Will my 8 g card handle star trails...

[NancyMoranG]

I am back in Borrego Springs, Ca for a few nights. It is a dark sky location. I want to take advantage of it with trying star trails.
I want to try and get some with that 'circular' look of trails behind/over a foreground statue.
I only have an 8 gig and a 4 gig card. Nikon D7000, 11-16 Tokina, great tripod.
Is that enough space to try this? Maybe I only get part of the look but will gain knowledge which is a huge effort on my part.

Was going to download Sequator for when I can download them. Not techie, but this sounds like appropriate program to process...?
Have PSE 11 but not good with layers.
Do I HAVE to shoot raw as these are surely NOT going to be enlarged/winners!
Thanks, I know it's a lot to ask..

I learned ALOT from this shot 2 wks ago. About 2.5 minute exposure. Will get better focus and a different statue away from road.

 

[JBPhotog]

You'll have lots of room since this camera can read to two memory cards, you may want to set the 4 GB as JPEG and the 8GB as NEF. How many photos do you think you will need?

Here's the capacity of shots from your manual page 320.

 

[NancyMoranG]

I should have looked there :{. sorry..
It seems people mention 200 or so photos?

 

[JBPhotog]

No worries, many people lose that darn thing after they rip the box open, LOL.

Yes and depending on your Raw NEF bit depth and Lossless compressed or compressed you should be able to get close to 300. Keeping in mind that these are all guesses based on typical bit data, a dark sky may indeed get you more images on the card.

Have fun with your project.

 

[Derrel]

I think JB is correct that the night sky will allow you to take more photos since there is a lot less detail to be recorded compared to say a typical landscape. My guess is that you'll get 35 to 40% more photos than the manual states, since the detail will be extremely limited, being composed mostly of black sky with tiny pinpoints of starlight.