24Mpix NEFs seem to average about 20-25Mb a piece. Corresponding Jpg, around 10-15Mb. So NEF+JPG, would suggest around 35Mb a shot, and a 16Gb card 'aught' take aprox 4-500 photo's, 1000 image files before full.... 'ish'.
So the card shouldn't have been full... but if there was anything else on it, and video is particularly card-space hungry, its not out of the question.
Mike, I was taking my time trying to get things right.. At the moment I'm focusing on learning to balance out my exposure when prioritising either shutter speed or aperture, so everything is a tad slow at the moment.
That doesn't actually deny the suggestion you may still be rushing.... you are, it seems, trying to get to grips with a heck of a lot of 'faff', and loading up your plate with an enormous amount of 'stuff' to consider... which all takes a lot of consideration, and time... does NOT mean that you aren't 'rushing'.... skipping over or trying to do fast the bits you 'think' are simple, because of how much else you have heaped the plate with that seems 'complicated'..... So, when it comes to the shutter-moment... all else faffed with... it's still likely you 'rush' at least that bit of the job....
I want to get into the habit of working with RAW files early as I've read it's the best way to go if you want to post process.
Shoving the pigeon in-front of the bus full of cats here... but WHY? NEF/RAW, doesn't make it 'easier' or 'better' to post process. Just heaps that plate some more!
'RAW' file format, actually isn't all that 'raw' as in the unprocessed data taken from the camera sensor. Even if it was; all that data is, would be the individual receptor values for the 'brightness' of light falling on them; without any electric amplification to adjust the overall 'brightness' of the image or effective ISO of the sensor. And THAT is essentially all you can effect 'change' in post-process.
You cannot adjust the shutter speed, you cannot adjust the aperture setting, you cannot adjust the focus range; you cannot change the lens you use, you cannot alter anything much beyond the amount of ISO amplification to the sensor signal.
Beyond that, there is only limited scope to alter the way the computer interprets the sensor data; worth noting that a 24Mpix camera doesn't have a corresponding number of sensor receptors; it needs three bits of data for each pixel, one for Red, one for Green, one for Blue; to get these the sensor is 'pre-filtered' with individual receptors receiving a signal for one color channel. To get a data-set for one pixel, then, the computer needs to 'poll' three sensors; one red one, one green one, one blue one.... and as these aren't in the same place.... what it will actually do is poll perhaps a dozen 'close' receptors, and 'interpolate' their values to make each 'virtual' image pixel by a 'best guess' of what the sensor receptors deliver in that area of the image. So starts the 'processing'.. the automatic 'best guessing'
Jpg.... is an off the shelf 'standard' processing algorithm; it looks at the receptor values and interpolates values from an array of adjacent ones to make a best guess at what it should choose for the image pixel... NEF, is
Nikon
Extended
Format.... depending on whose blurb you read... but, it's NOT the actual base values of brightness taken from individual sensor receptors... I don't think any camera makers 'RAW' format is even close TBH, but the NEF format is basically a Jpg... the camera captures the sensor data, processes it to the 'standard' Jpg algorithms, BUT, keeps a note of what decisions it made in that processing, in an 'extended' data-set stored with the image data. Hence Nikon
Extended Format.
Point IS, that jpg, is the 'standard' worked to. And its NOT a bad one, and ultimately whatever steps you go through between pressing the shutter button and beyond, when you get down to it, its likely that JPG format is what you are going to end up with, in whatever you send to a screen, a web-site or a printer......
NOW, cats and pigeons; PERSONALLY I see very little merit in shooting RAW or NEF, as habit.... do I want to take photo's or play cameras, more play computer games in photo-shop?
Well... as I type photo-shop is 'open', and I have a couple of dozen 'psd' photo-shop 'raw' files open to mess with; all obtained from a scanner from 35mm negatives out of the archive; I think these particular ones were taken probably by my Grandad, and date stamp suggests they were taken in April 1989; they are half-frame images too, so probably taken with an Olympus OM101, I think... but who the HECK is in them? Well, I think I might be related to a lot of them, but that's another issue........ Scanned into photo-shop via Hamrick, I have captured then at 64bit colour depth, and with 12 times over-scan, and multi-exposure..... I have a LOT of scope for photo-faff.... cleaning up scratches and dust on the negatives; adjusting the colour balance, diddling the exposure, messing with the response curves.... BUT, I STILL cant change the shutter-speed; the aperture or the focus, and only have a very small scope to change the ISO gain.
You may be able to work miracles in post-process, BUT the impossible, is still the impossible!
YES I am a photo-shop junkie! I LOVE this chit! Crikey these aren't even MY photo's I'm faffing with at the moment! BUT... what do YOU want to do?
If I want to 'photo-faff', I have a wonderful collection of old film cameras, that give me every opportunity to faff to my heart's content. My Ziess Ikonta 120 Medium Format 'folder' is a wonderful piece of equipment. Has a 105mm lens as its 'standard angle'; it only has about five shutter speed settings, and maybe six or seven apertures. Has no built in light meter; I have to meter by eye or hand held meter; doesn't even have a view-finder to speak of! Just a wire 'gun-sight' framing guide! This is pure fully manual, manual EVERYTHING unadulterated photo-faff.... and camera takes great photo's on enormous negatives! And there's even more photo-fafff to be had, developing the film, making prints and or scanning to digital, and then all the photo-faff of post process play, to be had....b-u-t....
The D3200... its 'fast-foto'..... it makes direct to digital images; it has auto-focus, it has auto-exposure; it IS at its simplest point and press convenient..... a four year old could, and has, use it! And I DID NOT spend all that money on that camera, and the lenses to go with it, to inordinately 'FAFF' as much or more than with one of my old clock-work film cameras! I REALLY didn't!
It has all that automation, so why NOT use it? Let the camera do the stuff it knows 'best' how to do, and let me get on with doing the bits it hasn't got a CLUE how to do.... For ALL that point and press automation, the camera hasn't got a clue what its being pointed at; it has no idea whether its a great composition; it doesn't know which exact moment is 'best' to freeze a kid kicking a football, or to milk a water-fall, it really doesn't.
The automation is there to HELP you, not hinder... so, I have few qualms about letting it 'help'.... the difficult bit is knowing where it really can....
As said; RAW formats have very very little scope to actually let you effect any influence over the final display image; yet they demand you use a post-process package to do what the camera could, without your input, and 'faff' to make that a display Jpg, you or any-one else will look at.
So where MAY RAW or NEF actually start to 'help'? You can still make a LOT of adjustments to a straight jpg, but if the camera has done its job, you probably dont really need to! And if the camera hasn't? Did you give it the chance? Likely a lot you could have done to make a better photo, and having a NEF file, probably wont help you correct it much.
Like I said, its cat and pigeons, an awful lot of digital exponents will grumble and say "Shoot RAW... JPG is crap! Its like a Mac-Meal compared to home cooked!" Which is probably true... but if you have the culinary skills of my mother, to be able to burn salad FFS... I'm going to go Macy-D's!!!! We are not all Cordon-blue chefs, and probably never will be.... and a frozen microwave meal is still edible... unlike my mother's oven-baked salad!
So, starting out, you want to learn this photography lark; DONT heap up your plate and give yourself an over-load of chit to get to grips with, chit you likely only have the first clue about, chit you probably have far too optimistic ideas about, and ALL you are likely to do is set yourself up for failure and disappointment, because the 'ideas' about what you 'might' be able to do with raw files or achieve in post process, or can get from going manual exposure, whilst still being a slave to the red-dots of auto-focus, REALLY are way beyond what they might really achieve.....
You have made that admission, and its another pet hobby horse of mine, BUT. Auto-Exposure systems have been around an awful long time. Longer in fact than I have! I have sat on top of the record player, my Grandad's Konica C35 film camera. Wonderful little thing, and it has the QC stamp on the bottom still, I think marked "1973". At that time it was far from a 'cheap' camera; it retailed in newly decimalised England for about £35 I think; 35mm was the new 'popular' format, that offered 120 rivaling image quality, and 'cheap' colour from movie film stock. It's party trick was an electric eye, that was coupled to the shutter, and took a reflected light meter reading, calculated an exposure value from it, and set both aperture and shutter-speeds for you based on that, and a film speed setting you had dialed in in when you loaded it. It was one of the first sub £50 'point and press' consumer cameras, and Auto-Exposure was its main claim to fame. But that's how long Auto-Exposure has been about, in over the counter consumer cameras. It is well developed, and these days in electric picture makers that can use the actual digi-sensor as a gazillion little light meters, and use umpety million different 'averaging' methods on the values to derive an 'average' exposure value, they are incredibly sophisticated and incredibly accurate....... WHY turn all that 'off' to go 'manual' exposure, still probably a slave to what the meter tells you, to 'faff' making probably the exact same shutter and aperture settings the computer would?! and try using the camera like my old clock-work Sigma, with a swing needle Through Taking Lens, light meter, telling me if I need tweek aperture or shutter settings to level the nedle and have that more chance to pick the wrong ones?
Auto-Focus? Been around about half as long as I have. I was shown one of the first consumer AF cameras when I was about 10, ISTR, and think it was a Minolta. Very crude device; winding on the film 'cocked' the AF at hyper-focal focus range, then a spring dragged it back to an electric 'stop' based on what the electrics calculated when you pressed the shutter. It was slow, it was inaccurate, it was unreliable, and FAR more so than Auto-Exposure systems....... A-N-D they have NOT got an awful lot 'better'...... Oh-Kay, they have, but only because of how dire the earliest systems were to start with!
AF is in almost all SLR cameras these days,. and pretty much all digital cameras from mobile phones and action cams up. A lot of the very small micro-sensor cameras rely on the fact that they have an incredibly short focal length lens, with incredibly near hyper-focal distance, and a relatively small lens aperture to give them such Depth or Field, front to back focus, they are essentially 'Focus Free'. Larger format digital cameras still rely on these traits to help make the AF a bit more tolerant and negate the need to be 'so' accurate. BUT, of the automation in a mosern camera its still the least accurate and least reliable and least dependable....
YET, the "Go Manual Mantra! begs people look for an obvious setting marked "Manual", and they find it on the exposure dial, turn OFF the incredibly well refined and basically pretty simple 'automation' that offers, to make their own effups, sorry aperture and shutter settings... and yet STILL rely on the much more flakey automation of the AF system?!?!?! Eh? Its a little like removing the electric windows from a car with an automatic transmission, cos the racers don't have windows, and expecting it to win a touring car championship!
Said in other thread what you need is not more gear its STRATEGY, and I don't think this is much different. You are, a bit kiddie-in-the-sweet-shop, full of enthusiasm, reaching for colorful packets, and hoping they will all taste amazing.
My advice, is to back up, Keep-It-Simple-Silly, and concentrate on just one thing at a time, rather than heaping up the plate with ALL these ideas... a lot of them erroneous or inappropriate.
And top tip.... there's more to be found INFRONT of the camera then there ever is to be found IN the camera. Spend more time looking through the dang thing than at it. The key to better photo's is Subject, NOT settings.
You can, to a large extent forget the settings, you can depend on an awful lot of the automation and easement built into a modern electric picture maker, and USE that to let you worry about the things that the cameras electricity just CANNOT help with; finding things worth taking a photo of; composing them in the frame to best effect.. where you have absolutely NO influence prodding buttons or dials on the camera, and even less messing with sliders infront of a computer screen later, but THAT is where better photo's start to be found.
WHEN you start hitting the buffers and thinking, "Well, that didn't work out!" or "Hmmm, this could be better", THEN... you have probably reached the boundaries of your 'craft' and a little more know how, is probably useful... reach the same point with that know-how, then, maybe a bit of extra gear and some more know-how may help.....
BUT, at the moment, its likely kiddie-in-the-sweet-shop 'chaos' too many variables, too many conflicting bits of advice, too much research, too little experience, and too many hopes and ideas and aspirations ALL begging you look for solutions to what are probably NOT really problems!
Keep-It-Simple-Silly...... modern electric picture maker is a wonderful bit of kit with so much automation and easement built in it IS point and shoot friendly a four year old can do it...... no know-how required. Learn to TRUST the camera, and let it do the things its best at; give it some help where its not 'so' comfortable, and do the bits it cant, don't try doing the things it can for it, more slowly, with more faff, and more opportunity for effup, JUST because of some notion of 'going manual' for the sake of it being the 'done thing'.
It sounds like the camera is over running its buffers because so is its operator! Stop trying SO hard. Take it easy, and take your time, WHERE that time is worth taking. Stop faffing just for the sake of it.
There is a rather large reveal in this thread in admission that you have taken advice on shooting in NEF for post-process benefit; you are experimenting with aperture priority and shutter priority metering modes, you are pondering different focus schgemes, YET exactly where that is mentioned, you also admit that you HAVEN'T read the bloomin manual that came with the camera!
I mean, come on, this is like getting a new car, and asking advice from a race driver about heel-and-toe gear-shifting, when you have an automatic micra and haven't even read the hand-book! Isn't it?
Slow down, back up, and start from the basics, Keep-It-Simple-Silly, and learn to walk before you try and run.
Odds on, that cutting through the chaos, this buffer over run problem will just disapear and prove itself one of them non-problems!
