Thanks for the memory

[charzes44]

I have bought my son a pre-owned Nikon D80, and fitted a 16Gb Sandisk memory card. However, flicking through the manual, I see that Nikon recommend cards up to only 4Gb for this body. Are there likely to be any issues in using the larger capacity card?

[Inkanyezi]

There shouldn't be any issues, the camera supports SDHC, but when the manual was made, there were no larger cards than 4 GB, so none were tested when the manual was written.

If the camera reports the correct size of the card, it is highly unlikely that there should be any problem.

If, however, the card is reported as 4 GB, the frame counter will not know how much space is left on the card. I have a Coolpix that cannot see more than 1 GB, but there is no problem using a 2 GB card, only that I won't know how many more pictures can be taken on the card. The camera continues writing past the first gigabyte, but the counter then goes bonkers, not knowing how much space is left.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm reasonably confident that I regularly used 8GB cards with my D80 not realizing the manual mentioned only 4 GB. The reason I haven't used 16GB cards is that the D80 became my backup camera that, fortunately, I haven't needed since I bought the 16GB cards.

I don't remember any issues with the counter, but that might be because I rarely notice the counter until I run out of card space.

EDIT: Now that I have checked my catalog, the sequential number in my file-naming convention confirms that I used 8GB cards with it. Such high numbers would not have fit on a 4GB card.

[Manfred M]

Urban's explanation is bang on. It doesn't really matter as to what the card capacity is, but rather what the camera can address. It may not be able to take advantage of the addition memory on the card, but that is really to only issue you are likely to face.

[NorthernFocus]

Goes to show how quickly tech progresses. The D80/D200 doesn't seem that long ago and 4GB was the largest card available. And they were expensive. I was in Costco yesterday and Sandisk 32GB/90MB/s SD cards were going for $25US.

[charzes44]

Many thanks for all your replies. I felt that it would be okay to use the higher capacity card, but I thought that benefitting from your experience would be a good idea! Thank you one and all.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I bought 16gb cards when I first got my D80. Was going to get 8gb but then found the 16's on sale for cheaper so went with them. No problems. I moved them over to my D7000 when I got it. In fact, they're in there right now.

[charzes44]

Good to know. Many thanks.