How Many Pictures Can You Fit on a Flash Card

It's only natural - we buy regular film based on the number of exposures it will hold, so we expect to purchase "digital film" the same way. Unfortunately, it's difficult to predict exactly how many photos you will be able to fit on a flash card.

That's because the file size for one photo depends on a number of different factors:

• Resolution The higher the resolution, the bigger the file will be.
• Compression Your camera may give the option of choosing a compression format (e.g. JPEG or TIFF) or taking uncompressed photos. Uncompressed files are the largest, and compression formats vary in size.
• Colors RGB photos (format for viewing on a monitor) are three times as big as black and white photos, and CMYK photos (format for printing) are four times as big as black and white.
• Your camera model and the shooting conditions Each camera gives slightly different results, and you may even get a different number of photos per card depending on the subject you are shooting and the current light conditions.

Taking those factors into consideration, the chart below can give you some general guidelines for how many pictures average users can fit on various sizes of flash cards.