cards, I think I have had one failure, and I haven’t had any reliability issues with microSD cards yet – touch wood! However, I have had physical issues with both card types. I recently snapped a microSD card in half. It was in my wallet without its case for safekeeping and it must have been wedged at an odd angle when I sat down and it snapped in two. Using and abusing this EVO Plus card didn’t produce any issues. I have tested Samsung’s four-proof technology (water, temperature, magnetic and X-ray) before and it works just as well in this card. I had absolutely no issues after submerging it in water or working with a card straight out of the freezer. It is highly specified with an Ultra High Speed Class 10 rating and U3 compatibility with a quoted

read speed of 100MB/s and a write speed of 90MB/s. A run through the Blackmagic Design Disk Speed app gave a write speed of 65.4MB/s and a read speed of 87.6MB/s which are good readings. Apractical test passing data onto the card through my Mac mini was less impressive with a write speed of 16.5MB and a read speed of 51.4MB. Loaded into a Fujifilm X-T2 set to shoot Raw files only at 8fps, gave me four seconds shooting at this speed before slowing down, and that is a good shooting rate and very rarely would I be rattling through so many frames for such a prolonged period. In the same camera, no problem was found shooting 4K footage for the maximum time of nine minutes 59 seconds either. WC

Verdict

We all need large capacity, reliable and high performing storage cards to feed our memory hungry cameras, phones and tablets and Samsung is a leading supplier. Its latest EVO Plus cards do a great job too, providing an impressive performance at competitive prices so worth adding to your shortlist when next shopping for cards. Pros Samsung four-proof design, write/read speed, comes with SD adapter, capacity Cons Nothing