Category Archives: Camera

Sony PMW-EX1 Maximum SD Card Size: 78.9GB

I dusted off my Sony PMW-EX1 Camera this month to shoot a bit of work-related video, I’d last used it a few years ago, and I was curious to see how well it aged. Well the first casualty was the Sony brand battery which couldn’t hold a charge at all. Everything else however seemed to be working fine. A replacement battery from SWIT seems to have sorted things out.

The next problem was getting some fresh storage for it. When I originally worked with the camera I’d used a combination of 16gb and 8gb SxS cards and few awkward SD Card adaptors. However I decided to try out a Sonnet SD card adaptor which allowed the data compartment door to be closed.

The next experiment was to try a variety of different SD card sizes to see what the largest size my latest firmware EX-1 could handle. The good news was that even cards up to 512GB work, however only the first 78.9GB seems to be seen by the camera.

It’s certainly an odd one.

In summary: there isn’t a huge advantage to buying SD Cards bigger than 64GB for the Sony PMW-EX1, but there isn’t any harm either. 78.9GB is enough for nearly five hours of highest quality footage – certainly more than enough for my needs.

I’m hoping the camera will continue to be useful for a few more years, however, the lack of 1080p60 is starting to feel a bit limiting in this youtube era.

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