Ginny, I could never get a straight answer either, whenever I asked this question. I can tell you what I have learned from experience, and hope it helps you.

First let me say that I would DEFINITELY buy another card or two, perhaps one with more storage, such as 1 gigabyte, that way you will feel comfortable knowing that you have many more pictures yet to take.

Secondly, my camera lets me know how many pictures I have taken and how many I have left to take, and this number changes since some pictures will take less space than others.

Next, I would recommend taking pictures on a higher resolution so that you can enlarge them later if desired without losing detail in the photo. If you are taking a picture of something that you know you will not make an enlargement out of, you can set your camera to a lower megapixel setting to save space on the card. Personally, I leave mine set at 5 megapixels, that way I am always ready to take a picture that I might want to enlarge.

I set my camera to take photos at about 5 megapixels. On a 512 card, I can get(on average), about 230 pictures. At 2.3 or 1.3 megapixels, you will be able to get many more pictures, possibly 2 or three times more, but there is NO exact way of determining exactly how many.

The reason for this is that some pictures, even if they are set at the same resolution level, will take up less space than others. For example, my camera showed that I had room for only 9 more photos. I took almost forty before it actually ran out of space, probably since I was taking pictures at night, of the moon.

I hopes this helps explain it...at least a little.

Good Luck

Kt

Kt,
Thank you for your explanation of this subject. Before going on vacation I did format the card so I had an empty slate to work with. That was the first time I had formatted it so I am learning and doing new things. I will keep your reply in my file and refer to it as I try to really understand my camera. Thanks again,
Ginny

Ginny - I have 254 pictures on my 512 card - It is just over half full.

Put your card in a card reader (or maybe just hook up your camera to the computer) and go to My Computer. Find your card or camera and click on it once to highlight (but don't open). Then click on FILE in the upper left side of the screen. On the drop down menu it will have "Properties" - from that you can tell how full your card is. That will give you some idea of how much your card will hold.

Iowagirl - great tip. I will try that for sure! AM chores to do first.
Ginny