How Much Digital Camera Memory is Enough?

The clock is ticking. In just a couple days the Rebel will come out of it’s Lowepro Slingshot camera bag, and most likely stay within hands reach for the next two months. A journey that begins with a drive from Seattle to San Francisco, includes a stint assisting a friend at her women surf camp in Kauai, followed by many weeks of wandering aimlessly through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Yunnan province of southern China. Besides dealing with such life-threatening diseases such as malaria or typhoid, all the while trying to cross the street in Saigon, one of my bigger concerns is, will I have enough memory for my camera?

Right now I have 13 GB. I’m shooting with the 8-megapixel digital Canon Rebel XT, almost entirely in RAW format. As far as I can tell, that translates to about 1400 photos. The first couple weeks I’ll have the ability to download my photos and clear out the memory cards, but there will be about 35 days there where I may not be able to do this. Is 13GB enough?

That’s, on average, only about 40 photos a day. Obviously there will be days I take only a couple, but at the same time (say, while visiting Angkor Wat) I’ll probably take hundreds, literally. Ok…I may need more. On the other hand, I will also have the 8 megapixel Canon Powershot 850IS, which only shoots high res JPEGs, so even a modest memory card can hold hundreds more photos.

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Posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 9:13 am. Filed under: Blog, Photography Equipment RSS 2.0 feed.