# Digital Camera's can only take X number of photo's, and no more? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 19, 2000, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542 "2000-10-19T15:28:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/21 "2000-10-19T19:57:20Z")
\>\> You are right but this would apply also to film cameras. \>\> And the human eye. You are right and sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything there is to see. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/22 "2000-10-19T20:20:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MadHatter \* > \*\*If you have forever to take/make pictures, you would eventually get to a point where NO MATTER WHAT you took a photo of, you would already have a photo of it. You physically could not take a photo that you didn’t already have. > > Am I wrong? \*\* Well…you’re not wrong, but from a computational point of view it’s not a very interesting observation because the universe would probably have cooled to an ember before you went through all the possibilities. For example, it’s pretty much a truism that chess is a deterministic game, but one which is computationally infeasible to work out, and that’s just an 8x8 grid with 6 different pieces. A digital camera is (well, mine is) 1200 \* 1800 with, I think, a 24 bit color depth. So what’s that combinatorially, about (2.2 x 10 \*\* 6) \*\* 2 \*\* 24? Not as large as you’d get if you computed combinations based on the resolution of film, but still a really, really big number. Interestingly enough, you can apply this “big number” argument to a lot of things in the computer world. For example, the classic argument that you can never program a computer to be artificially creative because it does “just what you told it to do”. Yeah, but so what? If the computer is generating from a large and interesting set of rules that combine in combinatorial ways, and it has ways of identifying interesting results, then it’s going to produce unexpected and useful results which is the definition of creativity. But I digress… ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/23 "2000-10-19T20:39:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by KarlGauss \* > \*\*The number of labels required is, of course, as huge as the number of permutations allowed. Even if you could label them, distinguishing among the books or images by checking the labels would take as long as reading each book or scrutinizing each image. > \*\* In this case, the book _is_ the label. ---
**Author:** ![ren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@ren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ren)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/24 "2000-10-19T20:48:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Even scarier! One day the SDMB will reach a point at which it will be impossible to make a new, original post. Everything will already have been posted. Isn’t one of the signs of the apocalypse the appearance of a SDMB thread that just happens to contain the complete works of Shakespeare? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/25 "2000-10-19T21:59:00Z")
" 2 million" ? More like a billion. Times the pixel size, say, 1024 x 1024. Could get quite a large amount of pictures. ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/26 "2000-10-19T23:02:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ren \* > **Isn’t one of the signs of the apocalypse the appearance of a SDMB thread that just happens to contain the complete works of Shakespeare?** No, actually that’s just a sign that DRY has too much time on his hands. I think that we’ve got a few threads around that already contain all of the works of Shakespeare that can be used in a flirtatious manner. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/27 "2000-10-19T23:40:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dylan\_73 \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by GaryM \* > > \*\*Just used that as an example of a picture that would be desireable. \*\* > > You desire MadHatter’s Mom? > 😉 \*\* MadHatter is posting pictures of his mom? 😕 Is she single? Is she nekked? Answer the second question first. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2000, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/28 "2000-10-19T23:53:36Z")
Come on, guys. Let’s keep the mother material to the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2000, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/29 "2000-10-20T02:32:06Z")
Well, let’s say I decided to have an Exhibit of All Possible Digital Photos. I’ll use a cheap 640x480 camera, and declare that the human eye can only distinguish 256 colors (which clearly isn’t true), so the number of possible photos is 256[sup]640x480[/sup] = 2x10[sup]739811[/sup]. I can’t hang that many photos, so I’ll just use magnetic tape to store them. A 40GB tape weighs what, 50 grams or so? So that’s a gram per gigabite. File size is about 100K or so, so the whole data set recorded on tape weighs 2x10[sup]739807[/sup] grams. Do you know how big that number is?? Our Sun weighs only 10[sup]33[/sup] grams. The entire Galaxy only weighs 10[sup]44[/sup] grams or so. So I think photographers don’t have to worry about job security for a while. On the other hand, poets may have to worry a bit sooner. For example, there are 50 characters in Japanese, and a Haiku has 17 characters. That’s 7x10[sup]28[/sup] possible Haiku. Store that on magnetic tape and you only end up with a cubical pile 40 miles on each side. ---
**Author:** ![DRY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a87d85/32.png) [@DRY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DRY)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2000, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/30 "2000-10-20T06:01:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Billdo \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by ren \* > > **Isn’t one of the signs of the apocalypse the appearance of a SDMB thread that just happens to contain the complete works of Shakespeare?** > > No, actually that’s just a sign that DRY has too much time on his hands. I think that we’ve got a few threads around that already contain all of the works of Shakespeare that can be used in a flirtatious manner. \*\* Mea Culpa. Mea Summa Culpa. Geez, I open a random thread (I don’t even own a digital camera), only to find my name taken in vain! 😕 ---
**Author:** ![KellyM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/57b2e6/32.png) [@KellyM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyM)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2000, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542/31 "2000-10-20T06:29:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by inertia \* > \*\*If graphics compression works anything like data compression, it doesn’t remove information. It just stores it in a more efficient format. If PKZIP lost half of an .EXE the zippee wouldn’t work upon decompression. For a text file, if there are 50 " "'s in a row, the algorithm replaces 50 bytes of " "'s with one byte containing the number of " "'s and a " " for a total of two bytes. That’s 25:1 compression and no data has been lost. That being said I am aware that .JPG format does drop every forth line or so. I just wanted to point out that compression is not necessarily destructive. \*\* There are two types of compression, “lossless” and “lossy”. PKZIP, and other general purpose compressors, are lossless: they guarantee that the uncompressed file will be identical to the original. However, many video and audio compression formats are “lossy”; they only guarantee that the uncompressed file will be “more or less” the same as the original. They can get away with this because small deviations are generally very obvious. Examples of lossy compression format include JPEG, MPEG, MP3, and the compression format used to encode DVDs. The exact manner in which lossy compressions lose data is complex (it’s not a matter of dropping every fourth line, or anything like that) and hard to explain without graphs and equations, so I won’t bother. 🙂 A classic example of lossy compression of a text is to remove all vowels. “Cn y rd ths?” is comprehensible with a little effort. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-cameras-can-only-take-x-number-of-photos-and-no-more/37542.md?page=1)