D700 vs 5DmkII: how many shots per 8GB card?

Pindy

I typically get about 305 shots listed as available on my D700 on a freshly formatted Lexar 300x UDMA 8GB card. My 5DmkII shows somewhere in the high 280s for the same cards. Given the resolution difference, is the D700 inefficient or is the 5DmkII seriously efficient? Both are set to RAW and their lowest base ISO speeds, with normal high ISO NR, no long exposure NR and no active D-lighting or HTP.

I noticed that today and it seemed like a huge disparity. Are you seeing the same numbers?

catspaw

Check the manual, but if I recall the 5d Mk II has a much higher resolution, so images will be better. you might also have compression turned on in the D700.

Pindy

catspaw wrote:

Check the manual, but if I recall the 5d Mk II has a much higher resolution, so images will be better. you might also have compression turned on in the D700.

Quite right—14-bit (lossless) I believe. Okay, RTFM time.

Pindy

Pindy wrote:

Quite right—14-bit (lossless) I believe. Okay, RTFM time.

TFM says 100 per 2gb 12 bit lossless and 77 for 14 bit on the Nikon which is consistent. Still to be explained is how a 21.1MP camera can acheive nearly the same in 14-bits.

ziggy53

Pindy wrote:

I typically get about 305 shots listed as available on my D700 on a freshly formatted Lexar 300x UDMA 8GB card. My 5DmkII shows somewhere in the high 280s for the same cards. Given the resolution difference, is the D700 inefficient or is the 5DmkII seriously efficient? Both are set to RAW and their lowest base ISO speeds, with normal high ISO NR, no long exposure NR and no active D-lighting or HTP.

I noticed that today and it seemed like a huge disparity. Are you seeing the same numbers?

First, the estimated shots remaining is often off by a considerable margin. You would need to do some testing of identical scenes in order to do a relevant comparison of file sizes.

Second, the D700 has a choice between 12 bit and 14 bit acquisition, and lossless and compressed, lossy and compressed, and uncompressed file types. All will yield different file sizes.

Third, according to "PhotoReview - Australia", the Nikon D700, shooting at NEF-RAW, 12 bit, lossless compression, averages around 13.3 MB. The Canon 5D, which only captures at 12bit and only has a single CR2-RAW file type, averages at 13 MB. The 5D MKII produces 14 bit CR2-RAW files which average 25.8 MB.

http://www.photoreview.com.au/reviews/digitalslr/nikon-d700.aspx
http://www.photoreview.com.au/Canon/reviews/digitalslr/canon-eos-5d.aspx
http://www.photoreview.com.au/Canon/reviews/digitalslr/canon-eos-5d-mark-ii.aspx


My recommendation is to use the 12 and 14 bit as required by the task and then use lossless compression to get the best overall results on the Nikon.

zigzag

ziggy53 wrote:

First, the estimated shots remaining is often off by a considerable margin. You would need to do some testing of identical scenes in order to do a relevant comparison of file sizes.

Bingo. Looking at "shots left" on a Nikon is misleading. My D300 shows ~268 shots when I format a card. But I can put more than 500 shots on it.

I remember reading somewhere that Nikon calculates the number of shots left based on a worst-case scenario.

Pindy

Very helpful, guys.

I suppose each shot will require a different encoded size based on content and combine that with Nikon's conservative estimates, I shouldn't pay the counters much heed. Better worst-case than best-case or you'd have very unhappy people to contend with.