Photography for Dummies (ME!)

[Disneymama1]

OK, my first digital camera is on its way to me. Its a Pentax Optio A10. It's coming with a 1 gig photo card.

Here are my questions:

Does anyone have any idea how many photos I can take with a 1 gig card? Is it 50 - is it 100 I literally have no idea.

Second, if my card does get filled up, could I use a flash drive with a card slot to move the photos off the camera and on to the flash drive. If so, how many photos will fit on a 128 meg flash drive.

These are probably very basic questions, so I apologize to the experts out there, but a little bit of info would really, really help me. I'm getting the camera now to practice and learn how to use it before my October Disney trip. I plan to take lots of pictures and I want to make sure I don't run out of space.

Thanks so much to all of you out there willing to share information with me.

 

[handicap18]

It depends on how many megapixels the camera is. With my 6.1mp camera I get on average about 320 pics on a 1 gig card. It will never be the same unless you only take a picture of the same thing over and over. The ISO you use, how much light that is captured and the subject will all have a factor in what size the picture file will be and how much space it will take on the card.

 

[Disneymama1]

Thanks Kyle. The camera is 8 megapixels, so I imagine I would get less than the 320 you mentioned.


Do you know anything about downloading on to a flashdrive or do you think I should just take two cards?

 

[handicap18]

Don't know much about flash drives at all. Others may have some experience. I took 3 1 gig cards and a laptop. In 4 days I ended up taking 4 cards worth of pics.

It really depends on your picture taking habits. Its to base it on what you may have taken with film since you were limited to 24 or 36 exposure rolls. With digital its almost endless and doesn't cost much.

 

[Judge Fudge]

It also depends on the quality setting, I would check the manual for exact figures on how many it will hold. If you don't have the manual handy, go to the optio site and download one in PDF format.

 

[Judge Fudge]

I went and downloaded the manual and checked for you;
@8MP Best Quality
44 per 128mb of SD Memory

So about 352 if those Pentax numbers are correct, though sizes do vary as someone mentioned above.

 

[Disneymama1]

You are all fantastic. Thanks so much for not only responding, but for doing research for me. I am hoping to get some fantastic pictures with my new camera.

 

[makinorlando]

Just another suggestion - if in doubt, I would buy extra memory to take on your trip... it is VERY EXPENSIVE in the parks. I made that mistake on a day trip for a character breakfast that I really wanted pics of and I believe I paid close to $50 for 256mb of memory! YIKES!

 

[jann1033]

if you have a micro center near you they have their store brand 1 gb sd cards on sale for 15( think till the end of the month, i printed out a coupon a couple weeks ago online but they might have it still in the in store circular).i picked 2 up just for emergency memory usage...they might be slow downloading but that's not that big a deal to me and i have plenty of memory that way

with my rebel xt ( 8mp) the largest finest pic is 3.3 mb so that would be what you could divide your flash drive mb by to see how many would fit ( roughly) i get about 450 pictures per 2 gb card