Could an upgrade in card speed to UHS-II make a noticeable difference in performance with the latest generation of the popular Sony a7 series?
With the inclusion of the second memory card slot in the latest generation of Sony mirrorless camera bodies, existing as well as potential Sony brand photographers everywhere rejoiced as the small change made relying on this system for professional work more of a reality. But once you dug deeper into the spec sheet, what stood out is that the second card slot was unfortunately inferior to the first.
So, is one card being slower really that big of a deal? The answer likely depends on you and how you plan to utilize the camera. Any performance boost is always welcome, even at the cost of upgrading existing memory cards. In this comparison video from Dan Watson, he offers a much needed stills comparison for varying cards, testing a7 III speed and buffering times with both UHS-I and UHS-II memory. If you are considering a card upgrade, it’s a valuable test to absorb as the latter card type is at this point in time still quite expensive, especially if you plan to swap out your existing stock of UHS-I cards in hopes of tremendous gains in speed and buffer times. As Watson demonstrates, expectations should be tempered, largely if you're like me and like the record mode to be set to capture simultaneous raw images.
I'm curious if you can shoot raw to both cards, not with one as a backup, but with it sending alternating images to one card and then to the next. I would think that would almost double the amount of shots you could take.
No, no "RAID 0" functionality.
I always wondered why RAID arrays aren't an option on cameras. You can easily fit 4 SDs in a camera, and even more MicroSDs. You could even make a quick change cartridge for them.