How Many Memory Cards?

[jamstew]

I usually put a 4G in the camera and take two 1G backups. I take some video, which uses tons of memory, and I'd actually be happier with 2G backups.

About erasing your cards--I learned that the hard way. I had just put in what I thought was an empty card to take some pictures and video of Spectromagic. After the second float, I got the dreaded "memory full" message and found that I hadn't erased the card from my trip six months before. You should definitely clear your cards as soon as they're uploaded to your computer

 

[annnewjerz]

I have photos on my memory card from 3 years ago at my bridal shower. Last trip to Disney I was FURIOUS when I was sitting around trying to capture a really great moment, or get pictures with characters and all of the sudden the beep went off and I had to start paging through the 500 photos I had taken thus far to get back to our 2006 Aruba trip to delete pix I KNEW were already on the computer.

So aggravating.

 

[Mckymousefn]

I have a long trip coming up, and can't decide wether or not I should buy another memory card for it. Right now I have two blank 2GB memory cards, as well as another 2GB that is about half full, so about 5GB total, enough for at least 2,500 pictures on my camera, probably more. That would mean I would have to take at least 200 pictures a day to even start to run out of space.

I can't decide whether that's enough or not.

What kind of camera do you have?

 

[rosiejo]

Do you have the facility to download the pics each day? I download mine to a laptop and start with an empty card each day. Personally I'd if I couldn't download I'd prefer a handful of small sized cards than one or two large ones.
My parents went to Africa on Safari and dad took just one large card as it would fit a thousand photos on... and towards the end of the holiday it corrupted! Luckily my mum had also been taking pictures - don't put yourself at a similar risk!

 

[fla4fun]

I have 11G so far for a 14 night trip. I plan on buying another 4G. I also do video with my digital camera.

That sounds like me! I have an 8g card that I use for video, and a 2g and a 4g that I use for photos. Since many of my trips are solo, I find it easier to switch back and forth because I'm not trying to capture so many spur of the moment shots.

 

[WillCAD]

For our Disney trip next year, I will probably purchase one more card to be on the safe side, just because who wants to scroll through pix while they are in the park deleting ones that are bad, blurry or you just don't like???

That's a bad idea, too.

Deleting individual pics from your cards increases the liklihood of a corrupted card. It's better to wait till you upload your pics to your computer, then delete the bad pics from the computer. The cards should be reformatted in the camera instead of deleting all of the pics; reformatting cleans the card off and gives it a new FAT, decreasing the liklihood of card failure.

I have photos on my memory card from 3 years ago at my bridal shower. Last trip to Disney I was FURIOUS when I was sitting around trying to capture a really great moment, or get pictures with characters and all of the sudden the beep went off and I had to start paging through the 500 photos I had taken thus far to get back to our 2006 Aruba trip to delete pix I KNEW were already on the computer.

So aggravating.

Do you have the facility to download the pics each day? I download mine to a laptop and start with an empty card each day. Personally I'd if I couldn't download I'd prefer a handful of small sized cards than one or two large ones.
My parents went to Africa on Safari and dad took just one large card as it would fit a thousand photos on... and towards the end of the holiday it corrupted! Luckily my mum had also been taking pictures - don't put yourself at a similar risk!

Both of these post just reinforce my advice to split up your pics onto multiple cards so that you never have more than one days pics on the same card.

 

[CanadianGuy]

This is really a question best asked on the DIS Photography board and as such I'll be moving this one there.

 

[disneyfav4ever]

What kind of camera do you have?

I have a Cannon power shot, and I believe it's 5 mega pixels.

 

[disneyfav4ever]

I do upload all my pics on a computer as soon as possible, but I won't have a computer with me in Disney. The one that is half full, will always have those pictures on them, since last year my whole computer crashed, and I lost everything on it, so I'm keeping my memory cards will all the pictures on them, as well as the computer.

I like the idea of having a memory card for each day, though with my trip, every other day is more economical. I'll have to watch for a sale. A few months ago, I bought the only two CVS had for $20, and yesterday I got one at Rite-Aid for $15, all of those were 2GB ones.

 

[disneyfav4ever]

Has anyone ever used lexar brand memory cards?

 

[jann1033]

I do upload all my pics on a computer as soon as possible, but I won't have a computer with me in Disney. The one that is half full, will always have those pictures on them, since last year my whole computer crashed, and I lost everything on it, so I'm keeping my memory cards will all the pictures on them, as well as the computer.
I like the idea of having a memory card for each day, though with my trip, every other day is more economical. I'll have to watch for a sale. A few months ago, I bought the only two CVS had for $20, and yesterday I got one at Rite-Aid for $15, all of those were 2GB ones.

if yu have a cd or dvd burner( or know someone who does) , you can always burn a few copies of your pictures rather than saving them on a memory card...much cheaper way to go and probably safer since it's easy to misplace a little card
i ran out of memory our last vacation and ended up paying $35 for a gb since i needed it then so now i'd take at least one card more than i "need", usually i use 1-2gb a day but i shoot raw. your manual should tell you have many photos per setting per gb.

 

[BabyPiglet]

Make SURE you bring enough. I had to buy a memory card at the photo shop in MK and it was 60 bucks...for 1 GB!

 

[disneyfav4ever]

Make SURE you bring enough. I had to buy a memory card at the photo shop in MK and it was 60 bucks...for 1 GB!

Ouch!

Last year I needed a camera when mine stopped working, (we think because of the humidity, plus it was old,) but I bought one of those stupid pic clix ones for the rest of my trip, and it was $80 or something, after getting home I saw the same camera in a store for $20, and I had to groan.

 

[airman]

Check on line (I've used buy.com), for inexpensive memory cards. I just got an 8 gig sd card for $40.00. On my 8 mpx camera that will give me 3000 pictures and I just bought a DXG hd video camera (as small as an ipod) with an 8 gig sd card that give me over 4 hours of 720p video. I am sure that is plenty for my next trip, but I'm thinking of getting another 4 g card just in case.

 

[handicap18]

Memory cards aren't really that cheap. The cheapest I've seen at Target and Wal*Mart has been about $25. To me, that's not really cheap. Cheap is $10.


I agree with taking off whatever is on that "half".

You can also do what we're doing and take your laptop and your camera USB cord and put them on your computer! That's the only reason we're taking the lap-top =]

See below for "cheep" prices ($8). Stay away from Target and Wal-Mart when it comes to memory cards. WAY to expensive (though not as expensive as the photo stops in the parks at WDW).

I do upload all my pics on a computer as soon as possible, but I won't have a computer with me in Disney. The one that is half full, will always have those pictures on them, since last year my whole computer crashed, and I lost everything on it, so I'm keeping my memory cards will all the pictures on them, as well as the computer.

I like the idea of having a memory card for each day, though with my trip, every other day is more economical. I'll have to watch for a sale. A few months ago, I bought the only two CVS had for $20, and yesterday I got one at Rite-Aid for $15, all of those were 2GB ones.

I download my images to an external HD then copy them to a 2nd internal HD. Every month or so I also copy them to a 2nd external HD AND burn a copy to DVD. Then I'll reformat a card and start that card from scratch.

On our last trip I brought 6 2GB SD cards and really needed 7. I downloaded 2 cards worth to the laptop and external portable HD, but my laptop is slower than molasses in winter.

I currently have 5 2GB SD cards and 4 1GB SD cards for my camera. I really only use the 2GB cards though. I get about 330/card when shooting RAW. Unfortunately my camera wont accept the 4GB SDHC cards.

IMO, you should always bring more memory cards than you think you need. You can buy memory cards at Disney, but they are about 5 times (if not more) the cost of what you can get them for online.

As of this writing, newegg.com has a Kingston 2GB SD card for $7.99 w/free shipping. (Same card at walmart.com is $15.81) I currently use 2 of these cards and at that price I may pickup 2 more.

newegg.com has 4GB SDHC for $22 and also a Transcend 4GB CF card for $21.75 w/shipping.

 

[WillCAD]

Lately I've been getting pretty good deals on memory cards from an online vendor called Meritline. They often have free shipping, and like to run sales pretty regularly.

When buying memory cards, stick with the major brands like Sandisk, Kingston, or PNY.

 

[tpholland]

Yes, never had a problem with the lexar cards. As for the computer crashing, thats why I not only load them onto the computer, but also back them up on a disk.
I lost the hard drive on my desktop once but fortunately I'm good about keeping back up copies. Actually after that incident, I got an external drive that does an auto backup every day. No worries!

 

[giantstu]

I took 40gb of memory cards with me, plus my laptop!
I shot just over 8000 photo's in 15 days...
Maybe im just a freak!!

 

[disneyfav4ever]

I took 40gb of memory cards with me, plus my laptop!
I shot just over 8000 photo's in 15 days...
Maybe im just a freak!!

That's what I'm afraid I'm going to do. And I want to take tons of pictures this time, so I can do a really awesome picture TR when I come home.

 

[Nicsmom]

I usually take 14 gb in various 1/2 gb denominations, this feeds 2 cameras, 1 slr and 1 p&s. I also bring a 20gb portable hard drive to back up to just in case I run out of space. I'll admit if I don't need to I don't immediately transfer from the cards to the drive or CD's. I probably should though as it's a great practice.

This may all change as we recently upgraded to a Hard drive camcorder. Depending on how we wind up shooting video we may run out of space in both the laptop and portable drive fast. Depending on how it goes, I may be upgrading the portable hard drive before the next trip.

I'll second the Buy.com recommendation as I've never paid more than $10 for a 2gb card, either SD or CF.