Panasonic G7 SD Card Recommendations

LUMIX G7 Memory Card Quick Recommendations

If you just want some quick recommendations, here you go. Any of these will work well in the Panasonic LUMIX G7 camera. These SD cards meet the needs of the LUMIX G7’s features, have a strong track record of reliability, are readily available, and are usually cost-effective.

Any of these makes for a good choice. If you’re after more detail, you can find it below.

Panasonic LUMIX G7 Memory Card Requirements

A memory card is an essential accessory for the Panasonic LUMIX G7. Without it, you’re not going to be able to take many photos or shoot much video. But the LUMIX G7 doesn’t come with one by default. There are some bundles that retailers put together that might include a memory card, but chances are it’s something you’re going to have to pick up separately. Or maybe you want something bigger with larger storage capacity—the cards that are included in bundles are often on the small side and might fill up quickly, especially if you’re on a trip. So which card should you get?

That’s where this post comes in—hopefully, to help you get out shooting sooner and taking full advantage of all the features of your new G7 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.

Panasonic LUMIX G7 SD Card Requirements

The Panasonic LUMIX G7 is an interchangeable lens mirrorless camera with a 16-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor. You’ll often see it listed under its formal model number of DMC-G7.

It has a single UHS-compatible SD card slot. It’s compatible with SDXC, SDHC, and SD cards.¹

The G7 shoots 4K30 video with a maximum video bitrate of 100Mbps (when shooting 4K MP4; maximum of 28Mbps when shooting AVCHD). The video bitrate refers to the amount of data being written to the memory card when shooting video.

On digital cameras, the two shooting modes that are usually the most demanding of the memory card are high-bitrate video recording and rapid continuous RAW photo shooting. And that’s true of this camera, which does both. A video bitrate of 100Mbps is quite high, but it’s still well below the highest available on other digital cameras, where 400Mbps or higher is becoming more common.

So which SD card should you get for your Panasonic LUMIX G7?

The LUMIX G7’s instruction manual isn’t especially helpful on the topic of which SD card to get. Although, to be fair, they’ve tried harder than some other camera manufacturers (or, at least, the manual writers). This is what you can find on page 22 of the manual:

That page refers to an SDXC memory card compatibility page, but the link is now dead. The most recent archived version of it I can find, from 2017, isn’t helpful and only refers to Panasonic-branded SD cards, which don’t tend to be widely available.

So what to make of this? That the LUMIX G7 supports SDXC, SDHC, and SD cards. Unusually, it also suggests it has a UHS-II-compatible slot, although the other specs suggest that a fast UHS-I card is also more than enough for this camera to take full advantage of all the available features (UHS-I and UHS-II SD cards have gotten a lot faster since the G7 was released (and the manual written) in 2015.

So what I’m aiming to do here is provide some practical recommendations on which SD cards to get for the Panasonic LUMIX G7 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 LUMIX G7 –there are others that will work just fine as well. I’m focusing here on ones that offer a good combination of meeting the requirements of all of the LUMIX G7 ‘s features, are readily available at major retailers, are cost-effective, and come from major manufacturers with track records for good-quality cards. I’m also basing this on my own SD speed tests.

So here’s more detailed information on these cards, along with some others.

What Size SD Card to Use in the Panasonic LUMIX G7

The LUMIX G7 is compatible with SDHC and SDXC cards. That means you can use cards from 4GB all the way to the largest cards currently available, which are 512GB and 1TB cards.

There’s really no right answer when it comes to what size, or storage capacity, to get–it’s mostly a matter of convenience so that you don’t keep running out of space. As is probably obvious, you can fit twice as many photos on a 64GB card as on a 32GB card. And with a 128GB card, you can fit four times as many photos as on a 32GB. And so on. And that’s especially handy when you’re traveling or on location; even more so if you’re shooting any video. The most logical sizes for this camera in terms of convenience and price are probably the 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB sizes. But if you want to use a larger or smaller one, say 64GB or even 1TB, go right ahead–they’ll work just fine because of the way that the SDXC spec is designed.

Panasonic has put together some estimates of how many photos and how much video you can fit on a 64GB SD card with the G7. The numbers vary based on the shooting settings you’re using; you can find the full chart here. But here are some examples (again, this is with a 64GB SD card):

• Compressed RAW / L Picture Size: 2230
• JPEG / L Picture Size: 7260
• 4K MP4 video / 1h20m
• 1080p50 MP4 video / 5h
  

Making Sense of SD Card Specifications

There are several types of SD card, and you’ll find a range of different acronyms and codes on them. Here’s a quick overview of what to look for.

SDHC vs. SDXC

Most of the cards you’ll see available now have either SDHC or SDXC printed on them. The Panasonic LUMIX G7 will work with both SDHC and SDXC cards (and, for that matter, just plain SD cards, but they’re hard to find these days and have impractically small storage capacities).

These aren’t performance categories, as such. An SDXC card isn’t necessarily any faster than an SDHC card, and vice versa. But they’re important for compatibility with the camera and also in terms of storage capacity.

They’re categories assigned by the SD Association, which is the organization that oversees and develops the standards for SD and microSD cards. The difference between those two specifications is in the filesystem they’re formatted with–the SDHC specification uses FAT32 formatting, while the SDXC specification uses exFAT–but when it comes to buying memory cards, the practical difference is that cards 32GB and smaller will be labeled SDHC and cards 64GB and larger will be labeled SDXC.

Video Speed Classes

The SD Association has come out with various rating systems over the years to help buyers choose a card that’s suitable for use in cameras. Because recording high-resolution video (or, more specifically, high-bitrate video) is often the most demanding operation in terms of a camera and its memory card, it’s known as a video speed class rating system.

As a technical matter, the first system was known Speed Classes (these were Class 2, 4, 6, and 10). The second system was known as UHS Speed Classes (U1 and U3). The third system is known as Video Speed Classes (V6, V10, V30, V60, and V90).

Most cards available now have a mix of old and new speed class codes printed on them. And while it’s helpful, it’s still an imperfect system for judging the speed of an SD card.

As a practical matter in the Panasonic LUMIX G7, cards that have any of these on them should be fast enough:

• V30
• V60
• U3
  

V90 is also fine, but it’s overkill for the LUMIX G7.

There’s a separate rating system that you might also see on some cards. They might have an A1 or A2 on them. You can ignore that when choosing an SD card for a camera. It’s designed for the kinds of operations that gaming devices and smartphones do.

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 Panasonic LUMIX G7

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 Panasonic LUMIX G7, you can find the format function under:

MENU > Setup (wrench icon) > Format

Formatting the card is often referred to as initialisation, and the G7’s manual uses that terminology as well–it’s referring to the same thing.

Notes:

1. The tech specs of the G7 say “Compatible with UHS-I / UHS-II UHS Speed Class 3 standard SDHC / SDXC Memory Cards” But it’s unclear whether the G7’s SD card slot is actually a UHS-II slot or that they’re referring to the backwards compatibility of the UHS specs (i.e., you can use a UHS-II card in a UHS-I slot). Either way, the other specs don’t really suggest that a V90 UHS-II card is really necessary for this card. ↩

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