How much memory?

[tgr141291]

How much memory do you reckon i will need for a 2 week trip to the rockies, calgary and vancouver.

Im going in 3 weeks and want to make sure i've got everything i need. I currently have 12GB of compact flash

[rowan57]

Are you going to have any other form of backup, laptop etc.? If not i would seriously advise you do. Even if so, it can be beneficial to not have to format a card during a trip. I would think say another 2 8GB cards would do you. Its better to have too much than not enough.

[Jon]

I figure something like 100 frames a day (including travel days) if I'm not traveling specifically to photograph an event or place. Of course if photography is the overwhelming driver for the trip, I'll increase that estimate, so I figure maybe 700 frames/day for an air show or 300/day for a day-long photo op. Seems to work out pretty close to reality. But I take along some kind of external storage even then.

[ed rader]

How much memory do you reckon i will need for a 2 week trip to the rockies, calgary and vancouver.

Im going in 3 weeks and want to make sure i've got everything i need. I currently have 12GB of compact flash


are you shooting RAW or JPEG? RAW will require twice as much space. it's really hard to say how much you would need.

i have two 10-day vacations planned this year and i'll take at least 60 gbs of CF cards plus a laptop plus an external HD.

ed rader

[Exposure101]

^ holy cow that's a lot of memory!!

OP- it depends on how many pictures you take in general. Just bring twice what you think you will need. So if you think you're going to take 100 pictures a day, bring enough memory for 200 pictures a day. As mentioned before, it would be best if you have a laptop or external hard drive so you can back up your pictures.

[ed rader]

]^ holy cow that's a lot of memory!![/COLOR]

OP- it depends on how many pictures you take in general. Just bring twice what you think you will need. So if you think you're going to take 100 pictures a day, bring enough memory for 200 pictures a day. As mentioned before, it would be best if you have a laptop or external hard drive so you can back up your pictures.


i burned through 56 gigs in africa in 10 days with a 10 mp camera. now my primary camera is 21 mp. i get around 500 files on a 16-gig card. so really if i wasn't carrying two back-ups it's not that much memory for how i shoot.

one of the trips will not be too picture intensive. the second trip to alaska will be but most of the action will be in about a 5-6 day period.

ed rader

[tvphotog]

I have two 16GB cards and a 500GB Hyperdrive. I shoot 21MB RAW photos and I shoot alot. I don't like the idea of being limited by storage, hence the overkill...which may not be so much over when you take video into account.

It depends on how many MB are in each shot you take and how many shots you take a day multiplied by the number of days on your trip.

[bohdank]

I find that, when stuck for memory, which has happened to me in the past, reviewing the images, in camera, have leads to a LOT of deletions. Amazing how many (didn't I just see this one a minute ago) type of shots show up :-)

With that said, going through my archives I have had a 243 keeper day and quite a few > 100... I'm fairly ruthless when it comes to deleting stuff so I can count those days on 1 hand.

Stil, always better more memory than less.

I have a 2 week trip (to a familiar place) coming up where I will be going with my newer gear. I expect I will be shooting more than any amount of memory I am willing to buy. A netbook will be coming along. Need to buy a netbook :-)

[stathunter]

Memory is cheap -- no reason not to have tons -- for a trip last year I picked up 6 transcend 16 gig cards from newegg-- they worked great - no problems and I still use them. They are slower than you need for commercial work-=- I tried one yesterday at a wedding shooting raw --and definitely slower than the SanDisk cards.

[bohdank]

I use Transcend and like them. Actually the only Sandisk card I have has started to develop problems and I have hardly used it.

I could look at the slower 133x Trascend cards since they are cheap and I have 266/300x cards when I know I will need faster speeds.

[Bob_A]

With my 20D I needed a bit less than 2GB per day for family vacations. If the sole purpose of the trip was for photography I'd double it.

I'd rather have more/smaller CF cards than take along a laptop or external HD. However I have to admit that because my D700 files are larger than the ones from the 20D and CF cards are so much cheaper than they used to be I've started to buy 8GB cards.

[xaviar13]

I usally carry at least 3-4 8gb cards on a 1 week vacation for shooting in raw mode and another couple of older cards for spares adding up to another 8gb or so if I'm not bringing a laptop. If I was doing your vacation I'd definitely increase what I'd normally bring.

I like the idea of deleting on vacation but often its not possible or not prudent for me since I often ask my wife to stand around while I shoot that I don't want to ask her to watch me spend another 45 minutes going through and deleting pics when we could be doing something. She's a very patient woman when it comes to my hobby but there is a limit.

[bohdank]

I usually do that at the end of the day or when there is some "downtime" during the day. Doesn't take long since I delete the obvious ones first and stop there. If I get desperate, which has happened, I'll go back at the end of the day and start getting more ruthless.

Just bought a 16gb Transcend 133x to add to my inventory. A little nervous buying such a large card (all eggs in one basket). It was considerably cheaper than buying 4 x 4 gig cards which I prefer. Nobody seems to have any 8 gig 133x cards.

[xander2188]

not really much of a help now, but you can get memory cards for super cheap on black friday. This year i got 2 sets if 3 4gig extreme 3 cards for 60$ each with a 60$ mail in rebate, so i basically got 24gigs for the price of tax.

If you are only going to shoot jpeg you will probably be ok with what you have, but if you are going to shoot raw I would get another 10-12 gigs of memory. It is probably better to have too many cards then too few, it would suck to have to go through your photos on the LCD or have to try and find a place to buy cards while you are travelling. Newegg usually has pretty good deals on cf cards.

[funhouse69]

I took a day trip to Utah with my family last year. We went to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon and I took about 600 pictures so I would say bring a ton and a way to download them / back them up. I have a combo of 8GB and 16GB Sandisk Cards and a couple Trancends as well that I will use for the day then download them on to my laptop at the end of the day and burn them on to DVD's if need be. If I didn't have my laptop I can't even imagine how much more memory I would need :rolleyes:

[JohnJ80]

How much memory do you reckon i will need for a 2 week trip to the rockies, calgary and vancouver.

Im going in 3 weeks and want to make sure i've got everything i need. I currently have 12GB of compact flash

Memory requirements vary dramatically by photographer. Figure out how many shots you think you will take, figure out the file size and then do the math. It's not that hard.

J.