How accurate is the 'Shots remaining' count?

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Name
Matt
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On my D600 an empty 16gb card says it will get me 294 shots. However, during a recent trip it I took near 500 shots, plus a 30 second video and still had 750mb free space on the card.
 
If the card was formatted in-camera it should be very accurate, perform a fresh format and check the number again.
 
Doesnt it also depend on what you take images of? You could get a figure from the card, bit then take hundreds of pictures of a plain blue sky (so not a lot of detail), and this would increase the number of shots available??

Someone please correct me if im talking s***
 
above is correct - all shots are never exactly the same (if JPG). Sizes change for shutter length, high ISOs and actual RGB content of each file
 
I think they're very conservative.

I thought the remaining shot figure was based on worst case scenario (largest image file) in terms of detail etc when in reality many of your shots could be much smaller.
 
Its the same as your cars fuel range. Its X amount of shots at a certain size. If the largest raw file is say 25mb and you get 100 shots if the images are actually 20mb due to them not having much detail then youve technically gained 1 photo for every 4 taken
 
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Never found one on my Nikon bodies to be anything but very conservative. More so when in JPG but still a fair bit in RAW.
 
I assume the count assumes an un compressed file size. By definition you can't know the size a photo will compress to until you've taken it
 
If u shoot in raw, its pretty much what it says how many remaining. But if u have video, jpeg, etc. Its a guess work as aforementioned regarding jpeg compression.
 
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