999 on a 4gb card?

[BasherXt]

I'm using a 30D in JPG fine quality. I just bought a new Extreme 3 4gb Sandisk CF card (not an ebay special) and I'm trying to find out if it will just hold a crap load of pictures or somethings wrong. The display says the pitures remaining is 999 i took about 64 pictures and it still stays on 999. So I stopped not having this before I don't know if it is good and holding over 1,000 pictures or what's going on.

I did format in camera also before use.

[kaypony]

I have a Lexar 4gb and was up at the mountain last weekend. Fitted 1200 on the card. Argueably (sorry spelling) I wasnt shooting RAW, I was shooting in large, fine quality. I have a 400d. Sorry this doesnt really answer your questions. When I bought it, the table said it should fit around 800.

[_aravena]

Um, yeah. It holds a schiz load. Simple as that. Have fun filling it up or start shooting on RAW. That's all I shoot now really. Although 4GB is only suppose to hold around 400+ on RAW, mine had 450 and read as only just over 3GB. Idk, but I feel bad 'cause my g/f bought me an extra 4GB Ultra II before the concert cause I thought I would fill over.

[poloman]

I get about 450 on my 4gb with 30D RAW.

[_aravena]

Yes, at low ISO levels. If I shot only at ISO 100 then I should. But i was shooting at ISO 400 even 800 sometimes and I still got that many photos and it only read as 3GB.

[JWright]

It will hold over 1000 images at the setting you are shooting. The counter will continue to read 999 until you've shot enough to get the counter down below that amount.

You also have to keep in mind not all images have the same file size, even in RAW. Image contrast, exposure and the amount of detail in the image all have a bearing on the final file size.

[BasherXt]

whew! ok i will start taking pics again with this card. i just thought something was screwed up and i was about to be ticked. man over 1000 pics on 1 card.... now i'm going to have to make sure i have enough batteries to take that many pics with.

[kaypony]

Took 1200 and my battery was at least half still full. Plus I was at around 2000 m altitude, apparently that affects battery but it still didnt run out so I was pretty pleased. Took photos from 9-3 with couple of breaks on the chair lifts. You should be fine :)

[kaypony]

Whoops, sorry. I dont think altitude affects battery life. But the cold certainly does.

[Jon]

Yes, at low ISO levels. If I shot only at ISO 100 then I should. But i was shooting at ISO 400 even 800 sometimes and I still got that many photos and it only read as 3GB.
Amount of detail in the photo affects file size too. If there are large areas of essentially uniform colour, the data compresses well, so the file sizes are smaller than average (this is also why high ISO files are bigger - the noise means there are fewer large areas of uniform colour). And, yes, even RAW files are compressed.They don't use a lossy compression like JPEG does, but the data is compressed.

[shannyD]

i have the lexar 4gb card. i shoot in raw, and Lfine, and i got just about 500 on that card. i was impressed to say the least.

[overclock]

The "999" means you have a dislexic satanic camera as it is "666" upside down. Hard to say whether it is the card or the camera that is possessed so send both to me and I'll exorcise both. And since you're a POTN poster I'll do it for free.

[Echo63]

canon cameras only count to 999, so if you can fit more than that on a card (which you would be able to do with 30d largefine and a 4gb card) then it will only start counting down once there is less than 999 shots remaining

[neil85]

what echo said .... they probably only programmed it to count to 999 and adding that other digit would take up some memory due to it being a binary number internally ...

[pwm2]

No problem with extra bits to handle larger numbers. It's the cost/size to add an extra digit on the display.