Nikon D50

Posted by: Dungassin on 29 April 2011

SWMBO was watching the Royal Wedding today and decided she wanted some photos of it.  So what did she do?  Took photos of the TV screen using her Nikon D50!  Then came to complain to me that her camera card was full and she'd had to use my Lumix compact as a substitute.  I carefully explained to her that she could just record it onto her HD/DVD recorder and I would have done screen grabs from the recording, but she thought that sounded "far too complicated" 

 

Anyway, when I checked out the 4GB SD card in her camera, it only had 169 6MP JPEGs on it, but the camera said it was full!    Now, I know that it's an ordinary 4GB SD card (not an SDHC), because it won't work in our HD videocam.  The card was a gift from our eldest, and I don't think has ever had more than 150 photos on it before I've downloaded them to the laptop and emptied the card.  I can't find anything in the D50 manual to say it won't cope with higher capacity SD cards, although I had assumed it might have problems with SDHC cards due to its age.  So, what's the highest capacity card this camera will cope with?

 

As stated in another thread, I wasn't actually watching the wedding myself, because I always find these events rather tedious, and made even worse by inane comments from the TV commentators.  However, I would have been willing to endure it to do screengrabs for her.  I've had to sit through many weddings over the years (many nieces, nephews, sisters-in- law etc), most not even in English (Maltese wife), so the thought of sitting through yet another loooooonnnnnngggg event didn't appeal at all.

 

I know - I'm just a miserable old git, but that's me. 

Posted on: 29 April 2011 by Alamanka

169 * 6MP = 1014 MP

 

Your observations seems to indicate that the camera is able to support about 1GB storage card.

 

Looking at the D50 user manual on-line, there is a table page 114 of the "approved memory card". None of these approved memory cards has a capacity above 1GB.

Posted on: 29 April 2011 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by Dungassin:

...watching the Royal Wedding today and decided she wanted some photos of it.......

Obviously important to get your own photographs because I doubt that many photographs will be available in the public domain

Posted on: 29 April 2011 by Dungassin
Originally Posted by Alamanka:

169 * 6MP = 1014 MP

 

Your observations seems to indicate that the camera is able to support about 1GB storage card.

 

Looking at the D50 user manual on-line, there is a table page 114 of the "approved memory card". None of these approved memory cards has a capacity above 1GB.

Correct.  Alas, there is no info in the manual about the maximum capacity of card supported.  The actual capacity used on the 4GB card was 453MB, so it wasn't even getting to 1GB!  I know it can get to that sort of size on a 1GB card, because she quite regularly got 300+ photos on one of those. (HiQuality JPEG setting on the camera).  I think I'll just take the 4GB card out of her camera and put swap it for the 1GB one I've got in the Lumix.  Only really asking about the capacity of the camera because I'll have to buy her another card as spare as she says she doesn't want to know about the 512 and 256MB SD cards I already have.  (sigh)

Posted on: 29 April 2011 by Dungassin
Originally Posted by winkyincanada:
Originally Posted by Dungassin:

...watching the Royal Wedding today and decided she wanted some photos of it.......

Obviously important to get your own photographs because I doubt that many photographs will be available in the public domain

The only annoying thing is that she will want prints of some (all?) of them.  Yet more wasted space on the shelves ...

 

It's a funny thing about "hard copy" prints.  She looks at them once, puts them in albums, and onto the bookshelves.  The only person who ever seems to actually look at them after that is me!  I wouldn't mind so much, but she prints at least half of what she takes  - and she takes a lot.   Then again, when she had a film SLR, she regularly used to get through at least 20 36 shot films during a 2 week holiday, so no change really in her printing habits.

Posted on: 30 April 2011 by Dungassin

As I've lost the manual for the D50 I went to the Nikon website.  They wanted me to register the camera to download the manual.  Couldn't be bothered, especially as I thought there might be complications with this as we bought the camera in Hong Kong when SWMBO's Canon (film) SLR developed a broken half-silvered mirror, as it was cheaper to buy anew camera than get the Canon repaired.

 

However, I did a further websearch and found that the D50 won't really cope with SD cards bigger than 2GB, and is really not particularly happy with many cards bigger than 1GB.  So, I'll have to order her another 1GB card online, as most of the local shops don't seem to do such small cards anymore.