What’s Your Total Memory Capacity?

What is your total memory capacity if you were to add up all the memory cards you use? I threw this question out on Twitter today as I was going through some of the photos I took at a recent wedding up in Whistler. I ask because I have been wondering if what I have would be enough to ensure I don’t run out of room while shooting a wedding entirely.

What do I have?

I have a total of 56GB of memory for my cameras. In Compact Flash (CF) memory I have 2x 16GB SanDisk Extreme and one 8GB Lexar Professional. With SecureDigital (SDHC actually) I have currently one 16GB card, the other SDHC cards I have had are dead.

Now 56GB worth of memory may seem like a lot to most people, but depending on your camera’s MegaPixel rating it might not be very much. On my Canon 7D (at 18MP) I get roughly 22MB per RAW photo. This can typically translate to 1250 photos with the 3 CF Cards I own. There has been a time where throughout shooting (think it was Ice Hockey) I had to switch from RAW to JPEG as I was running out of room fast, though I think I only had 1 card back then. On my Canon XSi (12MP) I can get easily 900 photos in RAW with a single 16GB card, I can’t tell how many in JPEG I would be able to get because the counter only goes to 999, but it would be a lot more.

Some responses from Twitter:

• @jrphotographybc – 64 gigs, in 2gb or 4gb cards, and 1 8gb at random, all in CF’s. Now starting on SDHC’s have two 4′s and an 8…
• @jakogb – About 50. Getting a few more soon though.
• @cylerparent – I have 32Gb, although I only use that much when I’m shooting a wedding.
• @ReubenKrabbe – 24 although i’m dumping after each shoot so i’m not even near filling them

Some people might go out and buy the largest memory cards they can, which I do believe CF cards are at 64GB as are SDHC cards (currently available to consumers). Though you will hear the saying “Don’t put all you eggs into one basket“ when the cards are this size and become larger. Imagine you’ve been photographing a wedding for about 9 hours and all of a sudden you get an “ERROR” message on your camera while you try and take a photo? If you had a large card and were filling it up, all those other photos you previously took might be lost (assume you have lost them, don’t rely on recovery software to get them back). Now if you had a bunch of smaller cards, like 4GB cards and rotating them throughout the wedding, the chance of losing significant amounts of photos due to either camera malfunction or memory card read/write errors will be a lot smaller. Even at 16GB I’m pushing the envelope, as a 16GB card allows me to shoot 500 images before becoming full.

Granted the larger memory cards I am sure are more geared towards the HD Video capable cameras and digital video cameras out on today’s market; the larger the size card, the longer you can record, or so the theory goes.

Now if I could only find a good deal on Compact Flash cards in the 4GB or 8GB range that were of the 400x speed (like the SanDisk Extreme), I would look at picking up a couple additional cards. The more space the better right? It’s not like I can whip out the laptop, download images from a card and keep on shooting, well not for a wedding really.

So my question to you is, What is the Total Memory Capacity of all your cards for your camera(s)? I’d like to hear from anyone with a digital camera, be it a professional photog, or someone with a point and shoot.