Nikon D70S - How many photos!!
Discussion
Hi all,
Bought my first SLR today, a Nikon D70S and put an 8gb card in. Now the number of exposures remaining is apparently 4.4k, is this right? Seems very high to me.
First impressions of the camera are awesome. I didn't want anything too fancy to begin with and it already has way too many settings that I don't understand, but really looking forward to putting it through its paces.
Bought my first SLR today, a Nikon D70S and put an 8gb card in. Now the number of exposures remaining is apparently 4.4k, is this right? Seems very high to me.
First impressions of the camera are awesome. I didn't want anything too fancy to begin with and it already has way too many settings that I don't understand, but really looking forward to putting it through its paces.
ali4390 said:
Bought my first SLR today, a Nikon D70S and put an 8gb card in. Now the number of exposures remaining is apparently 4.4k, is this right? Seems very high to me.
That's 1.8Mb each so I deduce you have it in JPG Medium mode...Set it to RAW and see it go down to about 1,350.
NB: If you have a manual for the camera it is good idea to read it

ETA Damn that Carter fellow...
ali4390 said:
I did read the manual but I was still confused as to how there could be that many. The memory card case said 800 odd photos so I thought it would be around that figure.
8Gb/800 = 10Mb per photo.From a 6Mp sensor a RAW file is about 6Mb and a Large Fine JPG about 2.7Mb. So if you shot RAW+Large Fine JPG you'd be up to 8.7Mb per shot, fairly close. But a maker of cards can't tell you how many photos you will get on it because they don't know what resolution/format you're shooting in.
Put it this way - with 8Gb to play with you have no problems! I took 3,500 photos in a month in NZ (mostly JPG but some RAW) and it only came to 11Gb. Enjoy your camera

ali4390 said:
Okay now when I've taken a photo and am viewing through the playback screen, any bright areas are flashing black! And ideas why? Hoping it's not broken already.
Guessing this is the same as on Canon - the flashing areas are 'clipped to white'...This means the camera wasn't able to record data for that area as it was too bright compared to the rest of the image - this is normal

If you find you want to expose for those areas and get more detail then you will need to reduce the overall exposure of the photo.
One easy way to do this is to use the cameras 'exposure compensation' - reducing it will make the camera deliberately 'underexpose' its normal guess, and hence it'll manage to get more detail from these bright areas.
(Worth bearing in mind that the camera may flash very dark areas of the photo as well, this is the same situation but reversed: it wasn't able to get info for a dark area and it has 'clipped to black'. Increasing the exposure will help...)
GetCarter said:
ali4390 said:
Okay now when I've taken a photo and am viewing through the playback screen, any bright areas are flashing black! And ideas why? Hoping it's not broken already.
Bright areas flashing mean you need to read the manual. HTH 

Flashing on screen usually means you are over-exposing yourself. Be careful.

Do you have a manual for your new camera?
Think Nikon (rather handily) have it as a download - http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_i...
Think Nikon (rather handily) have it as a download - http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_i...
Yeah I've got a manual, just didn't know what I was looking for in it and could only find a mention of there sometimes being a flashing where the brightest bit of the picture was but not giving a reason why.
It wasn't doing the flashing originally, it started after I took a particular photo and then older photos started doing it as well. I had the camera on auto so assumed it was sorting the exposure out for me?
Looks like I've got a lot to learn
It wasn't doing the flashing originally, it started after I took a particular photo and then older photos started doing it as well. I had the camera on auto so assumed it was sorting the exposure out for me?
Looks like I've got a lot to learn

ali4390 said:
I had the camera on auto so assumed it was sorting the exposure out for me?
It was
but the 'dynamic range' of what a camera can capture isn't as great as the human eye (and brain). So it has to make a judgement and take a guess as the best exposure...E.g. If you were taking a picture of a friend in front of a sunset then you may be able to squint your eyes a little and see both the sky and your friends face....
...but the camera won't be able to do that, if it 'exposes' for the figure of your friend then it'll 'blow out' the sky - turning it blank white (and it'll flash on the back of your camera).
Keep in mind that all cameras make these same decisions, having a SLR gives you more control over their 'thinking' and more tools to identify problems and make creative decisions

You can set it so you don't see the flashing. I think when you are viewing pics you use the toggle one way to scroll through images and the other way (so either up/down or left/right) to see the pic, some sort of luminence graph, the flashing and something else.
I have not used mine for a while so the battery is dead otherwise I'd give you better instructions.
I have not used mine for a while so the battery is dead otherwise I'd give you better instructions.
Actually, you'd think, wouldn't you, that it would be possible to point a 21st century DSLR packed full of electronics and state of the art acronyms at a scene and expect it to get the exposure right...
Nope!
Recalling my first experiments with a D70 it was very shy of highlights and would, in an attempt to keep them on the scale, massively underexpose everything else (the bits you wanted). So you have to step in and grab it by the scruff of the neck and see what it's doing and make adjustments. Can't be more specific than that here as there are many ways to do it depending on where you're starting from.
The blinking display is just showing you which areas are burnt out, ie white. It's very useful. Sometimes of course you want parts to be like that, so it's not always bad.
Nope!
Recalling my first experiments with a D70 it was very shy of highlights and would, in an attempt to keep them on the scale, massively underexpose everything else (the bits you wanted). So you have to step in and grab it by the scruff of the neck and see what it's doing and make adjustments. Can't be more specific than that here as there are many ways to do it depending on where you're starting from.
The blinking display is just showing you which areas are burnt out, ie white. It's very useful. Sometimes of course you want parts to be like that, so it's not always bad.
Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff



