Archive 2017 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

StarNut
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

HI,

We're going to Africe for almost three weeks later this year.

How many photos might I expect to take (I can translate that into how much memory I'll need, with my cameras)? I would rather have too many cards than too few, obviously, but I have no idea what to expect.

Thanks.

Mark

Jun 19, 2017 at 12:22 PM

Bobg657
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

If all three weeks will be on safari, and this is your first time there so you'll shoot everything that moves, I'd assume around 500 shots per day. You can calculate how many cards based on that as a starting point. YMMV of course.

You also want to be sure to backup images somehow, while card failures are rare they do happen, usually at the worst time!

Be prepard to go back again, it is addictive!
Bob

Jun 19, 2017 at 02:53 PM

Genes Home
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

Depends on the type of trip, your shooting style, and your backup strategy. If not doing backups to an SSD or portable hard drive I'd say Bobg657 hit the minimum number you should plan on. If shooting movies, plan on 30 minutes a day, minimum, plus your still work. If your camera has a high speed shooting mode and you will be shooting birds as well as wildlife, I would say to double that. I always figure on 1,000 plus, split between my main and backup camera. I carry enough camcorder memory for an hour a day (though I rarely hit that total). If you are on a "tourist" trip, visiting multiple places and spending lots of dead time in planes, buses, and cars traveling between your destination points you may be lucky to take 200-300 shots a day, but shoot lots of camcorder time (e.g., a travelog). An actual photo workshop or photo safari where you spend lots of time in only a few locations will up your still shooting rate big time while reducing your video time. If you have a backup device (laptop/SSD/HDD) you can reduce the memory you have with you to a 3-4 day supply - as long as you backup daily.

Jun 19, 2017 at 03:05 PM

StarNut
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

We're on a normal tourist safari, going to four or five sites over three weeks, plus a trip to Victoria Falls. Perhaps it would be useful for us to try to get a sense from our hosts how much time we'll be watching critters.

My tendency is to feel that film is cheap, and if my biggest problem is that i take a lot, that's not a bad problem. OTOH, if I miss shots because I'm short of memory and conserving, that is a bad thing.

I suspect 500 shots/day is a fair guess; I plan to have a large external hard drive, and my laptop, so that I can back up each night.

Jun 20, 2017 at 11:00 AM

mpoole
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · How many card (how much memory) for an Africa trip?

On my first trip to Tanzania, I filled 4 x 32GB cards shooting raw at 25mb per shot. We were shooting 6 days.

Jun 20, 2017 at 01:50 PM


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