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Digital Photography
Have you ever wondered how many pictures your camera's memory card can hold? Here's a Tactical Panda Rough Guide - all capacities state the approximate number of photos you can store with your camera in high resolution JPEG mode without compression.
| Camera Resolution | 32Mb | 64Mb | 128Mb | 256Mb | 512Mb | 1Gb | 2Gb |
| 2 million pixels | 35 | 70 | 141 | 281 | 563 | 1,125 | 2,255 |
| 3 million pixels | 21 | 43 | 85 | 171 | 341 | 683 | 1,367 |
| 4 million pixels | 16 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 256 | 512 | 1,024 |
| 5 million pixels | 13 | 26 | 51 | 102 | 205 | 410 | 820 |
| 6 million pixels | 10 | 20 | 40 | 80 | 160 | 320 | 640 |
| 7 million pixels | 9 | 18 | 36 | 71 | 142 | 284 | 569 |
| 8 million pixels | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 256 | 512 |
There are two main types of card available for your camera, the SD and XD cards. There are others (such as the Sony card), but these are the two most popular. Check you the camera before you get a new one! Most new cameras arrive with only 32Mb of memory on the card so you are most likely looking to upgrade.
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| SD Card | XD Card |
Putting it on the computer...
| There are two usual ways that photographs can be put onto your computer, one is via the XD or SD card (shown above) using a Card Reader, which you can obtain from retailers or online. Basically, a card reader has a USB port at one end, and one or more 'slots' in the other where the SD or XD card is inserted.
Once the new hardware (the card reader) has been initially recognised by Windows, then every time the reader is placed into a USB port a window will open up asking you what you want to do with it! Naturally, you want to save the photographs to your computer's hard-drive, and to do this you will have to open the various folders on the SD or XD card. |  |
Step 1: Attach/insert the card reader (with your card inserted) into an empty USB port (doesn't matter which one).
| Step 2: The folder window looks something like the one shown here, click on the line saying 'Open folder to view...'. This will take you further 'inside' the card where you are then (usually) met by two more folders. |  |
| Step 3: The window now looks something like this one. Click on the folder called 'DCIM'. This will take you even further 'inside' the card where you are then met by yet another folder! |  |
| Step 4: Finally, you will see one more folder which has an odd looking name, usually a code like '101SSCAM' or something like that. This is where your photographs are actually stored, click on this folder and... there are your photos! |  |
All you have to do now is select which ones you want to save onto your computer. To do this select the photo by clicking on it once so that it is highlighted. Now you can select more photos by holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard at the same time as you click once on each photo. You will notice that every time you click on a photo, it too is highlighted.
If you change your mind, you can de-select a photo by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the photo again. If you want to save all the photos, the easy way to select them all is to hold down the Ctrl key and press the 'a' key on your keyboard (Ctrl+A). This will select all the items on the page.
Now you can either (a) right-click on any of the selected photos and choose 'Copy' from the menu that will appear, then open your 'My Pictures' folder (XP) or 'Pictures' (Vista/Windows 7), right-click in a space and select 'Paste' from the menu. All your photos will copy from the card to your folder!
Option (b) is to select your photos as before, but this time select 'Copy this file' from the menu on the left-hand side of the window - it's in the second block under 'File and Folder Tasks'. A small window will now open up and you can choose where you want the photos to be copied to. The usual location is 'My Documents' - 'My Pictures'.
Using a cable...
That's one way of doing it. The other is to use the USB cable that may have come with the camera. One end of the lead will have a small connector which goes into a slot in the camera, the other end will have a standard USB port fitting. Connect the cable to the camera, then the other end into a free USB port on your PC and off you go in a similar fashion to the way described above.