Canon R8 Memory Card Recommendations

Unsurprisingly, the Canon EOS R8 has been quite a hit! It’s a very capable full-frame mirrorless camera at a competitive price point. It’s aimed squarely at enthusiast photographers and hybrid content creators who want good results out of a lightweight, travel-friendly size and design.

It features a 24.2MP sensor and shoots 4K 60fps video (oversampled from 6K), and up to 40fps continuous shooting with an electronic shutter.

But what kind of memory card are you going to need for it? If you don’t get an SD card that’s fast enough, you won’t be able to take advantage of all the camera’s features, and you might end up with lockups or dropped frames. So here are my recommendations.

Some quick recommendations

If you just want some quick recommendations on which SD cards will work well in your Canon EOS R8, here you go.

These SD cards meet the needs of the R8’s features, have a strong track record of reliability, are readily available, and can often be found reasonably priced at major retailers.

You can’t go wrong with any of these, and you should be able to find at least one of them available for a decent price.

If you’re after more detail about these cards, the R8’s memory card requirements, and why I’ve chosen these cards, you can find it below.

Jump to:

Canon R8 SD cards: In detail

Now, for the more detailed version.

Somewhat unhelpfully, Canon buries this advice in the product manual: “A card is not included. Please purchase it separately.”

Which is somewhat understating it. A memory card is an essential accessory for the Canon EOS R8. Without it, you’re not going to be able to take many photos or shoot much video; the R8 doesn’t have any user-accessible internal memory on the R8.¹

OK, so which SD card should you get?

While Canon does offer a little guidance on what types of cards to get, the information could, frankly, be more helpful.

This is where I hope this post helps. Hopefully, it’ll save you some time searching, so you can get out shooting sooner and taking full advantage of all the features of your new camera rather than spending your time searching the web and trying to make sense of cryptic technical codes.

I’ve been buying and testing numerous SD cards for several years and have put many of the most popular SD cards on the market through their paces. You can find my main SD card tests here, and I have a lot more information on this site about SD cards and other memory cards.

Specific practical recommendations

So here’s more detailed information on these cards, along with some others. Any of these make for a good choice for the R8.

Canon R8 memory card compatibility requirements (ie., what to look for and why I’m recommending these specific memory cards)

My recommendation: Get an SDXC card with a UHS-II interface that’s rated at V60 or V90.

The Canon EOS R8 is a mirrorless camera with a 24-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor. It handles photos and video equally well, rather than leaning heavily toward one or the other. So there’s a good chance that users are wanting to shoot both.

The Canon R8’s instruction manual isn’t all that helpful in providing guidance on what memory cards work well.

There is a section titled “Compatible Cards,” but it doesn’t really help much. This is it:

Elsewhere, it does provide more specific guidance in terms of speed requirements when shooting video. And which that is definitely useful, it’s still not as specific and practical as it could be.

So what I’m aiming to do here is provide some practical recommendations on which SD cards to get for the Canon EOS R8 so you can spend less time searching online and more time out shooting. I’m not trying to list every SD card that works in the Canon R8; there are also others that will work just fine as well.

As a technical matter, you can use a slower SD card in your R8 if you only stick to lower-bitrate video modes and don’t max out the still photo burst buffer. But that doesn’t make much sense to me. If you don’t plan to use all of the camera’s features, why not save some money and buy a cheaper model like the R100. So it makes more sense to me to get an SD card that lets you use all of your camera’s features, not just some. And that’s what I’m focusing on here.

Detailed recommendations

Here’s a more detailed explanation of why I’m recommending these particular SD cards and the type and performance specs they meet.

Firstly: The R8 has one memory card slot. It’s always good to have a spare card, but you only need one to make use of all the camera’s features.

Should you get a V60 or V90 SD card?

The R8’s maximum video resolution is 4K60. And while that might not sound all that demanding, with some other newer cameras shooting 8K these days, it’s the video bitrate where the need for a fast SD card comes into play.

The Canon EOS R8 shoots 4K60 10-bit video with a maximum video bitrate of up to 230 Mbps.² If the memory card is too slow for the shooting mode, you can end up with dropped frames, errors, or even lockups. Which would be bad.

Canon recommends a card that’s at least V60. If you happen to find a good deal on a V90 card, go for it — they’ll also work well. But you don’t need to go out and seek a V90 card and pay extra for it, and it’s not going to give you any added benefit in the camera.

UHS-I vs UHS-II?

This refers to the type of interface between the memory card and the camera. Most current SD cards are either UHS-I or UHS-II.³ UHS-II is the faster of the two, with two rows of pins rather than one.

Any of the V60 or V90 cards you come across will be UHS-II.

SDXC

I recommend sticking with SDXC rather than SDHC in this camera.

There are two good reasons for that. One is fairly obvious; the other is less so.

1. Larger storage capacities. By definition, any SD cards that can store 64GB or more are SDXC cards. And with the high-bitrate and burst shooting modes of the R8, you’ll fill up a smaller card quickly.
2. Smoother when working with video. By smoother, I don’t mean visually of the type that a gimbal or stabilizer offers. I mean smoother in terms of the editing workflow. The reason for that takes a little explaining, but the gist is that when the R8 saves video to an SDHC card, it breaks the footage into chunks that are smaller than 4GB. When it saves video to an SDXC card, it keeps it as one large and continuous file.
   
   Most current SD cards are marked as either SDHC or SDXC. This isn’t a performance indicator, as such. The SD Association, which is the organization that governs the SD card spec, has assigned SDHC for cards 32GB and smaller and SDXC for cards 64GB and larger. But the important part for the R8 isn’t so much about the storage capacity — although that’s obviously important. It has to do with the file system used on each type. SDHC is formatted with the FAT32 file system, while SDXC is formatted with the exFAT file system.
   
   The key thing to know about that in relation to the R8 is that FAT32 only supports individual files up to a maximum of 4GB. With exFAT, the maximum file size is so large that for all intents and purposes there is no maximum.⁴
   
   That matters, because the R8 will adjust how it records video. If you use an SDHC card, the camera will save the video in chunks of 4GB or smaller. It’s a process known as chaptering. While it’s possible to rejoin those segments later in video editing software, it’s inconvenient, and the camera won’t play back the segments seamlessly in the camera.
   
   If you use an SDXC card, however, the R8 won’t break up the video, and will save the movie file as one long continuous stream.

Why it’s worth getting a good memory card

A better memory card is not going to help you take better photos or improve image quality. But it can let you take advantage of all of the camera’s features. A card that’s not fast enough to keep up with the camera can cause issues like locking up, dropping frames, and overheating.

There’s also the issue of reliability. There are plenty of junk memory cards on the market. Not only do they have flaky performance, but they’re also more likely to fail. And that means the risk of losing your photos and videos.

At the same time, you don’t want to pay extra for a high-performance SD card that’s overkill for the camera.

How to Format SD Cards

When you buy a new SD card, you should format it before use and then regularly after that. If you’re formatting a card that you’ve already been using, make sure that you’ve downloaded any photos and videos you want to keep, because formatting deletes everything on the card.

Here’s some information on how to format the memory card.

How to Format SD Cards in the Canon EOS R8

It is best practice to always format memory cards in the camera that you’ll be using them in. That sets the card up with the filesystem, folder hierarchy, and, in some cameras, a database file, so that the card is just how the camera expects. That greatly reduces the risk of unexpected errors and unpleasant surprises.

Always be sure you’ve backed up everything you want from the card, because formatting it will wipe everything. (If you’ve formatted accidentally, it still might be possible to recover data from the memory card, but it’s not always guaranteed, and it can incur the expense of buying recovery software; more on that below.)

On the Canon EOS R8, you can find the format function under:

Wrench icon > Format Card

The R8 also has a low-level format function. It’s sometimes known as a full format, and it’s a more thorough and secure process, but it also takes significantly longer. If you’re disposing of the SD card or lending the camera to someone else, it provides a safer option that vastly reduces the chances that anyone could recover anything from it (at least with the normal data recovery tools available to consumers).

I have more details in a separate post on quick format vs full format, but the gist is that for day-to-day use, quick format is the more suitable option. Full format is better for occasional use in instances where you’re running into performance glitches with the memory card or you really need the data on the card gone.

Notes & References:

1. The R8 does, technically, have internal memory; it’s the buffer that’s used for queuing data for writing to the card and internal processing. But that memory is not user accessible in the sense that you can use it to save photos and then retrieve them, in the way that you can from a memory card. While relatively rare, there are some cameras that do have at least some user-accessible internal memory. [↩︎]
2. The R8 actually has a higher bitrate that’s used for time lapse video (up to 470 Mbps). But because of the nature of time-lapse capture, that’s not a real-time capture bitrate. So the SD card doesn’t need to record at 470 Mbps, which is why I’m not factoring that in for write speed, but it does mean you’ll need a card with a fast read speed if you plan to play that footage back directly from the SD card. [↩︎]
3. Technically, there is also a UHS-III spec, but it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll run into any of those in stores, and they won’t work in the R8 even if you do. [↩︎]
4. The practical maximum file size supported by exFAT is 128 petabytes. In theory, it can go up to 16 exabytes, but that exceeds the maximum partition size, so it’s not possible to hit that maximum in practice. [↩︎]