Diminished capacity

[MikePL]

When I inserted my SanDisk 512MB for the first time it showed memory for 220 pictures. When I took some pictures and erased them in the camera, the only free space I had was for 207 pictures. Once I noticed this, I connected the camera via FireWire to my PC, and the shown capacity was 485MB. I formatted it in the camera two times but it won't show more than 485MB. Is the card shot or maybe I am mistaken. Maybe it's the format type that fuji uses?

[lightwrangler]

My Lexar 512MB CF card gets 208 images on fine quality, 3024 res jpeg. The difference must be the formatting of the card - which does take some space, although now that I think of it, that is a large amount of space for a format.

Oh well guess I have to get a 1gig!

[volcanojumper]

There are a few reasons for the diminshed capacity.
1. The manufacterers list the MB in 1,000,000B/MB where the Operating systems list MB as 1024KB/MB. So a 512MB CF would equate to 488MB unformatted.
2. Some space is used up in formatting.
3. Also you may have to periodically run scandisk or ndd on the cards to fix any problems caused by improper/premature removal of the cards, etc. which can also take up space. Formatting would also solve this problem.