Shooting RAW will I have enough memory

[JeannieK]

Will I have enough memory using only 3 1gb cf cards to shoot for 3 hours at a party?

[Digidave]

That will depend on a few things. What camera/how many megapixels you use. The type of photos you take. Just put 1 in your camera & it should show you how many average shots that you can take. Remember, it's just an estimate. I usually get more than what it starts out with. I'm guessing that you will be fine unless you take a crazy number of shots.

[gturner]

Hi what camera are you using, and do you need to cover the entire party as the solo photag or is it just for snaps.

My 1st reaction is that it will not be close to enough if you are there as the event photographer.

[jdepould]

My initial reaction is no, that won't be enough memory, but it does depend on the camera.

[Doug Sundseth]

I do most of my shooting on 4GB cards. My camera (a Nikon D7000, 16.2 MPx sensor) thinks that is enough for 111 shots in RAW. (My experience is that the real number is closer to 140, but it varies depending on subject.)

I know that I can fairly easily shoot that many in an hour if I'm standing in front of interesting stuff. How interesting are your friends?

(OTOH, if I switch to small basic JPG, my camera thinks I can get about 4,000 shots on a single card, and I can guarantee that my friends, at least, aren't that interesting.)

As an aside, if you're shooting with very small cards, make sure that you have your camera set to stop shooting if there's no space. (That's not the default on Nikons, IME.) It would be unpleasant to lose many shots because you ran out of memory on a card and didn't notice.

[Crabs]

I would say that you need more, buy at least 1 more 4 gig card. There is nothing worse than looking down and your captures left number is flashing and knowing that you are on your last card.

[JeannieK]

Thanks. I am using a canon 400D. The reason why want to shoot in RAW is because the party will be outside under a thatch roof and there are a lot of street lamps lighting the venue so my lighting situation is a tricky one.

[Bruce A]

On my D90 Nikon the average raw FILE WAS ABOUT 10 MB. Taking 14 bit Raw on my D7000 they average about 18-19MB. Have a look at some of your raw files and check the size. Then do the math.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by JeannieK

Thanks. I am using a canon 400D. The reason why want to shoot in RAW is because the party will be outside under a thatch roof and there are a lot of street lamps lighting the venue so my lighting situation is a tricky one.

At 10MP that should get you a decent number of images per card--my 12MP (14-bit raw capture) Nikons show 38 with a 1GB card, which is probably a touch on the conservative side. At 12-bit they show 50. If it were me, I'd probably get at least one 4GB card. My two primary cards right now are 8GB (302 images), and I have three 4GB as my second tier option. I have a bunch of 1 and 2 GB cards that I keep as backups from when I was using a D200.

[OsmosisStudios]

*never leaves the house with less than 16GB spread across 4 cards*
/enough for 1000 photos on RAW