When I first got my "prototype" 300x 16GB CF card from Lexar, my initial reactions was, "Who in the world would ever need to shoot 16 Gigabytes worth of images on one card?" I also asked myself "How wise is it to put that many eggs (photographs) in one basket (CF card)?" As it turns out, the timing couldn't have been better. I was handed the card during the 2008 Beijing Olympics just in time to meet some new technical hurdles that this card would help me overcome.
So, who "truly" needs both a 16GB CF card and an additional 4GB SD card in one camera body? Well, I do. And so do most photographers who use remote cameras at events such as the Olympic Games.
As it turns out, photographers have to set up cameras hours before anyone shows up on the field of play (i.e. you need to show up a minimum of two hours in advance to go up to the catwalk). You also need to set up your remote camera when there's no one beneath you as no one wants to risk you dropping something and injuring (or worse) someone below.
So, even if an event doesn't start until 10 p.m., you may have to be in-place ready to set up your remote between 5 to 6 a.m. And here's the main point (and challenge): once the camera is up, it may be there for the rest of the day (and even overnight). This means there's no chance to go up and change a battery, or more importantly, a memory card. And, of course, the best moments happen on the last event of the day, and the "Gold Medal match" is more often than not the prime target. If your card is filled up by then, you've got nothing but often "insignificant non-medal" photographs to show for your 18-hour day.
There is one obvious solution of course, and that's not to fire the camera until the final match. But the reality is that unforgettable moments can happen at ANY time, even in a completely irrelevant match that you would normally write off if you looking to "save your bullets" for the big event. And when you chose to turn off your remote transmitter in an effort to "save your card" for the evening event, and miss a fantastic photograph that happens in one of the early matches, you feel like a total fool. While the ultimate photograph will always be of the "Gold Medal match," something truly spectacular can eclipse it, especially if the Gold Medal match is a dud. These are the kinds of problems we face as photographers when we cover large events, and why it helps to have larger, more dependable, and faster memory cards. They can end up giving you a significant advantage over the competition.
One more factor to consider is that the best way to fire a remote camera is to have your main camera fire the second (remote) camera, by sending out a signal every time you shoot from the ground, via radio transmitter (called a Pocket Wizard) on your (primary) camera's hotshoe. That way, you don't have to do the juggling act of both shooting with your handheld camera AND using a foot pedal or handtrigger. Obviously, this means you're going to shoot a lot more images, but you'll be able to concentrate 100% on your main camera and allow the remote camera to fire simultaneously. This, of course, leads to a tremendous amount of waste on the remote camera. But who cares? When you consider the amount of time you invest in preparing the remote gear, and the fact that the Olympics happens only once every four years, should you really be worrying about saving hard drive space? After all, you can delete more than 95% of the remote frames once you've had a chance to do a careful edit, which is what I do.
Lastly, I actually use both a remote on the hotshoe of my camera, and have a second one hanging from my neck. That way, I can always fire it from the trigger around my neck in case I'm not firing my main camera. The worst thing you can do is to find you're blocked waiting to shoot a good frame. Your angle never clears up and you're left with zero images on both your handheld camera and overhead remote (which is likely NOT blocked) because you weren't firing your main camera. It's happened to me in the past and there's nothing worse than missing the "picture of the day" or having nothing to show for a long shoot.
The Lexar Professional UDMA 300x 16GB CF card and 4GB SDHC cards offered me the possibility to shoot 737 RAW files total (589 on the 16GB card and 150 on the 4GB card) or 2546 of large JPEGS total (1999 on the 16GB card and 547 on the 4GB SD) on a 21-megapixel 1Ds MKIII camera, which is amazing!
Just as important as the cards' capacity, are their dependability. The larger the card, the more images you put on it, and the deadlier any corruption or potential problem becomes. Also, being able to copy 20GB of data at a very high rate of speed is essential when you're on deadline. It takes less than 10 minutes with the Lexar high-speed UDMA readers over FireWire 800, which is pretty much as fast as modern hard drives can spin. If you used slower cards, it can take up to 20-30 minutes, easily, and that's not acceptable when you're on deadline.
Does all of this seem excessive? It absolutely is! But when you're competing with more than 1,000 other photographers at these Olympics games, many of them the very best in the business, shooting with similar gear and from the exact same positions (because you can't set wherever you'd "like" to), believe me, you'll take any advantage you can get!
