Insufficient Space on SD card – Super easy Fix in 10 seconds

Assume you were trekking in the Himalayas and your camera memory card is running low on space and getting an error message that says – Insufficient Space. Most of us stop taking photographs and instead store some memory for some gorgeous and fascinating photos that we will capture later. You may get some intriguing images as a result, but you may also lose out on many more essential shots that you could have gotten if you had an extra camera memory card. Here are a few pointers on how to manage and shoot more pictures with the available space on your camera memory card without missing out on any stunning surroundings.

Manage with existing Camera memory card - Insufficient Space
Insufficient memory message

Optimizing memory card usage to avoid Insufficient Space

  • Change the camera settings so that photographs are captured in either RAW or JPEG (RAW is always preferable), but not both at the same time. These days, cameras include dual slots that allow you to insert two memory cards into the camera. When you shoot/write/save an image, the same image is saved on both cards (usually done to be on safer side by wedding photographers, just in case if one memory card fails). To preserve memory, you may need to disable this option.
  • Change the 14-bit to 12-bit settings in the camera’s settings. A 14-bit camera RAW file may waste almost 27-30 MB of space for each shot, but if you alter the settings to 12 bit (RAW file), the memory consumed would be around 19-23 MB. Furthermore, the difference between 12 and 14 bit should be negligible, and you will still be recording in RAW.
  • Switch from RAW to JPEG as the image format (high). This will save a lot of memory, but keep in mind that shooting photographs in RAW is always preferable to JPEG because JPEG loses a lot of colour information and the lost image data is unrecoverable. RAW is usually preferable, but if you don’t have another alternative, choose high-quality JPEG photos. Each RAW (NEF) format shot takes up over 30MB of space (on my Nikon D610), but a JPEG good quality photograph takes up 10 to 12 MB.
  • If you don’t care about image quality and just want shots to post on social media, JPEG (regular or low) quality images are OK. Trust me it is still good enough for social media usage and you will never face insufficient space issues.
  • For less important photographs, use your camera’s built-in software to convert RAW to JPEG format and delete the RAW format photos. When I take landscape and nature shots, I generally use RAW format, and when I capture group photos of our hiking group, I usually use JPEG- High.
  • Delete any duplicate or highly similar photos. Check for crappy video recordings and remove them first because they take up more space than images. You may even erase videos that are excessively shaky.
  • Examine your previously acquired photographs, erase any undesired fuzzy images, over or under exposed images (if captured in JPEG), and so on.
Duplicate images that can be deleted - Insufficient Space
Duplicate images that can be deleted on SD-card to avoid Insufficient Space issues.

Good practice for lenghty trips

It’s a good idea to acquire an additional camera memory card if you’re going on a lengthy trip or hiking for a week. During my week-long Himalayan climb, I normally bring two 64 GB flash drives. These days, you can even obtain 256 and 512 GB SDXC memory cards, but be sure your existing camera supports this large amount of storage before purchasing these cards. Also, look into the read/write speed that is supported.

Dual card slots usage

Usage of Dual card slots to make duplicate copies in-camera may be avoided which is not recommended, but if you do not have any other option then at least one copy is better than nothing. Most high-end cameras have dual card slots, and there is an option in the camera settings to overflow or make a duplicate copy in the second memory card slot that is accessible. Set this to overflow, and it will begin loading the second memory card in the second slot once the first memory card in slot one is filled.

How OTG Card Reader can help with Insufficient Space?

I’ve been carrying a USB Type C OTG Card Reader these days so that I don’t have to carry my laptop and then use a card reader to copy and store it to the hard drive for cloud storage. Instead, I utilize this USB Type C OTG Card Reader to copy the material to my mobile device, then transfer the data directly to my Google Drive or any other cloud storage account.

Cloud Storage

Furthermore, data is dirt cheap, and cloud storage is now far cheaper and more dependable than any hard drive (HDD). With the usage of cloud storage, ‘Insufficient Space’ is history. I’m not getting any more hard drives because I lost three of them with all of my data on them. I had to learn my lessons the hard way. However, I prefer to carry at least one external memory storage, preferably an SSD hard drive. Also, these days, cameras come with built-in WiFi, transfer the files to your mobile device and then to the cloud, and free up your camera space.

The above tips will help you save a lot of your camera memory card space, and make good use of it. Hope your issue is now fixed and you enjoyed reading this blog post. Buy me a coffee to support my work or you can go to my store to buy some of my images. Also, do not forget to join my FriendZone by signing up for my newsletter. Consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.t below.

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One Reply to “Insufficient Space on SD card – Super easy Fix in 10 seconds”

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