basic arithmetics and D500 picture capacity

<p>Dear all,<br>

the D500 is said to take about 25 Mo for a RAW-lossless compressed and 10 Mo for a fine JPEG. <br>

When shooting RAW+JPEG on a 64 Go card, this should lead to something like 2000 pictures / card (ie about 30 pictures per Go).<br>

The D500 indicates 984.<br /> <br />Where is the trick ? ;)</p>

<p>What's your setting for the RAW file? Uncompressed, compressed, compressed lossless? 12-bit or 14-bit? The 984 makes sense for uncompressed RAW at 14-bit. Page 387 in the D500 manual (US version) lists the number of images estimated for a 64GB card.</p>

<p>In addition, when using compressed formats, the actual amount of compression depends a lot on the actual content of the image, so it cannot be anticipated very well. As a result, the estimates of "shots left" is never fully accurate until the card is close to full. Nikon tends to be extremely conservative with the guestimate they show on the camera.</p>

Each individual image file size depends on what you are taking photos of: the more detail (detail is difference and vice-

versa) the larger the file.

 

On top of that the capacity indicator on all cameras that I have ever used have always been extremely conservative in

calculating the number of photos that the media can hold.

Nikon DSLRs basically assume that very little or no compression of the raw file is possible and calculates a worst-case

estimate of how many files will fit on the card. When using lossless compressed this is a lot smaller number than how

many will actually fit. If you choose compressed (lossy) the camera does increase the estimate, if I recall correctly.

<p>I know that the camera is more conservative but I suspect that the camera somehow thinks it's a 32Gb card. Put a 32Gb card in it and see what it says.</p>

<p>You may wish to keep in mind: the camera does not know what subject you are going to shoot. It gives you a estimate. Lots of solid white background images may take less pixels, compared to a lot of forest-like images with a variety of colors.</p>

 

<p>Dear all,<br>

I know the variation in size you can have on a compressed file.<br />If you take the Nikon manual and take the average file size in this manual, you end up with 2500 pictures on a 64 Go card whereas in the same manual such a card is given for 1300 pictures....<br>

The difference is huge !</p>

<p>FWIW, my D750 behaves the same way - a 32GB card typically takes some 1200 images (in my shooting), but an empty card shows 570 or so images remianing. I learned to multiply the number by 2 to get a good estimate of how much space remains. By comparison, my old Canon 5D (Mark I and Mark II) were much more accurate in their estimates.</p>

<p>Underestimation of the number of remaining shots is normal with Nikon DSLRs. All 3 of mine (D700, D800 and D7200) give a very conservative shot count initially - with an empty card. As the card fills up the estimate tends to increase, or rather decrease more slowly than the number of pictures taken.</p>

<p>Don't worry. The camera "knows" what size card is fitted; it just refuses to calculate a sensible shot capacity!</p>

<p>We have had this discussion since the early days of digital. Nikon's remaining-frame-count estimate is always the worst-case scenario, that somehow no compression is possible for all the images you will capture and store on that card. Of course in real life, it is next to impossible to run into such situation on hundreds, and perhaps thousands of images in consecutive frames.</p>

<p>What Nikon wants to avoid is to show you that you may have N number of frames left, but somehow since compression is less than normal and you end up with fewer than N, perhaps a lot fewer, thus you run out of memory card space.</p>

<p>If you shoot lossless compressed RAW, a typical compression ratio is 50% such that the actual number of frames remaining is roughly twice as many as the counter shows on the camera.</p>

 

<p>On my D 500, I shoot in lossless compressed RAW, 14bit. Image size varies as explained above. On Saturday I did some shooting at a local water garden store. My images varied in size from around 37 MB to 44MB. The average size was probably closer to 39-40MB. I was shooting dragon flies, water lilies, flower blossoms, stoneware, etc. </p>

<p>Joe</p>

<p>Joe Smith, are you sure that you are not using 14-bit, uncompressed RAW on your D500? Due to my trip to Botswana, I have already captured over 10K images on my D500. I pretty much use 14-bit, lossless RAW exclusively. The RAW files from the D500 vary from about 20M bytes to around 30M bytes. I also have used a D5, which too is 20MP, and its RAW file sizes are in that same range.</p>

<p>If your RAW files are between 37M bytes to 44M bytes, they are almost twice as big as what I am getting. Hence I suspect that you are actually using uncompressed RAW.</p>

<p>For my 24MP D750 and D7200, RAW file sizes vary from 25M byte to 33M byte, for 14-bit, lossless compressed.</p>