Lost a full client shoot in Phoenix when my main camera ate a card mid-interview
Two Saturdays ago I was filming a real estate agent interview at a house in Arcadia, about 40 minutes into the shoot, and my Sony FX3 just stopped writing to the card. The card was a 128GB V60 I bought 3 months ago, and when I pulled it, the last 22 minutes of footage were gone. I swapped cards, finished the interview, then drove home and ran a recovery tool that got back 14 of the 22 missing minutes, but the best soundbites were still toast. Now I am stuck debating whether to keep shooting on consumer cards and just double record to a Ninja, or go all in on a pair of CFexpress Type A cards that cost almost $400 each. The cheap side says gear fails no matter what, the careful side says I got lucky and should never trust a single card slot again. What do you all actually do on paid shoots, dual record, or just eat the risk?
Newer cards dying fast is usually about heat and cheap controllers, not age. A lot of V60s sit in hot little cameras or readers that bake them, and the card quits way before the memory itself does. Your idea that new means safe only holds if the card never gets cooked, which is kind of hard to control.