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Digital Storage Calculator
Estimate how much storage your photos and videos need, and see a practical capacity tier to shop for.
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Rule of thumb: consumer 4K video eats roughly 30 GB per hour at common bitrates — so an hour of 4K needs about six times the space of the same hour at 1080p. Use the calculator below to size your storage for photos and video together.
Storage per hour by resolution
| Resolution | Approx. storage per hour |
|---|---|
| 1080p | ~8 GB |
| 4K | ~30 GB |
| 8K | ~120 GB |
High-frame-rate, high-bitrate, or professional (log/RAW) footage can be several times larger, so treat these as consumer baselines.
What capacity should you buy?
| You shoot… | Practical capacity |
|---|---|
| Occasional 4K clips | 256–512 GB |
| Regular 4K vlogging | 1–2 TB |
| Heavy 4K/8K or archives | 4 TB+ (SSD or NAS) |
Where to store it
- microSD / SD — in-camera capture. See how many photos 128GB holds.
- Portable SSD — fast offload and editing on the go.
- External HDD / NAS — cheap bulk archiving.
Size it precisely with our Digital Storage Calculator, then compare portable SSDs and high-speed SD cards on Amazon.