When do people start uploading images from their cameras?
I noticed (well, I've known for years!) that my camera does not seem to reset its image number counter no matter what I do - change memory card, format card, send it in for repairs, and it seems like this is the norm.

So I got to thinking. When I first got it, I took a large number of "scrap" images, just playing with its settings. I wonder if that's normal? How many do people take?

Luckily, with the power of the web, we can attempt to find this out!

On a number of search engines, I searched for various (exp-distributed) searches of the form 'dscfNNNN', then tabulated the results. You can see the resulting graph below (Y axis is percent of maximum from each source).



As you can see, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the first 5 images are binned, at the most, with the majority of people scrapping relatively few initial photos. The speed with which the graph tails off also suggests that either not many people take many photos (ie. most cameras are just chucked in cupboard), that people sort their images more effectively, or that they just don't bother to upload as many once they get through their first memory stick. It may also suggest that some cameras do reset their counter, but then what causes the bulge at around 2-3 photos?

Both results from Google are odd in some way - the web one initially seems to fluctuate a lot, and the images one does it near the end. I presume for images the jump indicates that there's just a cap on the number which results in a second algorithm being used (crossover is at about 35).