What is meant by RAW photo?
Many photographers shoot in RAW photo quality. But what is meant by RAW photo and why it is recommended to shoot in RAW quality? A RAW photo is nothing but a simple digital photo that is stored in your camera memory or memory card which stores each and every pixel. This type of photo is either unprocessed or minimally processed and not compressed. RAW photos are taken in various formats depending on the type of device you are using. There are various camera manufacturers which have different RAW photo formats. For Ex: Canon stores RAW files in .CR2 or .CR3 format whereas Nikon has .NEF format. The size of RAW photos is larger than JPEG and JPG images. The average size of RAW photos is 30 MB.
Here in this photo, the left side is what the RAW photo looks like whereas the right side is edited.
Factors affecting Size of Photo
Now let us understand the factors that affect the size of the Photo.
Type of Photos
There are different kinds of photo formats- RAW, JPEG, DNG, etc. RAW photos are the purest form of photos. They store every single detail of the photo. You have huge scope in editing this kind of photo. As it is of high quality you can edit and process it very easily. Coming to the size, it holds a large space in your memory card due to its high quality.
Features of Photos
There are several features of photos like shutter quality, shutter speed, portrait or landscape photos, and resolution. They hugely impact the size of the photos leading to storage capacity.
Type of device
Which device you are using to capture photographs also plays role in determining the size of the photo. If you are capturing a photo on your smartphone camera the size of the RAW photo is obviously less than that of the same photo captured on the DSLR or any other professional camera.
How to calculate storage capacity for 128 GB
Calculate storage capacity for 128 GB in terms of average size
One of the basic ways to calculate the storage capacity of a memory card is by its average photo size. To calculate the number of pictures your 128 GB memory card can hold, use the formula given below.
Size of memory card(128 GB= 128000 MB)/Avarage Size of a RAW photo.
In this way, approximately 128 GB memory card can hold(128000/30) 4270 photos. There is a simple trick to calculate the average size of a photo. For that, you need to take some photos with your device. Take the average size of all photos. When it comes to a memory card, most of the time we can’t tell an exact number of photos it can accommodate because along with photos it also stores some videos and files.
Calculate storage capacity of 128 GB for different Devices
Depending upon the type of device, the storage capacity of the memory card changes.
For smartphones, a 128 GB memory card stores around 6000 RAW photos.
DSLR cameras like Nikon D7100, Nikon D3400, Nikon D3500, Canon 7D, and Canon t6i give you maximum resolution and high-quality images and can store 3000 to 5500 RAW photos.
Devices like GoPro are very popular among photographers and travelers due to their compact size, easy to carry model, and high quality photos. If we talk about how many RAW photos it can store in a 128 GB memory card, then it also stores 4000-5000 photos.
Other cameras like Fujifilm X-t2, Sony a6000,a6300, and a6400 which are also quite popular among photographers can store 2500 to 4000 Raw photos.
Conclusion
To conclude, we cant perfectly tell the exact number of RAW photos a 128 GB can hold. It depends on other factors like photo features, type of device, and camera settings. But for devices and settings, this number varies between 3000 to 6000.
I hope it will help you in determining how many RAW images a 128 GB cards can hold.
