Newbie Photography Question

[Venusian Broon]

I'm not great on photography, but a good few years (almost a decade!) I purchased a Canon Powershot A560. It seems to have held up well tech-wise - 7.1 MP compared to my very recent Samsung android phone which is at 5 MP, and I'm assuming the camera's lens system is going to be better than the smaller phone one...

However I just have a 16 Mb data card for the camera and after some experimentation that's about 11 photos and it's full. For you photographers who know a lot more than me, does that sound right? I think the biggest data card I can get for the device is 32 Mb, which would double my limit - thus do I need large numbers of cards to pull in and out of the camera if I'm doing a big photo spree? (I also see that my Samsung smartphone as 4 Gb of storage on it - so am I right in assuming that more modern cameras have similar such bountiful memory and the ability to really store huge numbers of pictures?)

It's not too much of a problem at the moment, I thankfully have the wires that connect both the phone and the camera to my PC, so pictures that are taken can be instantly put on my hard-drive and free up the data cards on both again. Just a bit annoying if I see more than 11 interesting things to photograph right at this moment

 

[Zoe Mackay]

What format is it saving your pictures in?

Essentially, there are two options:
1. RAW - this records the information exactly as it hit the camera sensor, more or less. These are very large.
2. JPG - the camera does some post-processing, and this is a compressed format.

About 11 photos on 16 Mb sounds like RAW. There will be an option somewhere in the camera's menus to change the format, you should do this unless you particularly want RAW format. Set an appropriate level of quality (max = least compression, usually) and size (bigger = larger, but better quality) as it allows you to.

 

[Venusian Broon]

What format is it saving your pictures in?

Essentially, there are two options:
1. RAW - this records the information exactly as it hit the camera sensor, more or less. These are very large.
2. JPG - the camera does some post-processing, and this is a compressed format.

About 11 photos on 16 Mb sounds like RAW. There will be an option somewhere in the camera's menus to change the format, you should do this unless you particularly want RAW format. Set an appropriate level of quality (max = least compression, usually) and size (bigger = larger, but better quality) as it allows you to.

Thanks Robert - I couldn't find my original manual, so a quick look at the interweb and I found it on their website. Using what you've said above let me find what Canon let you do to change the photo quality. They have a range of pixel sizes for each shot (about 7 different levels, from Widescreen and A3 print size to email attachements) instead of RAW but the camera automatically seems to produces JPG's no matter what. For the highest compression system and smallest pixel sizes that gives me a memory of 138 photos! (I thought 11 was far too little )

I shall experiment to see what the smaller image sizes do - the big quality images are excellent for cropping and taking smaller parts.

Eventually I might get the hang of the photography malarky!

 

[Vertigo]

I'm a little surprised by your memory limits. I have a Canon that is about ten years old and I generally use an 8GB card in it which holds loads of images and I have it creating both raw and jpeg.

 

[Zoe Mackay]

Looking up the A650, it can cope with SDHC cards, so that's up to 32GB. You should get a larger card - they're pretty cheap - 32 GB for 11 quid ish?

 

[Venusian Broon]

I'm a little surprised by your memory limits. I have a Canon that is about ten years old and I generally use an 8GB card in it which holds loads of images and I have it creating both raw and jpeg.

I'm not sure what the 'Powershot A560' series role was intended to be (Nor do I remember why I bought it - I think I just had too much money at the time and just picked something at random!) It might be a basic entry-level 'fun and point and shot camera', rather than a more professional one.

I'm not sure, but I think I might be able to get a much bigger card for it if I researched it more - but at the moment my monetary priority is not on upgrading it. I will keep that in mind though Vertigo and put that down in my ever burgeoning wish list of things to buy...

 

[Zoe Mackay]

*sigh* Typo - the a560 can take SDHC cards.

 

[Venusian Broon]

*sigh* Typo - the a560 can take SDHC cards.

Actually that makes me wonder, I have a pile of old mobile phones, perhaps there's a spare SDHC card in one of them I can cannibalise and give to the camera. Well that's a project I can do if I want to time waste

 

[farntfar]

I don't believe that it can only take a 16Mb card.
I've just looked up this model on the Canon website and they try to sell you a 4Gb card from the A560 specification page.

MyMemory has cards up to 32Gb for this camera.

At 4Gb you'd have loads of space, even at the highest resolution, but I'd buy it at tesco's if I were you.

 

[Vertigo]

incidentally when looking at cards to buy you shouldn't need class 10 (the expensive ones) as they are fast for use with video cameras. For photography only, any of the SDHC classes will be fine.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Up to 4GByte an SD Card even will do.
You can use a Micro or Mini card in an adaptor.