I'm travelling with two kids and my Mother for 7 days. I typically take lots of photographs and I know I will take even more while at Disney. I don't want to run out of memory card space, and I don't want to pay to get the cards put on cd while down there. I also don't want to bring "too many" memory cards. Realistically, how many photos would you expect a 1st time (1st time with kids, anyway) visitor to take? Does anyone keep track of how many they take per trip?
Memory is cheap. Buy twice as much as you think you'll need so that you don't have to worry about it. It is hard for anyone to tell you how much you'll need. Some people shoot a handful of carefully planned shots a day while others fire off hundreds or even thousands of shots in a day. I think an estimate of 300 shots per day would be a good, conservative place to start.
I have to admit these threads always amaze me, how or why are people taking 3000 plus pictures while on vacation? I know that I must be a little strange but I have only come out with about 400 pictures when I go for a week. I wonder is it that people are just "machine gun" style shooters when it comes to their DSLR's ? Maybe its the influence of still using film but I tend to think before I shot and look for a shot which may be why I tend to have so few shots? So am just curious why so many people are taking so many shots?
It varies for me. There are some scenarios in which I take a few carefully set up shots. In other cases, I fire like mad and hope. I tend to do the latter when I can't control some variables. I usally fire a short burst when taking shots of people to get a selection of expressions and eye positions. On rides and during shows, I'll often take a hundred pictures hoping for a handful of good shots.
Not meaning to completely hijack the thread but, dmccarty - which slideshow software did you purchase? I'm very interested in creating these and haven't the slightest idea where to begin.
Back to our regularly scheduled topic......
I use two sets of slideshow software. I use Pro Show Gold for making slideshows designed to be viewed on a DVD or Blu-ray player or for those designed to be streamed over the Net. I use Pictures2Exe for creating slideshows designed to be downloaded and watched on a Windows PC. The latter have much better picture quality because instead of converting the pictures to video, it just stores the jpg files and displays them. If you look here, you'll find examples of
both. The ones that say Windows Only were done with Pictures2Exe and the ones that say Streaming Video were done with Pro Show Gold.
Pro Show Gold can create executable slideshows, but it appears to do it by generating video and adding a video player rather than just storing the picture files. The result is that you have the same quality loss as if you had made a video file. My suggestion is that you first decide how you want to distribute your videos (DVDs, Blu-ray, streaming video sites vs executable files) and then pick the best software for that choice.
The main appeal of shooting in RAW over JPG (for most) is that RAW files are more forgiving for post-processing. If you completely blow a highlight or need to restore some light in the shadows of a photo, you have much more room to do so with a RAW file versus a JPG.
RAW is also a lossless format in terms of photo editing. Each time you save/edit a JPG, the file loses a bit of quality/gets compressed whereas you can edit and save a RAW file as much as you'd like without altering the quality of the file. Once you're all done editing, convert to a high-quality JPG and you're set. RAW will take up a bit more memory in the end, but if you are interested in processing your photos, it's the better (not the only) way to go.
I agree with this in general. I just want to add that if you do shoot JPG and you want to edit your pictures, you can save your edits in a different format. For example, if you use Photoshop, you can open your jpg, edit it, and save it as a PSD file. In that case, you can edit it as many times as you'd like without continuing to lose quality.
No offense but, if you have to ask that, you shouldn't shoot RAW.
RAW is completely unprocessed and uncompressed data straight from the sensor. When shooting JPEG, the camera decides the amount of sharpening, contrast, and other variables that go into "developing" the digital image, then compresses it into the JPEG format.
I don't agree. If you are interested in improving your post-production work or you think that you will someday try to improve your post-production work, it is worthwhile to shoot in RAW or RAW+JPG. There are tremendous advantages to working with RAW files, so don't write it off. Memory is cheap. At least consider switching to RAW+JPG for the shots that are important to you.
Not exactly.... RAW is not a "format". RAW is the, well, the raw data. You can not view a RAW file. RAW files from the camera have to be processed into an image format before viewing. This is what your RAW converter is doing. You can convert into a JPEG with compression (throwing away data) or to something like a TIFF, which would be the lossless format.
When you preview a shot taken in RAW on the camera's LCD screen, you are not seeing the RAW data. You are seeing an image format that the camera is converting to before displaying.
Just wanted to make that more clear. If you wanted to look at a RAW file, it would look something like this:
klajdt[ugoqrn ognriojhfgoipeqo iroiejhqroid nfoehqfih
jhekjfnhodnnqvq43u5847qiht5io54yq908u7t4389045
... for pages and pages, ie. a bunch of googly goop with random characters, not an image. RAW must be post processed, whether you do default settings in the converter or you do custom processing. As I said, if you do the default processing, you may as well just shoot JPEG to begin with. But if you post process yourself with something such as Aperture or Lightroom, then you can apply things like white balance correction, color correction, selective sharpening, exposure correction, and other such "developing" stuff.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. Neither RAW nor JPG is a picture. In both cases, they are bits of data that need to be translated to color and brightness values for display purposes. JPG is a standard, widely supported format whereas RAW is a proprietary (except DNG) format that is much less widely supported.
Incidentally, even a RAW file isn't just the direct sensor data. It's as close as you'll get, but some processing occurs before it the RAW file is written. That usually includes some noise reduction and sharpening. The camera makers are rather secretive about what processing is done between the sensor and the generation of a RAW file.
As for looking at a RAW file on the LCD screen, that raises an interesting point. In the Canon world (and I think the others, but I'm not sure), the image you see on the display is the RAW file as it would look using the camera's current image processing settings. In other words, you are effectively looking at what a JPG would have looked like. Why does that matter? If your white balance is way off, it could throw off your histogram, misleading you about clipped channels. So even when you shoot RAW, it makes sense to try to get your white balance at least reasonably correct.
Another frequent memory question is "one big card or several small cards?" Should you buy a 64 gig card and not worry about space or should you buy eight 8 gig cards? With one big card, all of your eggs are in one basket and sometimes that basket gets into trouble. With lots of smaller cards, you make more frequent card changes, each of which risks dropping or losing a card. You also run a bigger risk of missing shots because you filled your card and had to swap if you use smaller cards. My personal preference is fewer, bigger cards and redudant backups to a pair of 2.5" external hard drives each night.
One other thing to consider is video. Video sucks up memory like there is not tomorrow. If you plan to shoot video, adjust your memory expecations accordingly.
, is that Nikon does a bit better job with NX processing NEF files. I was able to improve my photos compared to the JPEGs pretty quickly. Then I got smart and bought a couple of books and viewlets for NX2. That really helped me improve the photos. What I learned in the books/viewlets allowed me to "save" some photos that where taken in some very bad light conditions. 
