How many GB storage space?

[cnhoff]

Hi,

 

i am not certain, how many GB in GF card space i should take on my trip to

India. I will spend 6 weeks there and am rather focusing on taking pictures (no

time at beaches etc.

 

I have shot around 1200 pictures on a 2 months trip to vietnam and around 1500

pictures on my 3 month trip to India(which involved around 4 weeks at various

beaches -> less shooting, but that was with film.

 

I guess i will certainly shoot more with digital, try more and certainly use

some exposure bracketing for added dynamic range in extreme situations.

 

What i basically wanted to do is taking CF card space worth 1500-2000 shots

which for my 30D is around 16GB.

 

What do you think? How do you calculate? How many shots per week on average?

 

Thanks

 

Chris

 

PS I have a portable harddrive with me, so i can backup my shots and have some

security with available space here, but i would rather only use this for redundancy.

[mendel_leisk]

You're asking people to predict how many shots you're going to take on your upcoming trip, and then to do the calculation as to how many cards you should take?

[cnhoff]

No Mendel, not in the slightest do i ask this.

 

I am asking, how many shots YOU people normally take on such a trip and how YOU plan YOUR trips.

 

I hope this helps me with the planning of my own trip. Letting other people predict my shooting habits would make no sense, would it?

[stipe_marinovic]

I shoot a lot.. and at the end of the day I erase double, bad and non sharp pictures.. so after deleting I usually end up with around 200 pictures per day, that is 2 GB for each day if you are shooting RAW or 600MB per day shooting jpeg.

For 6 weeks.. I don't know.. may be 16GB and laptop (with 100GB hard drive) and bunch of empty dvd for backup :)

[phule]

[[i am asking, how many shots YOU people normally take on such a trip and how YOU plan YOUR trips]]

 

I don't see how this is any more reasonable a question than what Mendel suggests. The answers you will receive will range from "I shot 20 photos" to "I shot 200GB." You're not going to get any more information that what you already have.

 

If you think you're going to shoot a lot you can:

 

1) Take along a number or size of memory cards you think you'd fill

 

2) Take along a portable backup device with a lot of storage and fewer cards

 

3) If you're really worried, do both #1 and #2.

[mike dixon]

I shot about 90GB in three weeks in Vietnam last year (mostly street and documentary stuff).

I store images on a portable hard drive (Hyperdrive HD80 with 120BG drive).

[garydem]

it also comes down to YOUR shooting habits. me, i am selective as to what i shoot. i do not aim and fire the shutter just to here it click. however, many people do just shoot everything in sight and then keep them all. so getting an answer from anyone is useless without knowing if their shoot style matches yours.

 

for myself, and i shoot jpeg, i have 28gb of memory cards. with my dslr at max quality that works out to just over 6900 pics. i just download them to the pc when i get home. there is noway that i will shoot 6900 pictures evewn if i was gone a month or 2.

 

just figure out how much you think you will need then ADD MORE. or buy an external hdr drv(or solid state) memory device.

[bruce_margolis]

Christian, this is really difficult to answer. You say you are "rather focusing on taking pictures." For me, a typical day may be 200-1000 shots if the focus is photograhy.

 

One thing you need to know is how many photos you get on a memory card. For example, I use a D300. It holds only about 300 shots (RAW) on an 8Gb card. That means I could blow through 25Gb in just one day. In six weeks, that would be more than 1,000Gb at a cost of greater than $25,000 for CF cards.

 

What I do is a little less expensive. I backup to my laptop every day, sometimes twice a day. Then I also save the data on a hard drive backup. Those who don't use a laptop often have a portable backup. Sometimes it is possible to find a place where you can copy your CF cards to a disk, for a fee of course. Personally I wouldn't want to rely on that. YMMV.

 

Bottom line, you can do your own math but unless your photography will be very negligible, you need to come up with a way to backup your data as you go along.

[ellis_vener_photography]

I'd take as many 4GB CF or SD cards as you can afford.

 

Why 4GB? near perfect fit for a DVD-R and you archive and make backups as you can.

[joseph_smith3]

I would take two portable backup hard drives without the ability to see the images, and enough cards for one or two days shootings. But that is me. There is no way I could ever afford to have enough CF cards to hold my images for a long trip. But I could afford to buy two harddrives, like hyperdrives. I shoot with a D 200 and D 300 in raw. Joe Smith

[mariosforsos]

Hehehe...some of you guys are WAY over my league...1000 shots a day? I mean,

hell...that's a lot of shooting...if my math is correct, that's around 40 shots an hour, 24

hours a day, or around 1 shot every 1 1/2 mins!!! All day, every day! I mean, even if I dare

assume 8 hours for sleep, it comes down to a shot a minute for EVERY other minute of the

day...! I envy you guys... Count food, toilet and maybe interaction with another person,

and the count goes down to around 5 shots a minute...!!! I am humbled indeed...

 

Personally, I can only afford (time wise) to take much shorter trips, but on my last trip in

Jordan (last summer), I took just under 1000 shots in 11 days (with a D80). Now I'm going

to Vietnam for 2 weeks with my D200 and am planning to take around 20GB of CF cards

with me. That's around 1200 shots (I get around 120 shots per 2GB) - I have read that

memory cards there are a steal, so maybe I grab a couple more there if I run out...

 

Personally, I prefer to travel light - cannot be bothered with burners, laptops, drives

etc...but that's just me...I know I risk a bit, but then again, it's the trade-offs we all have to

live with I guess ...;-)