Media cards and opening housings

how much storage do you use in media cards? i'm going on a liveaboard trip soon, and need to get a new card. i try to limit the number of times that i open my housing to take out the card, so is 4gb enough? 8? what do you use?

oh by the way, i shoot a canon 5d in raw+jpeg mode.

I use 8GB. Usually lasts me more than a day (d2x raw)

Cor

Do the calculations. Work out how much space one photograph takes. Estimate how many photographs you will take per dive. You can then work out how many dives each card will last.

I know with my D300 I was just over half filling a 4GB card on a single dive shooting raw+jpeg. I now have an 8GB card so I could probably last 3, maybe 4, dives. For the calculations: The raws are between 10 and 15MB and the jpegs are between 3 and 5MB. Worst case, 20MB per photo, so I can get 400 on a 8GB card. With 80-120 photos per dive, that's 3-4 dives.

Some other things to consider: Will you be using the same lens for all dives? If you are going to change the lens, you may as well change the memory card and the battery. What is your battery life like?

One thing that is always in the back of my mind on a liveaboard is a housing flood. That would be devastating, but if I change the memory card after each dive I will at least have the photos from all the dives prior to the flood.

Hi,

I use a 16Gb card that no matter how many photos I take during the day I always erase it in the evenings. I shoot only RAW and the card is 30% full after 4 dives.

Having such a high capacity card the risk is to get complacent and lazy in downloading the photos, but after I've lost a camera in the past with 3 days photos in it, I've learnt the lesson.

I've always been against having high capacity cards, but with new cameras and resolutions, it gives me the option of changing to RAW+JPEG any time if I want to.

alex

I have 2 8Gb cards and and typically swap them once per day.

This leaves the housing open only long enough to change battery and card.

No fogging and less chance of a flood since I typically am more fresh in the AM than between dives.

I don't change the lens that often.

I use 8gb cards because they last about the same length of time as my battery (Nikon D200). So, I can change them at the same time. This usually lasts up to 4 dives, `400 images in RAW+jpeg. I do change lenses at times, but only have to open the front port on my Aquatica housing, the camera stays in place. Now if my strobe batteries (Ikelite DS-125's) could last the same amount of time, then my entire day could be dedicated to taking images and no camera changes

Kathryn

It sounds like most people are using 8 Gb cards. I also use two 8Gb cards and swap them daily.

Shane

ok, what brand cards do you use ... san disk extreme III? lexar professional? i'm looking at these two and one is about $100 more. what do you get for more money?

I bought a 16GB card to go with my D300, the housing of which shipped yesterday. I strongly prefer to leave my camera housed and crack it open only at the end of the day. Frankly, I'm too lazy to transfer my cards more than once a day, and "swapping" the cards is a pain because its easy for me to forget if I did the transfer and I don't wish to bother with a 'system' to help me remember. So, in short, if its dark and I'm going to dinner, I put the card into the pictureporter, and when I come back I clear the card in camera and I'm ready to go for day 2.

Matt, I'm using an 8GB SDHC Class 6 made by ATP. It screams past my 4GB 150x SD Transcend. RAW write speeds aren't an issue. The difference between the two cards is so profound that it is really amazing!

Sorry, I haven't tried San Disk or Lexar yet, but the San Disk IV looks promising.

I just bought two 8Gb Scan Disk iExtreme IV at 40 Mb/sec (300x) rate but they were $220/each.

I just bought two 8Gb Scan Disk iExtreme IV at 40 Mb/sec (300x) rate but they were $220/each.

i just bought 2 extreme iii's 8 gb

somebody needs to invent a camera or housing that can wirelessly transfer data (bluetooth or something like that) so that you can get the images off your card w/out having to physically take it out of the housing.