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[Doctor Gollum]

Where's the most reliable place to source them/any supplier recommendations?

After 128GB cards for a potential road trip, these are apparently the largest that the camera can reliably handle.

I currently use a 32GB SanDisk (which does about 10 hours in time lapse mode) or a 64GB one (that I have misplaced but better as it's about 20 hours) in a GoPro Hero 4. Not fancy but it gets the job done...

Planned trip is intensive, and about a week long, but needs to be reliably documented in its entirety.

I have just acquired a second identical camera and the plan is to have one facing forward and one backwards and swap the cards daily so will potentially require 14-20 cards

The other related issue is going to be getting them uploaded... it might be easier to wait until I get home for that although obviously if I can upload as I go then 4-6 cards would suffice.

I am open to alternative storage ideas, but I would prefer to keep things minimalist especially as planning to travel with hand luggage only.

[LC0112G]

My advice is do not buy them from eBay or similar - every one (probably about 10) I've ever bought from eBay have been fake. They might show as 32/64/128GB initially when formatting, but once you start to use them it's quickly apparent that someone has 'reprogrammed' the card info, and they are actually only 1 or 2GB.

Only solution is to buy them from a well known retailer. For camera stuff I typically use Wex, and buy either Sandisk or Lexar - although these are Compact Flash or full sized SD cards.

[Viral_Jim]

The other related issue is going to be getting them uploaded... it might be easier to wait until I get home for that although obviously if I can upload as I go then 4-6 cards would suffice.

I think to answer this part of the question, we would need to know where you're going. 7 days up the west coast USA is going to have different solutions to 7 days in darkest peru 

[Doctor Gollum]

It will be US, but that's all I will say for now.

I could use 64GB cards and get look into get a decent data package for a tablet or down load them to a laptop/hard drive

[Doctor Gollum]

My advice is do not buy them from eBay or similar - every one (probably about 10) I've ever bought from eBay have been fake. They might show as 32/64/128GB initially when formatting, but once you start to use them it's quickly apparent that someone has 'reprogrammed' the card info, and they are actually only 1 or 2GB.

Only solution is to buy them from a well known retailer. For camera stuff I typically use Wex, and buy either Sandisk or Lexar - although these are Compact Flash or full sized SD cards.

This was my concern...

[TheBoy]

SanDisk are probably the most faked.  Avoid Chinese sellers, eBay and Amazon Marketplace.  Sold and Dispatched by Amazon is normally OK, its just Marketplace to avoid.

My current preference is for Lexar 1066x for use in my drones and stuff, but they need a reliable fast writing cards (and SanDisk Extrem and Extreme Pro struggle), if its for stills photography you may get away with something slower.  Amazon (US) sells these directly themselves.

Sticking with Lexar's Silver Plus range, or Kingston, the DJI shops can be competitive on the rare occasions they have stock - dii.com sell Lexar 1066x, dii-retail.co.uk sell Kingston and Lezar Silver.  eg - https://dji-retail.co.uk/products/lexar-professional-silver-plus-128gb-microsdxc™-uhs-i-v30-205mb-s-memory-card - if you go into central Londonium or central Brum you can walk in and just buy one.

Now is a crap time to buy - with all the AI hype, all memory has gone mental price wise.

[TheBoy]

Sorry, that link got corrupted, its https://dji-retail.co.uk/products/lexar-professional-silver-plus-128gb-microsdxc™-uhs-i-v30-205mb-s-memory-card

[TheBoy]

Incidentally, if this is for an action or 360 camera that you plan to have on for long road trips, you might want to look into higher endurance cards - all flash memory "wears" with each write, and will wear out.

[Doctor Gollum]

It will be along these lines if that helps...

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFiE7XiQUSlU&si=p0b8hChOxwEz3bzS

[LC0112G]

It's not unusual for me to take 20K-30K photos - each 30MB - on a 2/3 week trip to the US.

For storage, I travel with a Microsoft Surface Pro7 with an updated 2TB internal flash drive. I religiously download all the photos from my cameras every evening onto an encrypted hidden hard drive. Uploading that amount of data to the web/cloud is a non-starter IMV. Then depending where I'm going the following day I format the card using 'non standard' formatting software.

Years ago we used to carry a small DVD writer too. That used to be OK when photos were only 10-20Mb in size, and the DVD's were 4.7GB ish. Burn a DVD every evening and post it home. However, now memory cards are 32/64/128GB that's less practical. 

[Doctor Gollum]

I normally swap the SD card into my phone or tablet, upload the timelapse straight to YouTube and then put the card back into the GoPro and delete it ready for the next time. That seems to work well enough for my use. For actual video, I tend to just use my phone and upload as I go.

I don't know if that's a longer term storage solution or not

This trip will be a one off, so being able to upload the video to storage every dayight be an option if it's something that can be done relatively swiftly?

I currently have no real way of editing, although it's not something I really get involved with. The road trip time lapses get uploaded raw, although it would be nice to add some suitable music to them

[Marks DTM Calib]

Given that flash is a terrible storage medium you need to just go with a decent brand, from a decent supplier, and get something with the speed needed to handle the application

The size you are looking at sticks you in the SDXC world and for highest speed a U3/V30 (there are some higher than V30) is about the top these days. (check the SD association who are the body that define the speed grading etc)

[TheBoy]

Most standard microSD UHS-I cards (virtually all are - they are the ones with a single row of pins on the back) peak out at V30 TBH.  UHS-II have an extra row of pins, which allows faster throughput - if the controller and flash can handle it.  Very few devices that take microSD are UHS-II though.

The V30 spec is a bit wank, TBH.  Much like tyre ratings - everything achieves it, and those that don't, fake it with sequential write shenanigans. Don't ever go for anything less.

As LC alluded to, back up your footage/shots every evening, to either local storage, or cloud storage.  If the latter, be aware your filesizes are likely to be huge - I'm regularly uploading 10s of GB to OneDrive every night whilst I'm away for a week, usually takes 200-300GB of video footage.

[Doctor Gollum]

I have 2TB of storage, of which currently 312GB used.

Those timelapse videos are 3.72 GB for each 8.54 minute block. So about 32GB for each day.. plenty of wiggle room to.upload them subject to data availability. Unless there's a reliable way to upload on the go

The numbers don't quite add up, but ~20 8hours equates to 72 minutes of timelapse recording which will fit on a 64GB card.

[Viral_Jim]

It will be US, but that's all I will say for now.

I could use 64GB cards and get look into get a decent data package for a tablet or down load them to a laptop/hard drive

I think with the amount of data you're generating, getting stuff onto the cloud while you're there would be a non-starter. 32gb of data, even at 5Mbit/s upload (which you may well not get on hotel wifi) would take 15hrs ish.

If it were me, I would get a decent USB-C hub, a portable SSD (or two, kept separately, if you're paranoid), and a USB-C SD Card reader. You can then use the files app on your phone to move the files from the SD card to the SSD on a nightly basis. Which will cut backup time to minutes rather than hours or days. You can then do cloud backup at home when time is less of a factor and you (probably) have a much faster connection.