Sony’s Burano camera is about to start shipping and one question that keeps coming up is “what cards can I use”?
The official line and my own recommendation is that you use CFExpress type B cards that are certified to the VPG400 standard. No other type of card is GUARANTEED to work.
Certainly if you want to get production insurance you are going to have to use the recommended media and if you are shooting something that can never happen again, you really want the security of that VPG400 performance guarantee.
You don’t have to use Sony cards, you can use VPG400 cards from other brands such as SanDisk, Exascend or Nextorage. If you use a Sony VPG400 card not only do Sony guarantee it will work but in the event of a card failure Sony will do their utmost to try to recover any data from the card for you free of charge. You might not get the same service from other brands.
But what about other non VPG400 cards? After all VPG400 cards are a bit thin on the ground right now and they are also rather expensive, tpically around 4 times the price of other fast but non VPG400 cards.
I can say that I have used other non VPG400 cards in pre-production Burano’s and they have worked. Each time you insert a non VPG400 card you get an “unsupported media” warning, but the camera will still allow you to use the card. I’ve used Integral Ultima Pro X cinema grade cards and so far have not had any significant failures. BUT the cards do run very hot and when you stop recording it takes noticeably longer for the write process to finish compared to a VPG400 card.
I have been able to crash the camera when using these cards by rapidly starting and stopping recordings and then to get the card to work again you have to allow the camera do a “restore media” . Whenever I have had to perform a restore media with these cards I have lost the last clip on the card. But in normal use, provided you don’t try to record instantly after stopping this hasn’t happened.
Integral state that these cards can sustain a write speed of around 800MB/s which is faster than the VPG400 spec. OK, so that sounds good. But I have to wonder why the cards are not in that case certified as VPG400? My guess is that when the cards start to age and are near full their performance will start to drop off and that the card won’t be able to sustain 400MB/s under all circumstances.
So – what to do?
My recommendation remains: Follow Sony’s advice and use VPG400 cards. These are guaranteed to work, no if’s, no but’s. They will work and they will be reliable. But if you can’t get a VPG400 card……………
If you do use other cards do let me and everyone else know in the comments. I’d love to hear about what works and what doesn’t. I would hope that in time VPG400 cards will become more common and the price gap will narrow. I do not advise that you use cards that are not VPG400, but I thought I would share my own findings.
