How to get more movie space on a digital camera?

I have a Nikon CoolPix L3 camera and when I first got it I had about half an hour of movie that I could work with... now, 2 months later, with a clean memory card, I am only about to use about half of that. Where did the extra 15 minutes go and how do I get it back?

Sounds like the video quality setting accidentally got changed. Most newer digicams have several quality settings. When you switch to higher quality, it uses much more memory.

Put the camera in Video Mode, and go into Menu. Look for Video Quality or Size (I don't know what words your Nikon menu uses.)

Choose a setting with either lower Resolution or lower Frames per Second (fps). Or both. That will give you more minutes, but worse looking video.

If you want the best video, you will have to buy bigger memory cards. I keep a 1 GB card just for video clips.

Good Luck

I also have a Nikon Cool Pix camera/movie camera. You can change the setting on the movie menu, if you want clearer movies you get less memory. If you want more memory set it for less clear settings. I ended up getting a 1GB memory card for $100 or so dollars and now I have over an hour of movie time..

Just buy yourself some more memory cards. They are so cheap now...get a couple of 512MB cards minimum...or more (1-2gig)
When you format your memory card you will lose some space. Thats normal.