Camera Question

First of all what model camera are you talking about?

If 8mp is the highest resolution the camera can produce then of course that will give the most detailed picture.

But I think with Sony compact digital cameras you get the choice of formats in a large, medium, small type of array. In your colleagues case she might well set the size to medium so whe will be able to take more pictures on whatever memory card she chooses.

For Sony cameras unfortunately the memory sticks are the most expensive of all . But if you colleague is going to be taking 2100+ pictures over the duration of her trip and she is not planning on taking a laptop to download the pictures to, then I think she is looking at 1gb. Or a low res setting and 512MB. But I guess if she got a scholarship then she will have money for that so go with 1gb.

I recommend the Sony Memory Stick Pro line for speed and quality, but if on a budget, the standard Sony sticks will do fine.

If it were me, going on a field trip, I would definitely take my laptop with me so I could review and store the pictures at the end of every day on a larger screen than the camera's LCD.

That way you could get away with a 256MB memory stick.

Hope some of this helps

FrancisQ

Do you want a good point-and-shoot or and SLR? That makes a big difference

With mild compression, my Kodak 3.2 Mpixel camera uses about 1 Mbyte per shot. That's about 1000 pix per GigaByte card. There's probably a chart in the Camera's Manual that details the storage requirements of her camera.

oh sorry i misread your post

1. more megapixels don't make the image more detailed, it just makes them larger. the advantage to this is you can print bigger pictures, and you can crop smaller portions of the picture and still print it out at a good size. i don't know a 'good resolution', though

2. http://www.crucial.com/library/how_many_pictures.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...e/onthego.mspx

3. www.dealram.com
find out if her camera utilizes high speed memory cards. if it can, the faster ones (like 40x) will store the pictures more quickly. most can't, though, so the cheaper ones are just as good for them.

If she has a fullbright scholarship then tell her to lay down some of that filthy knicker on a 1gb card and she'll be all set to go

Ask her what the damn camera is!

Your question is like, how long is a piece of string.

I just bought a sony dsc v3 after long research, for an aerial photographybusiness. This is a compact, 7mp, high quality jpegs about 300 on a 1 gb compact flash card. It is dual format, so you can use memorystick pro or compact flash 1. Don't buy mspro, it is overpriced with no real gain over compact flash.
She should leave it on full res all the time, unless she is taking a test shot or simple reference/layout shot. Don't use RAW/TIFF unless you know how to edit them.
You said excavation? I am an Archaeologist in Ireland and have done quite a bit of shooting, aerial and ground work.

Any further questions you can buzz me, but do so with proper camera specs.

Chin-Chin

Also, the question has to be asked (sorry couldn't hold back) are you sleeping with her yet?

The only 8MP Sony camera is the F828, which also accepts compactflash cards.
A 1 gig card will store about 200 photos at full resolution; unless she shoots in RAW mode, which gives uncompressed images around 20-30MB in size.
I'd advise a 1GB Lexar or Sandisk CF card; they're around USD$80-100. It's always a good idea to have a backup card as well. The CF cards are a LOT cheaper than memory sticks.

I think your RAW file size might be a little high. My EOS 20D (8 mp) takes 7-9mb RAW files. Although of course the Sony may use different methods.

8MP seems too large unless she's doing some poster-sized prints. I would say she needs to set it on medium JPG compression and use a size of more like 5+ MPixels. Then with a 1024MB card she should be able to dump the images every few days onto the laptop. I would say for maximum security (you can't go back if you lose the images) she should backup the images to CD or DVD.

For the non-tech savvy teacher, I really think she should just take 100 pix at home for several days and learn all about the camera beforehand. Practice practice, so that it will be smooth in the field.

The only thing the Sony Memorystick provides in the 828 over compact flash cards is fast save tim es for burst mode.