CF memory card dilemma...please help

[sakeroni]

i'm going to europe in a month for 10 days. i have 3 4G compact flash extreme III. Planning to shoot everything in raw, which means ~280 images per CF card, X3 = 840 total pix. Not enough memory! what is the best to go about doing this? please help

[Bob]

Buy a 16G CF card then you do not have to worry.

[wickerprints]

How much space do you need?


Do some calculation. On average, how many pictures do you expect to take in a day? Clearly you intend to take more than 84 a day. So let's just say you're going to take 250/day. That means you need about 40 GB total storage. That is clearly a very different situation than, say, if you take only 100/day, for which you could just buy one more 4GB card and be good. And then suppose you're going to take > 700/day. Now you're talking hundreds of GB of storage and it becomes obvious that you cannot economically buy that many CF cards.


Also consider that if you are not bringing a laptop, you may want to view your images on a larger screen than your camera's LCD. That means you might want to consider a cheap and lightweight netbook. Or if you will have the opportunity to stop at an internet cafe, you may consider getting a portable laptop hard drive (capacities up to 500 GB) and utilize a CF card reader to transfer files from the card to the computer and then to the drive. There even exist devices that get rid of the computer in the middle--they are basically battery-operated CF card readers with a hard drive in the enclosure. http://secure.serverlab.net/shop/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=T00107&amp ;Category_Code=FlashPac


Shop around but first you need to determine your storage needs.

[sakeroni]

Wickerprints,


thanks. not really sure how much i would take a day, great question. but since im there, might as well take everything from landscape to people to architecture, etc. but for sure, i can burn 900 pictures in 5 days. when i went to thailand last year, i was there for 2 weeks and took a total of 1800 pix. of course, filtered out a great amounts when i got home and ended up with 800 acceptable images. so all in all, i can easily fill up my 12G of memory within 10 days. and yes, i am not taking my laptop. but i do like your idea of buying a CF card reader and transfer it using a local internet cafe. thanks again for your feedback





your friend,


sak boun

[Cory]

I think answering yourself these questions might help....


1.) How many shots do you think you will shoot in a given 'shoot'?


2.) Will you shoot in Raw, JPG, or both?


3.) Will you will have access to a storage device of some kind. Laptop, portable media device you to download to on the spot, etc.


4.) Is speed shooting (many shots quickly of a moving subject) is a need.


5.) Do you want to play it safe and have backup cards for the purpose of card failure or subject organization?





So, how many shots you will take in a shoot based on what type of file you are saving in and how long you will go without having access to a storage solution should determine how much capacity the card needs. I'm shooting the largest file of both types on a 50D, so I'm going to guess my average picture will consume 25megs. I'll get 40 shots per gig. I tend to shoot about 450 pictures in a day in certain situations (England vacation for example). My old 4gig card from my old 300D won't cut it at all. I also shoot fencing (of the sword variety) sometimes and want the speed of a fast cart. So, I bought a 16Gig IV.


In looking at multiple cards I had something of a dilema. I have a small laptop (12" 5lbs) that I have used up to this point to download cards to, and it's fine for leaving in the car or hotel room (it was bought specifically for travel). I wanted to still have the ability to save a lot of photos but not have to bring the laptop with me and was considering buying additional cards. I had also been looking at portable storage devices I could download the CF right to. At first I didn't think the cost of the storage devices was justifiable... but when I considered a 32gig card was $250 and the 160gig Wolverine was $300 it suddenly became very cost effective.


Now a while ago I stupidly left my 16gig IV CF card at home and had a Camera with no card in it... so I went to a nearby store and bought a 32gig III card, but I had more cash flow at that point. So now I have a card that has much more storage space that I use for 'normal shooting' (i.e. I don't plan on taking a lot of consecutive shots of a moving subject) and my 16gig IV. And, yes, the speed of writing on these two cards DOES make a noticable difference.

[sakeroni]

Cory,


Like yourself, i too, shoot everything in the largest file type but only in Raw on my 40D. Each picture should average about 12MB, roughly about 70 shots per GB.





gunslinge,


shooting in sRaw1 is interesting, but since i have a 40D. my 12MB/per image would be reduce down to 6MB, not sure if the quality will be as great as yours on 8.5x11.





Jarhead5811,


i would love to bring my laptop, but weight is an issue. since in europe they charge us per luggage to fly.

[Cory]

Like yourself, i too, shoot everything in the largest file type but only in Raw on my 40D. Each picture should average about 12MB, roughly about 70 shots per GB.
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Just what I'd do, but I'd say get yourself a couple 8GB cards. Maybe one of the two with faster memory rate... like a SanDisk Extreme III and a IV. Probably run you in the area of $150-$175 total, you'll have two cards in care of failure and one of them can be used for a higher number of consecutive shots and you have an overall capacity of more than 1000 shots.

[gunslinge]

I am going on vacation too very soon ( Yellowstone ), My solutions is, buy an extra card ( 4 -8GB cards total ), andshoot S-Raw-1.I tested with my finial output 8.5"x11" and could not see any differance between RAW and SRAW1. I can get twice as many pictures, from 20Mb down to 10Mb, until I reach the last card, then switch to JPG, which should hold over 1000 images.


That sould be a total of 1500 SRAW1 images and over 1000 JPG, I only took about 1200 images in Colorada last year.

[Jarhead5811]

If, it werean option I'd take my laptop.

[gunslinge]

The car is to full of camping gear for much more, but we have these new netbooks, mini-portables with 160GB hard drives, 10"x7.5"x1", we are selling them for $399.


The sp 4449 ( steam enigene ) ,should be here in a hour or two, but sky is cloulding up :&lt; .