bbrowner Loc: Chapel Hill, NC

For those who have taken a 7-day Alaska cruise...

What total SD card total capacity would you recommend?

I know there are many variables that I can't answer. And, of course, each person shoots differently. I would say that I'll take a lot of pictures. (This being a first time there... I don't really know)

I already have a 16G and an 8G. (I loaned my daughter another 8G for her Africa trip on Sat.)

Thanks for your input.

Barry

Bob Smith Loc: Banjarmasin

Did this last year two 32 gig very close to filled, Camera was a Fuji XT1 take as much as you can.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

That might do me for a day or two depending on what I was in front of. (RAW +JPEG)
My arsenal is a waterproof card case with five 16s, and three 8s, with an 8 in the camera and two more 8s in the bag.
(I had to get a few extra 16s because they are getting harder to find, and I don't think my eight year old camera will take 32 and up.)
I'd really hate to run out of memory on a trip like that.
I sometimes fill an 8Gb card in one day when at Acadia.

ChuckMc Loc: Prescott, AZ

Barry - I can only answer for myself. When in the Mediterranean, for 7 days, I'd need at a minimum, two 32GB cards. Each night, I'd copy A to B. You don't want a single point of failure. For an Alaskan trip of 7 days, not having take that cruise, I would envision only nature shots and 16GB might be sufficient. On our upcoming EU trip, I'm going to have a 64GB in the camera, and two 256GB backups, but again, my timeline is much longer than yours and, I envision that my opportunities per day will be much greater in number than yours and I will be shooting large-format, RAW. So in summary, the answer is "it depends".
A side note, the cost of the SD cards is much lower these days and is heavily influenced by not only the size, but the R/W speed. I just purchased 2 SanDisk Class 10, 80MB/sec, 64 GB SD cards for $21.79/ea from Amazon. Those will be my in-the-camera cards. Others may note that there are faster cards, but these will work for me. I don't expect to take much, if any, video, and do not tend to use continuous action.
Sigh, another note: You may want continuous action if you see several otters cavorting.
Enjoy your trip.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Depends on how big your images are and how many photos you plan on taking / day. My body has 2 SD slots and 2 x 64gb gives me about 1.1k pics. Last Alaskan cruise, I took about 100 to 200 pics / day (took a lot of pics whale watching). I had 6 64gb SD cards with me, or enough for about 3.3k images, and had plenty of room, but better to have more than you need.

ChuckMc Loc: Prescott, AZ

Oh BTW: You must take containers that will protect your cards that are not in the camera.

ChuckMc Loc: Prescott, AZ

Finally (we hope): Since I do not know your technical expertise, let me clarify that to transfer data from one card to another I have a tablet, could use a smart phone, and use the OTG USB port and attach a USB hub. I then have USB SD card readers that I place in the hub and effect the transfer from card A to Card B.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Enough to fill a container as tall as a short piece of string. You know, about so.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

We did an 8-day cruise and I pretty much filled up 3 16GB cards, and had some photos on an 8 GB card. I was doing some burst shooting of wildlife - whales, sea otters, eagles, etc., which accounts for the number of shots taken, which was probably over 2,500. It depends on whether you shoot JPG or RAW, of course.

Alki7000 Loc: Lacey, Wa

As others have said, it depends on what you shoot and how you shoot. I have taken two Alaska cruises and each time I took about 2,000 photo. A lot of that were burst photos of wildlife. Depending on the size of files your camera creates, you will need to determine if you have sufficient storage.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Only you can really answer that question. I can do it with 3 32 gb cards and a couple of 256 gb memory sticks to write the cards files to every night (using a RavPower WD-03). A good friend of mine will need 20 cards. I have a D800 and a D810 which make raw files that are around 45-50 mb each.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Okay, a long piece of string.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

Take more than you think you will need and then add a couple 16gb cards.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

[quote=Retired CPO]Take more than you think you will need and then add a couple 16gb cards. Alaska is not as primitive as a lot of people think. You can buy cards there.

btbg

Depends on whether or not you shoot raw or jpeg and whether or not you intend to shoot any bracketed images for hdr photography.

One 16GB card would be plenty for my wife shooting jpeg, but her camera shoots a relatively small file size.

I have two 128GB compact flash cards, six 32GB compact flash cards 8 16gb compact flash cards. Two 128GB xqd cards, four 64GB sd cards, 12 32GB sd cards and several old 16GB cards both compact flash and sd and I would probably fill all of them shooting raw on that kind of trip unless I also carried my laptop and a portable hard drive.

Your cards wouldn't last me the first day, but if you are shooting jpeg and not bracketing anything if your camera takes 8megapixel or smaller photos what you have might be enough. For example an 8-megapixel photo in jpeg format has a file size of approximately 2MB, so you can save over 8000 photos of this file type to your memory card. The same photo, in RAW12 format, is 12MB and fewer than 1500 photos will fit on your memory card. If you lower the image quality in megapixels, you can save more photos to your memory card regardless of format. In RAW 14 or 16 you will get even fewer photos.