handicap18
<font color=blue>Husband, father of 3, and Disney
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2005
- Messages
- 4,860
I was wandering though one of the nikon boards today and someone was complaining about the Nikon D50 giving incorrect exposure tallies. He said the tally registered that he took 560 pics, but when he downloaded them to his computer he actually got over 800 pics.
I found 2 of the responses interesting. Not every picture is the same file size and the counter on the camera is basically estimating based on an average file size. So in essence you really could fit more than it says (then again you could also get less) depending on what your subject is.
Here are the 2 responses I was talking about:
"The D50 uses the FAT16 file format method for the SD card. If you do some research on FAT16 you will see that it is a file system that was designed in the days when a 100MB (that is MB not GB) hard drive was HUGE. FAT16 is very inefficient with it's use of disc space over 540MB and as such it incorrectly reports available disc space. This is one reason why the D50 reports only 135 RAW images on a 1 GB card (135 x 6MB per image = 810 MB)when the reality is that you will actually get 150+ RAW images on a 1 GB card if you just keep shooting.
This is why no computer hard drives are ever formatted in FAT16 these days (apart from the fact FAT16 only supports 2GB maximum partition size anyway).
When and if Nikon ever do a firmware upgrade to allow the cards to be formatted as FAT32 you will get accurate shot remaining tallies. Until then you just need to either accept what you have or buy something else."
"The problem is present on virtually all digital cameras, because most of the commonly used formats use variable-bit-rate compression. In other words, although they have a fixed size (say, 3008x2000), the amount of compression that goes with any given image is variable. In particular, both JPEG and compressed RAW do this.
If you take a JPEG picture of a blank wall, it will end up as a (very) different sized file than if you take a picture of a teeming ant hill with a razor-sharp macro lens. (Or random pink noise.)
Nikon RAW files are usually compressed too: the D70 and D50 don't even give you the option of saving uncompressed raw files.
The pictures-remaining counter is therefore always going to be inaccurate, because it can't predict what you'll take a picture of in the future. Nikon plays it safe and assumes the worst possible mileage.
On my D2h, a 2 GB card shows capacity for 318 raw files. I shoot compressed raw, and it's unusual not to be able to get 600 of those onto the card.
TIFF is a non-compressed format. I am pretty sure that if you shoot in TIFF, the counter will be deadly accurate."
I haven't actually filled a card on my D50. I did with my Canon P&S on a 1GB card, but I never paid attention to what it said I could fit when it was empty to when it actually said card was full and how many I actually had.
I'll have to pay attention to this when I go to Disney in June. I plan on filling at least one 1GB card, probably will actually need closer to 3 cards, but we'll only be there 4 days.
Just thought I'd pass along some information that I came across.
I found 2 of the responses interesting. Not every picture is the same file size and the counter on the camera is basically estimating based on an average file size. So in essence you really could fit more than it says (then again you could also get less) depending on what your subject is.
Here are the 2 responses I was talking about:
"The D50 uses the FAT16 file format method for the SD card. If you do some research on FAT16 you will see that it is a file system that was designed in the days when a 100MB (that is MB not GB) hard drive was HUGE. FAT16 is very inefficient with it's use of disc space over 540MB and as such it incorrectly reports available disc space. This is one reason why the D50 reports only 135 RAW images on a 1 GB card (135 x 6MB per image = 810 MB)when the reality is that you will actually get 150+ RAW images on a 1 GB card if you just keep shooting.
This is why no computer hard drives are ever formatted in FAT16 these days (apart from the fact FAT16 only supports 2GB maximum partition size anyway).
When and if Nikon ever do a firmware upgrade to allow the cards to be formatted as FAT32 you will get accurate shot remaining tallies. Until then you just need to either accept what you have or buy something else."
"The problem is present on virtually all digital cameras, because most of the commonly used formats use variable-bit-rate compression. In other words, although they have a fixed size (say, 3008x2000), the amount of compression that goes with any given image is variable. In particular, both JPEG and compressed RAW do this.
If you take a JPEG picture of a blank wall, it will end up as a (very) different sized file than if you take a picture of a teeming ant hill with a razor-sharp macro lens. (Or random pink noise.)
Nikon RAW files are usually compressed too: the D70 and D50 don't even give you the option of saving uncompressed raw files.
The pictures-remaining counter is therefore always going to be inaccurate, because it can't predict what you'll take a picture of in the future. Nikon plays it safe and assumes the worst possible mileage.
On my D2h, a 2 GB card shows capacity for 318 raw files. I shoot compressed raw, and it's unusual not to be able to get 600 of those onto the card.
TIFF is a non-compressed format. I am pretty sure that if you shoot in TIFF, the counter will be deadly accurate."
I haven't actually filled a card on my D50. I did with my Canon P&S on a 1GB card, but I never paid attention to what it said I could fit when it was empty to when it actually said card was full and how many I actually had.
I'll have to pay attention to this when I go to Disney in June. I plan on filling at least one 1GB card, probably will actually need closer to 3 cards, but we'll only be there 4 days.
Just thought I'd pass along some information that I came across.
