Number of photos on an 8gb CF card?

[Idnas71]

I'm sorry... this has got to have been addressed before, but I can't find it.

I'm going to be traveling through South America for almost 4 weeks coming up in November. I want to take advantage of the good rebates at SanDisk and get enough memory for the trip.

If a person decides to shoot in RAW *and* JPEG combined, how many photos from a 10 megapixel 40D would fit on one of these 8gb Extreme III CF cards? Not that I intend to use that method the whole time, but maybe I will. I don't know.

Addendum: Another question... mostly curiosity. When you review your pics and decide to delete some, does one action delete both the RAW file and the JPEG file, if you choose to shoot in duplicate like that?

[GaryS]

I shoot RAW only on my 10mp XTI, and it produces files between 8 and 10 mb, so I get about 400 on my 4gb card. I would suspect that a jpg would add about 1-2mb per pic or so....

Do you have the 40D already? You could just try it out on a smaller card to see what you get...

[TheWengler]

The camera reviews on this site tell you approximate file sizes at the various quality settings. You should be able to figure it out from that.

[Idnas71]

Thanks, GaryS. No, I don't have the 40D yet... it's on the slow shipping truck... probably another week before I see it. I could certainly wait and test it for myself, as you suggested.

[Rhys]

I'd say that you'd be better off in this instance with a lot more CF cards. I went for 6 weeks to the Baltics and took 1,500 photos - that's an average of about 40 photos a day and it's somewhere that I'd been many times before. I'd say you should be thinking in terms of 200 photos a day or 5,600 photos total. In RAW on a 40D this is 12.4mb/image or about 70GB. That's several 8GB cards or pray and hope it works and get a portable hard drive. Just don't use the hard drive above 10,000 feet.

[GaryS]

When on vacation, I tend to shoot about 400-500 images a week.

[JTL]

Just don't use the hard drive above 10,000 feet.

My Epson P5000 (viewer with hard drive) worked fine hiking around Tibet...average height around 14,000 feet...

[Idnas71]

Thank you for the replies. I just bought three of the Sandisk Extreme III 8gb CF cards and will take advantage of the full $160 rebate. I figure with reviewing my photos in the evenings and ditching the bad ones (there are usually a bunch of those), that should be sufficient for me. Part of the trip is a cruise, and I imagine the days at sea will not provide much photo-taking opportunity. When we hit the Chilean fjords, though, I'm looking forward to some great on-ship scenery.

I'm not sure of the elevation at Machu Picchu... I know it's high, though. I'm not taking the laptop, just the camera stuff.

[David Metsky]

Machu Picchu is rougly 7800', lower then Cusco which is 11,000'. There was a problem with CF II hard drives where they would sometimes fail over 10,000'. Since at the time they were the biggest memory cards available it was a big deal. I don't know if the same holds for current drives used in compact storage devices (like iPod disks).

[SpecialK]

I'm not sure of the elevation at Machu Picchu... I know it's high, though. I'm not taking the laptop, just the camera stuff.

That will be a great visit - hope they do not close it soon due to damage caused by...too many tourists...