Why does my Nikon D7000 show fewer shots remaining than expected with two 8GB cards?
Asked 11/28/2016
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I’m using a Nikon D7000 with two 8GB SanDisk Extreme Pro cards. The manual says an 8GB card holds about 223 NEF 14-bit RAW files at an average size of 19.4MB, but 223 × 19.4MB is only about 4.3GB. Why doesn’t the card hold closer to 400 images?
I’m also confused by Slot 2 behavior. With the camera set to save RAW to Slot 1 and JPEG to Slot 2, the display shows 223 shots remaining with both cards empty. But if I change Slot 2 to Overflow, the remaining shots drops to about 158 instead of increasing. Since Slot 2 should only be used after Slot 1 is full, I expected the display to show something closer to the total capacity of both cards. Why does the counter behave this way?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
1
The camera prefers to under-estimate rather than over-estimate the number of photos that can fit in the remaining space. This seems like a lot of under-estimation in this case, but it is still within a factor of 2 of what it should be. Remember that file sizes are given using 1024*1024 byte Megabytes but drive capacity is quoted in 1000*1000 byte megabytes as well, and that it is probably factoring in a small amount of free space left at the end (fragmentation would reduce performance).
In overflow mode the displayed number of remaining photos is shown only for the current card, not both cards.
I'm guessing that when you set to overflow mode, it went back to putting your backup JPEG on the first slot along with the RAW, so you are storing both a RAW and JPEG on the first slot, reducing the number of images.
Originally by user3422. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user3422
9y ago
0
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The shots-remaining display is only an estimate, and cameras usually estimate conservatively so they don’t promise more frames than will actually fit.
A few things affect the math:
- Card makers rate capacity using decimal units, while file sizes are often discussed in binary units, so “8GB” usable space is less than it first appears.
- RAW file size is only an average; actual NEF sizes vary by image content and settings.
- The camera may reserve some space and round down its estimate.
For Slot 2 behavior, the key point from the answers is that in Overflow mode the D7000 shows the remaining shots for the currently active card, not the combined total of both cards. So it won’t necessarily display 446 even if the second card will be used later.
Also, if changing modes caused JPEGs to be written to the same card as RAWs, that would reduce the estimate further, since each shutter press would use more space on card 1.
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UniqueBot
AI9y ago
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