alex

I have decided to buy a canon powershot a40. From reading through all the posts it seems to be a decent camera and I am going to get a charger, converter, spare batteries (1800) and 256 mb compact flash memory card. <BR><BR>Question: I might even get 2 256 mb cards or 1 512 mb card. How many pictures will these cards hold assuming i use 1600x1200 for printing regular 3/5 or 4/6 pictures. I want to print out all my pictures at the end (or maybed during) the trip.<BR><BR>If the flash card is not plugged into the camera how long can the pictures stay on it without erasing? <BR><BR>Is 2mb pixel enough for regular snapshots?

just

Do you think this might work better if you posted on a camera site?<BR>Or ask the man at the camera store?

rar

www.dpreview.com <BR><BR>the place to go for digital camera stuff

jules

Alex:<BR>In JPG format as used by your Canon, a 1600x1200 pixel picture (2 mio pix) takes up anywhere from 1 to 2 MB, depending on the intricacy of the picture. You can use 1.5 MB on average as a guideline, that's 171 on a 256 MB card.<BR>I find 2 mio pix sufficient, but that's a subjective notion, as witnessed by numerous threads on that issue.<BR>Flash memory cards are nonvolatile memory, so in principle the data stays forever, powered or not.

Gary

Get a digital walet, it is a portable hard drive. You can download from your flashcard. Wallets now are available that have 5G and up memory. 5G will hold about 5000 pictures cost is not much more than a couple of flash cards.

Greg

Alex,<BR><BR>You may need to consider a device to steady your shots. I used the Canon S300 on my trip and found the lower resolution shots worked better, 640 x 480. Also, printing is best done by a photo shop. They have the technology to print the pictures with consistencey.<BR><BR>Just some more to think about. Have a good trip.<BR><BR>Greg<BR>

xxx

Go for the highest resolution (in mega pixels) you can afford, since this will allow the best enlargements of the whole or part of a picture. <BR><BR>Do you need spare batteries? We charge ours up before a vacation and they last several days of heavy use - if you can charge them overnight I think you should be fine.

Tim

Alex,<BR><BR>Don't know about Canon &quot;a40.&quot; Canon has &quot;S-40&quot; and &quot;A-20.&quot; <BR><BR>You said &quot;2 mb pixel,&quot; so you must be talking about the A-20. Two MPixels is plenty for excellent 5x7 prints.<BR><BR>Shooting at full resolution (1600 x 1200), you can fit about 550 pics on a 256 MB memory card. If you switch the camera's Compression from Fine to Normal, you will then get about 1100 pictures per 256 MB card -- a good idea if you find yourself running low on memory during a trip. <BR><BR>Considering that, on an average, people discard/erase half of the pictures they take, that means you could snap over two thousand pics onto that single card. (The Canons have a neat Panoramic mode that lets you easily stich overlapping shots -- a good use for all that memory.)<BR><BR>For emergencies and accidents, though, I would recommend having more than one card. Since you already have the 256, just get a 128 MB and you should be set.

Keith

Figure about 1 meg per photo saved with the a40. But you can always delete the ones you don't care for so a single 256 mg card will let you take perhaps 450 photos and keep 250.<BR><BR>The pictures will stay on indefinitely.<BR><BR>Warning, I used a converter with a charger in March. It worked. Once.<BR><BR>Second time I tried charging bateries, the charger quit working.<BR><BR>Your camera uses AA-size Batteries. If you don't take enough, they are readily available in Europe.<BR><BR> Keith

jules

<BR>Alex:<BR>As mentionned above, pixels is one issue, compression another.<BR>Shooting in 1600x1200, but then compressing at the same time doesn't make sense to me. It's a gimmick, like the digital zoom.<BR><BR>The Canon A40 spec sheet has all the details:<BR>www.powershot.com/powershot2/a40-30/specs.html<BR>For Superfine - least compression - the Canon site states 1 MB per picture, but adds:<BR> &quot;These figures reflect standard shooting conditions established by Canon.<BR>Actual totals and file sizes may vary according to the subject, shooting conditions and shooting mode&quot;.<BR>My experience in 1600x1200 Superfine is 1.5 MB per picture on average.<BR><BR>Tip: buy a CF memory card USB reader (abt $ 20). It will save you a lot of time (and batteries) when downloading the pics to your computer.

alex

Thanks for all the replies. Much appreciated. I just bought the canon s200 (really compact) and a 256 mb card as well as a spare battery. The manual says that the charger can work in europe so I should do fine with that.<BR><BR>Thanks for all the responses. Since the s200 uses a lithion ion battery if my charger doesn't work I will be screwed. Worst case scenario I will have to buy a battery in europe (which will probably cost double).

jules

Excellent choice. The charger will work fine. All you will need is an adapter plug, from flat to round pins.<BR>Radio Shack has them: catalog # 980-0444 ($ 2.49).<BR><BR>

Patrick

I'm not much of a camera buff and don't even have a digital, but I do hope that the second poster, &quot;just a thought&quot; comes back to see this thread. I can't imagine a camera store anywhere that would give you so much good unbiased information. Just another reason why I like this website.

Al

Patrick, there are some poor souls who post innocent enough questions about travel on these threads and get flamed to death! Who would expect a camera question to actually be answered!

sam

I am not a complete digital convert yet. I have a 2MB camera, too. However, I take &quot;important&quot; shots with film and &quot;for the record&quot; shots with digital. Some &quot;for the record&quot; shots are nice, I find later. That's because I am extremely liberal in taking digital pictures and delete half of them later.<BR><BR>As far as memory cards, I'm still weary of computer chips so I'd carry at least one spare. If you have 2 Compact Flash cards, then the capacity doesn't have to be extremely large.<BR><BR>If you are not using a film camera, then you will probably shoot more high resolution pictures.<BR><BR>A converter may be unnecessary except for a plug adapter. My charger says 100v-240v which means that it can accept almost any kind of electricity found worldwide. Do bring spare batteries because they can die without warning!

Tim

Charger:<BR><BR>All you need is a wallplug adapter; that charger is happy anywhere in the world.<BR><BR>Radio Shack indeed has them, although they usually are sold as a set of five for $20. (The set is also sold at K-Mart, right next to the Money Belts.) <BR><BR>The wall sockets in France can be smaller than, say, Italy, so the &quot;smaller&quot; round plug is more flexible. (Don't forget and leave them in the wall, like I did.)<BR><BR>That S-200 is a good choice -- it's about the smallest thing around. You'll be able to sneak pictures anywhere with it, and it slips easily in your pocket. <BR><BR>Although &quot;Digital Zoom&quot; is indeed a gimmick -- it just crops the image and blows it up -- the Compression settings are not. You will be hard pressed to see any difference in the three Compression settings (try it), yet the last one can double your remaining shot capacity (if you're running low).

Mina

Alex, looks like your questions were pretty muched answered here. But if I may, I'd like to add my two cents on digital cameras.<BR><BR>I'm not a techie person (I didn't know how to use a computer until 7 years ago. I TYPED my way through college!) For my recent trip, I brought a digital camera, a point-and-shoot, and my dad's old manual pentax &quot;spot-o-matic&quot;.<BR><BR>The spot-o-matic weighed 400 lbs, so it often stayed in the hotel room. But boy, it could take great pictures if you knew what you were doing. The point and shoot (a reliable and reasonably priced Canon) took crap pictures. It could not do any justice to the Irish landscape. <BR><BR>As an afterthought, I played with the digital camera I had gotten for free...and I became a convert. That's all I'm taking from now on! The thing I liked about it was I could switch from black and white, to color, with all kinds of filters in between. Using color enhancement, I could capture the green of the hills (the point and shoot did a terrible job). Even the clouds came out clearer and more alive. Since I was alone on my trip, I could be a geek and take a picture of the same place with multiple cameras to compare! <BR><BR>While I don't think digital is for the die hard photographers, a novice can do all kinds of neat things with it (esp if it has lots of features). Mine is a 2.1 megapixel, and I shoot at 800x600 in fine mode. Makes for great 4x6 prints, and I actually got good 5x7 prints too. On an 8mb flash card, I was able to get 33 pictures (which I downloaded daily). <BR><BR>I would suggest after you buy your camera, to take a few shots at different resolutions, then take it to a photo shop for printing to see results. That may give you a better idea of how you would like to shoot your pictures. Try to print different sizes too, so you can see if a lower res picture will give you a result you are happy with. If so, then you can shoot most of your pics at a lower res and save room on your cards for more pics. Digital cameras do save printing costs...I only printed 25% of my pictures, and I think I have a better quality scrapbook because of it (at least no one has fallen asleep looking at it!)<BR><BR>Have fun with the camera. Digital cameras can help make you a better photographer because you can take tons of pictures!

xxx

ttt