How Many Pictures Can 32GB Hold?

Memory cards, flash drives, hard drives, SSDs, all of these devices are meant for storage. However, their capacity can be slightly confusing when it comes to photographs. So, how to make sure you do not run out of space? Well, it’s not that difficult. A few points to understand and you will be good to go. If you were wondering how many pictures a 32GB can hold, or how many photographs can be stored in a 64 GB container, we are here to help.

Table of Contents

A Guide to Memory Card Capacity

While buying memory cards and such for your phone or camera, it is crucial to make sure you get one with the right capacity. Memory cards come in a variety of sizes and can hold data accordingly. Most newer models have a capacity from 16GB and can range up to 1TB. If you are running low on memory, something like Photostick might help you out as well.

First comes understanding how much size a single picture can take up. Well, that depends on the quality of the picture. If your camera takes high-definition photos, you can bet a single picture can take up a whole lot of space. So, how many pictures can 32GB hold? Let us look further.

What affects the Size of a Photo?

There are a few things that affect the size of each individual image.

Image resolution: A higher resolution means a bigger photo. A general 720p HD image with a resolution of 1280×720 takes up less space on your memory card than a full 1080p HD image with a resolution of 1920×1080. It is a highly significant factor increasing/decreasing the size of an image. Essentially, this is pixel dimensions. More pixels on the screen makes for a larger sized photo. In a 1280×720 image, there are 1280 horizontal pixels and 720 vertical pixels.
Image format: Image formats also affect the size of your picture. For example, if you are shooting in a compressed jpg format, you could potentially save some space. However, if you are using uncompressed image formats, like raw and PNG, you might see a drastic increase in individual file size. Converting a bigger sized photo to a compressed one can allow you to save some space.
Bit depth: Bit depth refers to how many ‘bits’ of information are used to store color information. A higher bit depth means more accurate colors, and a larger file size. A more vivid image obviously has a higher bit depth and better colors.

When it comes to videos, there are also a few things that affect their size. Videos can get exceptionally big in size and can effectively reduce the total usable space on your memory card. A higher resolution, better frames per second, and a lengthier video can all account to a bigger individual space of your videos.

How many Pictures can 32GB hold?

To answer the question about how many pictures can 32GB hold, let us first see how many pictures you can store per GB of memory.

Well, since image size is highly dependent on quality of the image. We can also answer in a rough estimate. Essentially in 1GB of digital storage, you could hold as many as 1000 photos to as few as 200. This totally depends on the resolution of the image, format, and bit depth that constitute the total size of an individual photograph.

A photograph taken from a competent camera or phone can easily be 1MB to 5MB. This means, you could potentially store an approximate of 292 images on a memory card of 1GB. You could check how much megapixels your camera shoots and make a decision there.

Photos you can store per GB of Space

A better camera obviously takes a better photograph which can have a larger space. Here is a chart that might help you understand how much space a single photo can be and how many you can save per GB.

Megapixels	File Size (MB)	Images Per GB
5.5MP	1.7	588
8MP	2.4	417
10MP	3.0	333
11MP	3.3	303
12MP	3.6	277
16.6MP	5.0	200
18MP	5.2	192

Photos you can store per 16GB of Space

Going by the chart above, you can store a whole lot of photos on just 16GB of storage. Obviously as we have already discussed, a better, high-quality photo takes more space and can effectively reduce the number of photos you can store on a single memory card.

12MP: 4,400 photos

16.6MP: 3,200 photos

24.2MP: 326 photos

Photos you can store per 32GB of Space

32GB storage is plenty if you only indulge in basic photography. If you are an avid outdoorsman that loves to capture everything, they can using a really good quality camera, 32GB is just enough and you would definitely require more of the same or a higher capacity memory card. However, there is still a lot of photos you can store on a 32GB memory.