Sony Product Advisory: These Popular SD Cards Can Corrupt Your Footage

Four days ago, Sony quietly issued a product advisory for three of its SD card product lines that could potentially corrupt your video footage when used. The company will replace these cards for free if your serial number is affected.

The notice—first spotted by Dan Carr over at Shuttermuse—refers to three affected products: The regular SF-M cards, the TOUGH SF-M series, and the TOUGH SF-G series. According to the notice, “data on [these cards] may be damaged or data may not be recorded correctly when shooting video on a camera in [the advertised V60/V90] video speed class mode.”

Sony doesn’t offer any further details about the issue with these cards, except to say that they’ll be offering free replacements from June 11th, 2020 through March 31st, 2022, “subject to the limited warranty that accompanied the SD memory card.”

To find out if your card is affected, flip it over and look for a star mark on the bottom left of the card. That mark means your card is not affected, no matter which of the three product lines its part of. If your card doesn’t have this star mark, you can determine whether or not it’s affected by following the guidelines below:

For Regular SF-M Series Cards

Note: only SF-M cards with “V60, R:277MB/s, and W:150MB/s” written on the front are affected.

For SF-M Series TOUGH Cards

For SF-G Series TOUGH Cards

If your card is affected, Sony asks that you call them at 239-768-7669 or reach out using their chat support—don’t contact the retailer—and the company will facilitate a return-and-replace. According to Carr, who already went through the process, you should be ready to provide:

  • SD card model number
  • SD card serial numbers
  • Date of purchase
  • Place of purchase
  • Your shipping and contact details

To learn more about the replacement program, head over to the Sony support website. Sony doesn’t say how many cards are affected by this defect, but the TOUGH line-up is particularly popular with professional photographers, so we expect that this “replacement program” (a voluntary product recall in all but name) will affect a good chunk of our readers.

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