On a recent shoot, a client shared that her friend had lost all of her wedding photos as the photographer had a problem with the memory card. A nightmare scenario for both the bride and the photographer! What a nice reminder to shoot to two cards.

Most readers of Beyond Here are professional or semi-professional photographers. I hope that for many this is a piece of advice that you don’t need as you usually shoot to two cards.

Older Digital Cameras Only Have One Card Slot

In early generations of digital cameras, the camera typically only has one card slot. In many ways, this made things easier as I didn’t have to think about whether I wanted to shoot to two cards. My second shooter at weddings was also my backup should anything go wrong with any of my cards.

Newer Digital Cameras Come with Multiple Card Slots

Digital camera evolution has led to cameras with multiple card slots. Pause for a moment to think why would this be? It is to overcome the odd occasion when something goes wrong with a card. How handy to have the images recorded to another card.

Get into the Habit – Shoot to Two Cards

I know several photographers whose standard procedure is to shoot only to one card. It saves them money on buying cards, and time in managing files. I hope they don’t learn the hard way that shooting to two cards is a lot wiser and is worth a little extra cost of buying some more cards.

Purchase some extra cards, and make shooting to multiple cards the default setting for your camera. It will be great peace of mind should anything go wrong with one of your cards.