I own a consumer digital SLR, a Canon Eos Rebel XT, which, when I bought it, came with a 256MB CompactFlash card. It holds about 70 photos for this camera, which seemed like an OK amount at the time, as I figured an old 35mm roll of film used to have 36 exposures, and this was about double. But I decided I’d buy a second 256MB card, so I could shoot 140 shots, give-or-take, and I’d be fine.
Funny thing about storage memory though… it’s never enough. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, my first computer had a 5MB hard drive and when I upgraded to 10MB, I didn’t know what to do with all that extra space. But then I ran out of disk space… And then I went to 20MB and was the envy of all my workmates. And so on and so on. And now a 1TB external backup drive isn’t enough and the 500GB backup at work isn’t enough… you know how it goes.
Well, the same thing here. 140 shots should be enough, right? Who’d need more, besides a professional photographer? That seemed right, until I went on my first vacation road trip and realized I could shoot 140 shots in a day or two. So I ended up downloading photos off those cards every night for those ten days. And I vowed to buy a bigger CF card when I got back home. Now, at the time I bought the camera, about four years ago, a 256MB CF card cost about $80. And when I went to buy now, lo and behold, the price of storage memory had dropped (it always does!). So I was able to now buy a Kingston 8GB Ultimate 133X CF memory card for $129 — with a $50 rebate, making it cost less than the old 256MB card I’d bought a few years earlier. (You can actually get an 8GB CF card for much less, but I wanted the highest speed card I could reasonably afford, so I went with the 133X version.) And then I got it in the mail, not really thinking about how many shots it would hold… but then I did the math when I popped it in the camera… and it holds a stunning 2240 shots! I hadn’t even thought about that when I’d bought it!
Of course, I’d be stupid to shoot that many photos on that card without backing up before I ever got near the limit — what if something happened to that card? — I wouldn’t want to lose 2000 shots or more… so I’m back to backing up after a few hundreds shots or so… but it’s nice to know I could go absolutely way crazy shooting one day and would never run out of storage! So if you see a lunatic in Hollywood on some set, who’s just shooting and shooting away with his still camera, it’s probably me — with his brand new monster CF card!
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