How many SD cards: I am preparing for a 3 week trip to Europe. It will include a 10-day river cruise (Basel to Amsterdam). Judging from my past experience, I will take between 500 and...

photog11 Loc: San Francisco

I am preparing for a 3 week trip to Europe. It will include a 10-day river cruise (Basel to Amsterdam). Judging from my past experience, I will take between 500 and 750 photos. I use a D750 which will allow up to 292 RAW, lossless, 14 bit compressed photos per 16GB sd card. My question is: Is it better to take more 16GB cards, thus minimizing loss of photos if a card is lost or malfunctions; or to take fewer but larger capacity cards?

Any advice out there?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

photog11 wrote:

I am preparing for a 3 week trip to Europe. It will include a 10-day river cruise (Basel to Amsterdam). Judging from my past experience, I will take between 500 and 750 photos. I use a D750 which will allow up to 292 RAW, lossless, 14 bit compressed photos per 16GB sd card. My question is: Is it better to take more 16GB cards, thus minimizing loss of photos if a card is lost or malfunctions; or to take fewer but larger capacity cards?

Any advice out there?

I think you've answered your own question. Though can one still buy 16GB SD Cards? My last few have been 32GB and 64GB. I agree I would not want to put all my images on one card for a major trip or project. I'd never want to come close to filling a 128GB or 256GB SD Card, too much to loose all at once.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

lamiaceae wrote:

I think you've answered your own question. Though can one still buy 16GB SD Cards? My last few have been 32GB and 64GB. I agree I would not want to put all my images on one card for a major trip or project. I'd never want to come close to filling a 128GB or 256GB SD Card, too much to loose all at once.

B&H is selling 16 gig cards for around $10 right now. I bought 2 recently. D7200 gets about 1000 per 16 gig card. I use a 32 gig as backup to the main card. Of course that is jpeg only but since the studio only requires jpeg it's all I shoot for them.

Lemon Drop Kid Loc: Greeley, CO

Use large capacity cards. And take with you at least enough more high capacity cards to hold twice the number of photos you intend to take. Actually,l you can never have too many cards with you on a trip to ward against card trouble, loss, or theft. Better still, or also, take some kind of small image vault with you and save each day's shooting on it. Keep all this with you at all times. Taking a 3-week tour of Europe is no time to skimp on SD card expense. Using the high capacity cards will mean less fuss about keeping track of cards.

1Feathercrest Loc: NEPA

The word for something you inadvertently have not kept, is "lose" pronounced "looze". The word "loose", pronounced "luce", (rhymes with "juice") means unfastened. Your shoelaces which are untied are "loose". You will"lose" your "loose" change if you have a hole in the pocket where you are carrying the "loose", now "lost" change which you did not take precaution to not "lose". This is grammar school stuff that you should know if you paid attention in grammar school. (Grammar school is, ostensibly, grades 1 through 8, if you are unaware of the meaning of "grammar school").

rplain1 Loc: Dayton, Oh.

And I would just try very, very hard not to lose my cards. Take all you want - they don't take up much room. I could easily fit 100 in my pocket.

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

1Feathercrest wrote:

The word for something you inadvertently have not ... (show quote)

Well now, wasn't that helpful...

IR Jim Loc: St. Louis

Losing photos is painful, no matter what size you decide on I would set SD slot 2 for backup RAW. I use 2x 64GB cards.

blue-ultra Loc: New Hampshire

IR Jim wrote:

Losing photos is painful, no matter what size you decide on I would set SD slot 2 for backup RAW. I use 2x 64GB cards.

photog11 Loc: San Francisco

Thanks to everyone for pitching in with advice and comments. I think I'll wind up taking 5 or 10 16 GB cards. Although I'm a grammar nazi myself (pet peeves: there, their, they're; its, it's; your, you're; lense :)), give Mike the benefit of the doubt. His finger might have lingered just a bit too long on the 'o' key.

IR Jim Loc: St. Louis

1Feathercrest wrote:

The word for something you inadvertently have not ... (show quote)

In your first sentence, move the comma after the word "kept" to after the word "lose".
In your third sentence, use "that" instead of "which" since the noun is followed by a restrictive clause. Unless you learned British English, then you can have a pass for that one.
In your fourth sentence you need a space after the word "will". On second thought, there are so many grammatical errors in this sentence I would suggest deleting it and trying again.
In your final sentence, move the period inside the closing parenthesis. This is done when a sentence is started with an open parenthesis.
You would know all this if you paid attention in grammar school.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I'd never put all/most of my images on one card. I don't trust Murphy.
I have three 16s and five 8s, which will allow me to store over 2,500 RAW+JPEGfine images.
If I needed more than 130 shots a day for three weeks I'd get more 16s. But at some point I'll be forced into 32s because of availability, if these ever go bad.

dieseldave Loc: Davenport,IA

1Feathercrest wrote:

The word for something you inadvertently have not ... (show quote)

Unless by using loose when you mean that as you review the individual pictures you delete the bad shots ,cutting them loose. This would free a significant amount of space (depending, of course, on how many shots are lost). Then save them to a disk for editing, and another external hard drive for a back up. You can then upload the final photos to a cloud and be assured that you will never be called a loser again.

Regarding your ostensible definition of Grammer school:Your use of ostensibly, would be correct, ostensibly meaning "apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually", since the definiton for that particular school has several meanings.

1 : a secondary school emphasizing Latin and Greek in preparation for college

2 : a British college preparatory school

3: a school intermediate between primary school and high school

4: elementary school (this is apparently your declaimed usage. which is OK, I guess. ( Although it is the last definition in Merriam-Webster . . . ) ;>0

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

IR Jim wrote:

In your first sentence, move the comma after the w... (show quote)

👍👍 Well said (those in glass houses...). This member’s pedantic, rude and unsolicited critiques of the occasional grammatical error (often the result of an over enthusiastic spell checker rather than the poster’s misunderstanding of correct usage) have landed him on a number of ignore lists, including mine.

To return to the OP’s question, I would opt for more, smaller cards rather than one or two large ones. While unlikely, cards do occasionally fail, and better to lose a small portion rather than the entire record of the trip.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

photog11 wrote:

Thanks to everyone for pitching in with advice and comments. I think I'll wind up taking 5 or 10 16 GB cards. Although I'm a grammar nazi myself (pet peeves: there, their, they're; its, it's; your, you're; lense :)), give Mike the benefit of the doubt. His finger might have lingered just a bit too long on the 'o' key.

Much to learn here.
If you "wind up" and take five or ten cards, don't be a loser and keep them loose, unsecured in a bag--you might lose one, or all of them.