Memory Card Capacity

Light Meter by Lisa K. Berton

Memory cards and digital cameras have made many changes in the past couple of years. As we watch the number of megapixels skyrocket in point and shoot cameras, the memory card manufacturers have increased the storage size of their products.

While Americans are renowned for believing that “bigger is better” there are exceptions to that philosophy. Taking one 8GB (gigabyte) memory card with you on vacation for a week could record all of your memories but if that card malfunctions or goes missing you’ll wind up spending your precious time off seeking out a new card. It’s my personal preference to bring several smaller capacity cards than one big one.

Financially speaking, you’re still way ahead of how much you spent on film. Let’s say you bought a 8GB SDHC for $30.00 and you own a 10MP (megapixel) camera. Roughly 1,138 photos would fit onto that card. We both know you never shot 31 rolls of 36 exposure film at $6.00/roll on a 7-day excursion. If you bought yourself two 4GB cards at $20.00 a piece you’d have the same number of pictures for $10.00 more. Per shot it’s a difference of $0.009 between having multiple 4GB cards and one 8GB card.

This new handy dandy chart will provide you with an estimate as to how many photos (100% compressed JPEG files) will fit onto memory cards regardless if they’re SD, XD, SDHC or Compact Flash. The chart does not incorporate recording video.

As always I recommend shooting at the highest quality level of your camera.

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Written while enjoying the soundtrack from “French Kiss”.

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2 Replies to “Memory Card Capacity”

  1. Actually I have filled up a card with about 1000 pictures. Not sure how I did it but I did. So I now travel with 3 to 4 cards each trip just to make sure that I never run out. Plus since I have my laptop with me I upload the pictures on to there and burn a copy. Not taking any chances.

    Lisa responds: Michele, you should make sure you’re camera is set to the highest quality level it has.

  2. I am always afraid that something will happen to my memory card (including the risk that my camera may be stolen) so I usually nip over to a Walgreens and transfer the photos onto a disc. But I don’t delete the photos from my memory card until I get home so that I now have 2 copies of each photo – just in case. We take hundreds of pictures when we go to WDW but I have never yet filled up my 4GB memory card (but I always take a spare one). We will soon be flying out to Orlando for a month-long holiday so I expect I will be making at least a couple of visits to Walgreens. I know we don’t want to spend all of our holiday in Walgreens but it really doesn’t take very long to do and I have peace of mind!

    Lisa responds: Copying images to CDs, jump drives, laptops, DVDs, and portable hard drives are excellent ways to keep your images safe.