You also enjoy the amazing speed of your Nikon Z8 (or maybe Z9) like me? But do you check if your memory cards and their settings allow to perform up to 20 frames per second (fps)?
I did not!
When I purchased my Z8 I got along the recommended CF cards:
- SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB CFexpress Typ B (named CF_A here)
with 1700 MB/s Read and 1200 MB/s Write speed. In addition I plugged in a SD card to backup JPEGs for data loss of the CF card:
- Lexar SD GOLD SDXC UHS-II V60 128 GB (named SD_1 here)
with 280 MB/s Read and 210 MB/s Write speed. They are both on the official list of Nikon Z8 Supported Memory Cards. I set my Nikon Z8 like this:
- Photo Shooting Menu
- Primary slot selection -> CFexpress/XQD card slot
- Secondary slot function -> RAW primary – JPEG secondary
- Image quality -> RAW + JPEG/HEIF normal
- Playback Menu
- Dual-format recording PB slot -> CFexpress/XQD card slot
With this I make sure that I have a JPEG backup on the SD card. But if I playback, I see only ONE image even though the camera stores TWO images per shot. In addition, I like to take the SD cards to business partners and friends for quick JPEG file distributions, much easer than CF and RAW files.
Month later I explored Nikon Rumors „Best memory cards for Nikon Z8 (real benchmark test results)“ post based on Alik Griffin detailed test results. There are quite some benchmarks out there: e.g. The Fastest Memory Cards for Nikon: 36 Tested, memorycard-lab for Z8. They all come to a clear conclusion:
If you want 20 shots per seconds beyond the first 20 buffered by the camera you need the right CF card. The SD card will become your bottle neck in the system.
Therefore, I checked myself, bought two new cards:
- Lexar Gold Professional CFexpress Type-B Memory Card 256 GB (named CF_B here)
- Sandisk Extreme Pro V90 128 GB (named SD_2 here)
and did my own speed test: shooting 60 seconds with shutter release H20 in M 32000 2.8. ISO 100 mounting the Nikkor Z 24-70 2.8 which results in a completely dark image. What a surprise! My current set-up allowed me only 6.1 fps (last line in the table), far away from 20 fps:
| CF | SSD | RAW | JPEG | # frames | fps |
| CF_C | SSD_2 | RAW | – | 888 | 14.8 |
| CF_C | SSD_2 | RAW | JPEG Basic | 779 | 13.0 |
| CF_C | – | RAW | JPEG Normal | 729 | 12.2 |
| CF_C | SSD_2 | RAW | JPEG Normal | 609 | 10.2 |
| CF_A | – | RAW | – | 529 | 8.8 |
| CF_A | – | RAW | JPEG Normal | 450 | 7.5 |
| CF_A | SSD_2 | RAW | JPEG Normal | 392 | 6.5 |
| CF_A | SSD_1 | RAW | JPEG Normal | 368 | 6.1 |
Writing JPEGs in addition to raw of course slows down the performance. But I was astonished how much the SD-cards take their toll here. Hence, you can leave the SD card in the slot as long as it is not used it does not impact speed. Different lenses did not change the test results significantly. During the first 20 seconds my Z8 achieves the 20 fps with the buffer independent from the cards or the set-up.
Therefore, I will now turn off JPEGs while doing wild life photography and using the JPEG Normal with SSD_2 for any other shooting. Both are in italic in above table.
My conclusion:
- Better check your memory cards and set-ups for speed.
- There is still no card on the market that supports 20 fps for 60 seconds. 15.6 fps seems to be the practical boundary.
- SD cards are the bottle neck in Nikon Z8 system
- Write speeds printed on the memory cards fit to the performance on your computer but do far worse in the Nikon Z8.