7 Best SD Card for Trail Camera (Reviewed 2022)

SD cards stand for “secure digital” cards. The card is used to store an array of data in portable devices such as phones, computers, laptops, and cameras. It makes both storing and accessing data such as video files simpler, which is why many modern cameras, including trail cameras, use this card to store videos.  

Secure Digital eXtended Capacity or SDXC memory cards are advanced SD cards that can easily support up to 2TB of memory. SDXC cards support the exFAT file system.

While Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC), and Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC memory cards) are cards that are physically the same, considering that both fit into an ordinary SD card slot, they are different in their specifications. SDXC provides storage of more than 32 GB, and up to a whopping 2 terabytes, while SDHC memory cards come with a storage capacity of more than 2Gb and up to 32 GB. With such high specifications, SDXC cards are used by modern devices, and they do not work in some of the older devices.   

SD cards are divided among different classes based on the reading and writing speeds of each. The different categories are called speed classes and are mainly differentiated with their minimum write speed. In this scheme of things, SD cards with a minimum write speed of 10MB/s are classified in card class 10. Below this card class is three other classes. The more the class rating, the better the performance of the card. Since class 10 cards come with the highest of all minimum speeds, it is deemed to be the best among the four. 

The ideal memory card size that you require depends upon which device you need the card for in the first place, and what kinds of videos you want to shoot. For instance,  if you want to record high-resolution videos, then the SD card should belong to Class 10, V10, or U1. For 4K videos, the requirements are V30 or U3. Likewise, different kinds of devices require different sizes of SD cards too. The acceptable size of trail cameras is 32 GB. This is why most trail cameras nowadays come with a storage capacity of at least 32 GB. DSLRs on the other hand would require an SD card of a larger size, due to the high-resolution videos it records.

A 32 GB SD card is the standard size that most trail cameras use. The number of pictures that the card can hold will depend mainly on the file format of the image. The format could be anything between JPEG, RAW, and DNG. The file format is mentioned after the image’s file name. You can store about 22,888 JPEG photos in a 32GB memory card. Although, this number is not absolute, as a lot of it depends upon the quality of the picture and the number of megapixels.

For pictures that have 22 megapixels, 4161 JPEG photos could be saved in a 32 GB memory card. In the case of RAW files, the same card size could hold about 2,228 RAW photos of 4 megapixels, and 416 photos of 22 megapixels. DNG will exhaust as much space as the RAW photos do. Another factor is the resolution of the camera.  

In the case of a 64 GB camera, the photo storage capacity would depend on several factors including the file format, the resolution, and much more. The variables that decide this kind of thing are big, so there’s no way of giving an absolute figure. However, we can pull some estimates for you. For 30 megabytes, about 2,184 pictures could be held in a 64 GB card.  

Based on estimates, you can expect 8GB to hold about 2,288 images, provided that the file format is JPEG, and the pictures are taken using a 10-megapixel camera, with each image being a 3 MB one.

Micro SD cards are prone to wear, after the incessant writing, and then erasing. The rigorous use can wear it out and would then require replacing. On average, you can expect a micro sd to last for about 5-10 years. This makes creating backups for the file important.