Reading the Display - # of pictures left

heatherb4

Hi Everyone,

I'm so glad I found this forum. I've been so impressed with the questions and the amazing quality of answers that people are receiving. I'm afraid my question is sort of stupid, but I'm hoping that someone can shed some light for me.

I am a beginner with my Nikon D3100 and I bought the "Nikon D3100 for Dummies" book and it's great. It pointed me to the 'box' in the bottom right-hand side of the screen that has brackets [ like this ] around it to tell you how many photos are left. The problem is (and maybe it's getting my thick head around this) mine reads: [3.6]k.

I have a 16GB class 10 SD card in the camera now. This can't possibly mean that I have 3600 pictures left on it, can it? My camera is set to the Normal image quality (JPEG), Large (14.2 M).

Maybe someone can explain the "Image quality" setting to me, because I see that if I change that, the number of photos left changes to a nice round (non decimal) number. Help!

Thanks so much in advance.
:)

dino

The letter K is used to represent x/1000. I have the same card in my D3100 and get just over 600, but I shoot jpeg (fine) and RAW.

heatherb4

Thanks, Dino!

I will have a look at my "for dummies" manual and see if I can figure out what image quality setting I should use most often.

dino

If you do a lot of editing then it should be RAW if you don't then one of the jpegs should do.

heatherb4

Fantastic, thanks so much Dino!