Number of photos

[k_fawver]

I've been looking through the threads, and it's apparent that this is a place for people who know way more about photography than I! lol I just like taking snapshots and a LOT of them. I just got a new camera for this trip. I plan on getting the book out and trying to figure out some things about it before we go.

My question is this though (having nothing to do with what i said above)....

How many memory sticks do you think I'll need for this trip? We're staying 6 days. I have a 2gb and 4 gb memory stick duo pro and a 8 megapixel camera. I plan to have the settings on whatever will give me the highest quality so I know that will take up more memory. Should I get a couple more? I looked up estimates as to how many photos this will hold and it was around 1500 combined.

 

[tinkbutt]

I think you should actually put your memory cards in at the highest quality setting and see how many picks can you take?

I know with my one memory card if I shoot RAW (highest quality) I can shoot over 500 but if I move it to the next lowest setting I can get 900+ so I think you should put both cards in and see how many total images you can get and honestly say to yourself are you going to shoot that many photos?

plus if you were already going to take your laptop you could upload your photos when one card gets close to full, then format the card (erase all images) and you would then have a fresh card again!

but if you are really on the fence grab one more memory card because in WDW they will be a lot more $$$$

 

[Aardvarks]

Memory cards are on special offer at Best Buy and Circuit City at the moment. Even Radio Shack has them on offer, but not as cheap as the first two.

I bought a 4gig 100x speed SD card in the UK and paid £80. I bought an identical card two weeks later in Best Buy for £15.......$28USD

I get 300 shots at full quality on a 4gig SD card but my sensor is 14.6 meg

 

[Steve's Girl]

I think I took 1400 on a long weekend trip and the last 10 day trip, I took 2500. I'd take extra. You can buy basic SD cards in the park, but they are very expensive. I'm not sure if they even sell memory sticks in the park.

 

[k_fawver]

Thanks so much everyone. I found a special on the memory stick I need so I plan on buying one more. I'm also taking my laptop (thanks for the tip) so if I find myself running out of storage space, I'll just download some photos on it and clear out my cards. Great suggestions

 

[frugal_mar]

I would recommend downloading your pictures every day just in case your camera gets "misplaced." It would be bad enough to loose your camera, but at least you would have the consolation of having your photos from the previous days. I always carry a spare card with me when shooting, just in case the card fails.

I have had 4 cards when traveling. I would leave 2 in the room, and take 2 with me. At night, I would transfer my photos, and rotate the cards.

When I used a new card, I would format it in the camera. Take care to make sure that you format it in the camera rather than just deleting the photos. If you just delete the photos the file system on the card can leave holes and over time, your capacity will diminish. If you format the card, then you should be all set.

 

[Steve's Girl]

Thanks so much everyone. I found a special on the memory stick I need so I plan on buying one more. I'm also taking my laptop (thanks for the tip) so if I find myself running out of storage space, I'll just download some photos on it and clear out my cards. Great suggestions

Be sure you back up what is on your laptop with either CDs or DVDs before you erase your cards!

 

[boBQuincy]

I am trying a slightly different approach. Our laptop only has 16 GB of drive (solid state) but SDHC cards are inexpensive so I am backing up our photos (on CF cards) to SD cards. I have 32 GB of SD cards which is more than we have ever come close to using on a WDW trip.

The good part is the SD cards did not cost any more than an external hard drive and I can carry them with me. We will see how well this works...

 

[Groucho]

If you just delete the photos the file system on the card can leave holes and over time, your capacity will diminish. If you format the card, then you should be all set.

That is not true. You do not lose any capacity by deleting photos rather than formatting the card.

There are other reasons why you may want to format the card (and it doesn't matter if you do it in the PC or the camera), but gaining back lost storage is not one of them.

 

[frugal_mar]

There are other reasons why you may want to format the card (and it doesn't matter if you do it in the PC or the camera), but gaining back lost storage is not one of them.

Formatting the memory card vs deleting the pictures ensures that the card is free of any unwanted files or fragments of files that may not allow you to get the full use out of that memory card.

Overtime, the file system may become fragmented. While the life of the card has a limited number of writes, de-fragmenting is not necessarily recommended, but reformatting the card with put on a new file system eliminating the fragments.

A woman at work brought me her camera because she thought something was wrong with the the memory card - she was running out of space quickly. She was just deleting the photos. I formatted the card, and all was back to normal.

 

[WillCAD]

I've been looking through the threads, and it's apparent that this is a place for people who know way more about photography than I! lol I just like taking snapshots and a LOT of them. I just got a new camera for this trip. I plan on getting the book out and trying to figure out some things about it before we go.

My question is this though (having nothing to do with what i said above)....

How many memory sticks do you think I'll need for this trip? We're staying 6 days. I have a 2gb and 4 gb memory stick duo pro and a 8 megapixel camera. I plan to have the settings on whatever will give me the highest quality so I know that will take up more memory. Should I get a couple more? I looked up estimates as to how many photos this will hold and it was around 1500 combined.

Since you will have your laptop with you, two cards will be plenty (one primary and one spare). Keep the spare with you at all times in case the primary gives you any trouble.

Do you have a locking cable for your laptop? It always pays to keep it securely locked up in your room when you're not using it, especially if it has your pics on it. You may get a rash of people telling you "I always leave my laptop sitting out on the table at my Disney resorts and never had a problem;" but then again, you may also get a lot of people telling you, "I stick my head in the oven all the time and never had a problem," or "I stick forks in electrical outlets all the tine and never had a problem." These practices are all still foolish, and eventually WILL cause a "problem" for those who practice them. Use the cable. Lock up your laptop.

I would recommend downloading your pictures every day just in case your camera gets "misplaced." It would be bad enough to loose your camera, but at least you would have the consolation of having your photos from the previous days. I always carry a spare card with me when shooting, just in case the card fails.

I have had 4 cards when traveling. I would leave 2 in the room, and take 2 with me. At night, I would transfer my photos, and rotate the cards.

When I used a new card, I would format it in the camera. Take care to make sure that you format it in the camera rather than just deleting the photos. If you just delete the photos the file system on the card can leave holes and over time, your capacity will diminish. If you format the card, then you should be all set.

+1. I agree with everything frugal_mar said.

I am trying a slightly different approach. Our laptop only has 16 GB of drive (solid state) but SDHC cards are inexpensive so I am backing up our photos (on CF cards) to SD cards. I have 32 GB of SD cards which is more than we have ever come close to using on a WDW trip.

The good part is the SD cards did not cost any more than an external hard drive and I can carry them with me. We will see how well this works...

Carry them with you? I hope you don't mean "carry them with you in your camera bag" or "carry them with you in the parks." Your SD backups should be safely locked up safely in your hotel safe safely.

Does your laptop have a CD or DVD burner? If so, you should burn copies of your pics before coming home. Optical disks are a little more stable than magnetic or solid-state media and provide an additional backup to your SD cards.

That is not true. You do not lose any capacity by deleting photos rather than formatting the card.

There are other reasons why you may want to format the card (and it doesn't matter if you do it in the PC or the camera), but gaining back lost storage is not one of them.

What frugal_mar is referring to is called "external fragmentation" and can be avoided by not deleting files individually from memory cards, but simply formatting the card each time the files are downloaded from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(computer)

Memory cards should ALWAYS be formatted in the device where they are going to be used, for maximum compatibility. Never reformat a memory card in your computer.

 

[Groucho]

Formatting the memory card vs deleting the pictures ensures that the card is free of any unwanted files or fragments of files that may not allow you to get the full use out of that memory card.

The only way you'd get "fragments" of files is if yank out the card while it's being written to, in which case you may have corrupted the FAT table and it should be reformatted to clear that.

What frugal_mar is referring to is called "external fragmentation" and can be avoided by not deleting files individually from memory cards, but simply formatting the card each time the files are downloaded from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(computer)

Memory cards should ALWAYS be formatted in the device where they are going to be used, for maximum compatibility. Never reformat a memory card in your computer.

(I fixed your broken link.)

I'm sorry, I simply cannot agree. External fragmentation is hardly an issue here. The fragments are tiny, you'd need to be doing massive, massive amounts of writing and erasing to see any noticeable effect whatsoever.

Furthermore, this is simply not how camera memory cards are used. Camera memory cards are generally filled very linearly. Photos are loaded one after the other, and when the camera is unloaded, all the photos are deleted. There are no temporary files ever put on the card, and usually the only time a single file is removed is if you delete a photo from the camera itself. Regardless, when you unload the photos, you generally delete all of them. That leaves nothing on the memory card except for a folder structure. That means that the entire card is free for writing - not fragments. There is no space lost nor "leftover" fragments.

As for formatting in the card vs PC - as long as you know what you're doing, there is absolutely, positively no reason not to format them in your PC. SD cards are FAT, SDHC are FAT32. There is no "magic format" that your camera does that is any different than what your PC does.

Regardless - we're really debating very nit-picky things. I'm not suggesting that the average user not format their cards in their camera regularly. However, I'd rather see truly legitimate reasons.

 

[WillCAD]

The only way you'd get "fragments" of files is if yank out the card while it's being written to, in which case you may have corrupted the FAT table and it should be reformatted to clear that.


(I fixed your broken link.)

I'm sorry, I simply cannot agree. External fragmentation is hardly an issue here. The fragments are tiny, you'd need to be doing massive, massive amounts of writing and erasing to see any noticeable effect whatsoever.

Furthermore, this is simply not how camera memory cards are used. Camera memory cards are generally filled very linearly. Photos are loaded one after the other, and when the camera is unloaded, all the photos are deleted. There are no temporary files ever put on the card, and usually the only time a single file is removed is if you delete a photo from the camera itself. Regardless, when you unload the photos, you generally delete all of them. That leaves nothing on the memory card except for a folder structure. That means that the entire card is free for writing - not fragments. There is no space lost nor "leftover" fragments.

As for formatting in the card vs PC - as long as you know what you're doing, there is absolutely, positively no reason not to format them in your PC. SD cards are FAT, SDHC are FAT32. There is no "magic format" that your camera does that is any different than what your PC does.

Regardless - we're really debating very nit-picky things. I'm not suggesting that the average user not format their cards in their camera regularly. However, I'd rather see truly legitimate reasons.

External fragmentation fits the description of frugal_mar's coworker's problem perfectly.

and usually the only time a single file is removed is if you delete a photo from the camera itself.

And don't we take casual shooters to task for exactly that practice all the time? Lots of people NEVER format their cards, they only delete one at a time when editing out bad pics, or use Delete All when they finish uploading their pics.

Bad practices can lead to all sorts of problems that you and I don't face because we have good practices. It's common for people to leave pics on their cards even after they download to the PC, then delete them one by one in the camera at a later time when they need to free up space. "Oops, I forgot to delete Cassie's wedding pics from the camera! Well, I better delete them now, the card is full!" And pics get deleted one by one - sometimes dozens of them - because you're already halfway through today's ocasion, so you can't format or even "delete all" or you'd lose todays pics.

You're probably right about the whole "format in the camera" thing; that practice came about in the early days of digital cameras, when digital camera specs were not standardized and a card formatted in one camera only had about a 50% chance or working in another camera, and a card formatted in a computer only had about a 50% chance of working in any camera, because the software that formated the cards was new, buggy, and not standardized.

 

[JR6ooo4]

Be sure you back up what is on your laptop with either CDs or DVDs before you erase your cards!

and of course, back up your computer before you travel with it.

Mikeeee