Orca
Loc: Little Egg Harbor, NJ USA
Just tried my D5500 purchased about 4-5 months ago. I don't have a R button either. Here is how I see the info you are looking for.
Turn camera on and press the info button on the back (is where the R button might have been) and the screen shows battery power and 999 for remaining photo's on my empty 16GB memory card. Hope this works for you.
The number in [ ] on the Info screen is the number of pictures that can be written on the card for the current format (Raw, Fine, Norm, Basic, Raw+F, Raw+N,Raw+B). Change the format on the touch screen and the number will change. The file size is different for each of the 7 formats. In the viewfinder the [r03] is the buffer capacity, which also varies slightly based on the format.
Did you double check that you didn't accidentally switch to nef + jpg?
Does the number change after taking some pictures?
Based on the specks with the 32 gb card shooting jpg I believe it should read 1.8k, not 1k 800
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