jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

Get 6 32gb cards- problem solved; you only want one bad big card, and you have a big problem; and more to the point, you might not be able to recover your shots !

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

Close to what I do Jerry, cards, USB drive and Toshiba Laptop, Bob.

cesar2

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

bgl Loc: Brooklyn,New York

why is there so much resistance to having your cake and eating it too? cards are NOW so cheap that economic considerations are minor. Why discourage someone that is buying a card or cards now from buying a large card in the 64 to 128 gig range? Is there a performance issue?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I only use smaller cards, and lots of them, calculated to hold around 250 to 500 images each, maximum. I avoid really large cards that would necessarily "put all my eggs in one basket".

How many images a card will hold depends upon whether you shoot RAW, JPEG or RAW+JPEG. I believe those Nikon models also give you choice of 12bit RAW or 14bit RAW, which will make a difference in the size of each image. If you shoot any video, that will consume a lot more space, too.

Download the manual for the D810... it probably gives you an estimate of how many images of different types can be recorded on a particular size card, which you can use as a basis for deciding what how many cards of what size to buy. It might also give you some guidance about card speeds and types needed for best camera performance.

But, you also can estimate based upon your present memory usage with your D7000. That's a 16MP camera. The D810 is 36MP, so assuming you use it the same way and shoot roughly the same number of images, you can expect to need 2.25X as much memory (36 divided by 16 = 2.25).

Personally I am now carrying thirteen 16GB CompactFlash (primary) and eight 32GB SD (backup/video) cards. Shooting RAW with 20 and 21MP cameras, this is enough memory to shoot and backup around 6000-7000 images during a hard day's work, if need be. (I've actually never shot more than about 4500-5000 images in a day, but rarely shoot less than 500, and probably average around 2000-2500 at a day's event).

I also have a whole bunch of older/slower 8GB CF cards (at least fifteen), that were used with earlier cameras with 15 to 18MP resolution.

Over about ten years shooting between digitally almost exclusively - 25,000 to 50,000 images a year - I've never lost a card (knock on wood).... But have had one or two get corrupted due to mishandling and had one fail completely (brand new, first time it was used).

Some observations and suggestions:

I use Pelican and similar card cases to manage my memory cards. These are "hard side", waterproof and I think even designed to float. The CF size cases accommodate four cards per case, while my SD card case can hold up to twelve cards. I usually wear a vest (a cheap fishing vest, actually) with several pockets to accommodate the card cases (among other things such as spare batteries, lens cleaning cloths, etc.). But, if need be one the hard side cases can safely be stuck in a back pocket of my pants.

Changing memory cards isn't a big deal... sometimes I have to swap out 8, 10 or more times a day. It only takes a few seconds to remove the full card, pop in a fresh one and format it (which I always do when I insert a card).

I simply store the fresh and ready to use cards face up in my card cases... and then put the full cards face down. Easy to remember and tell the difference at a glance.

I highly recommend using an indelible marker such as a fine-point Sharpie to write your name and means of contact (phone #, email or personal URL) on each card. I know more than a few people who have had lost cards returned to them. Also, those Nikon probably can be set up to record name and contact info in the EXIF of each image. Look for copyright/owner/author data fields that you can set up as you see fit.

Even without those, folks are pretty good about trying to return a lost memory card to it's owner. We had a case on another forum a few years ago: Someone found a card full of what appeared to be professionally shot wedding pics and posted about it on the forum. Unfortunately the card wasn't labelled and there wasn't any owner data in the image EXIF. But from some of the images someone on the forum recognized the church where the photos had been taken, so the person who found the card was able to contact the clergy to ask about weddings and photographers on the date the photos were taken.... Ultimately tracking down a photographer who was extremely happy to get back her hard work!

It would have been a lot faster and easier if that photographer had just written her name and contact info on the memory card! Or at least had the camera record their info in the EXIF. I bet she does that now!

Traveling you might want to save images a couple places... I use a laptop with two internal 1TB hard drives... one of which is only used for images. I also have an external drive I'll use as backup (my old 1TB external drive died... I just got a 3TB to replace it).

Just don't rely only on the laptop alone. A friend of mine had her's stolen while traveling in Europe and lost many years worth of images she had on it! There are any number of possible backups... external drives, thumb drives, extra memory cards, or periodic cloud storage uploads, for example. Use whatever works best for you.

It's all so much easier today digitally, than it ever was with film! A friend of mine was a staff photographer with the Associated Press and spent ten years traveling the world taking photos. Sounds like a dream job, but it's hard work, he caught most diseases known to man at one point or another, and since he was on staff AP owns the copyright of every photo he took while in their employ! To get his exposed film in for processing and editing, they often had couriers meet him in an airport or where ever he happened to be, to pick up the film and hand deliver it back to the AP photo lab and offices. There was no backup of any sort... And he might not know for weeks, months or years if his images were good or not, or even if any ever got published. He left that job decades ago, but still comes across his own images being used from time to time (now as stock photos). He's even occasionally had to buy usage of images that he made, since AP still owns or has sold off the copyright.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

I second Dr. Gallagher. 32gb cards are the largest I use. Yes, the cards have gotten much better, but I did have one in my D7100 crap out. Fortunately like him, I always do a second slot backup.

Of course that's not a FF, but test about 10 shots and then look at their size in Explorer. You can calculate the approximate number of shots that will fit. In any case, if one does go bad, you haven't lost everything. Buy a card bank from Adorama or wherever. It will hold 10-15 cards.

MrT Loc: Gilbert, AZ

I have my D800 set for 14 bit lossless compression and on a 32GB card I get 399 frames in the LCD. I normally get more but... I bought a 64GB CF and SD card when I bought the 800. I have not filled both but at the airshow I did fill the CF and move to the SD card. In the D800 I use the 64s unless I run out of room then the 32s from th D7000 and then the 16s I got originally for the D7000. I reformat after every download and have never had a card failure - I only use Lexar or San Disk.

Separately, If you have CF cards why are you not loading them first? They are in general so much faster writing than SD. I used cameramemoryspeed.com (or some combo of that) and CF cards are significantly faster I can tell when it rolls over and I got the highest rated at the time. Have a great trip and take every card you have available.