Which digital camera memory should you use?

When buying digital camera memory also called flash memory cards, the most important is to choose the right card for your camera. Different cameras on the market do not always use the same type of memory. Different cards have different read and write speed, but this is only important when using cameras capable of shooting many pictures per second.The exception is if your camera records VGA-quality MPEG-4 movies which reqiures carsd with relative high-speed writing capabilities.

Capacity
The big advantage with the memory cards is you can use them over and over again. You can also shoot and store many more pictures (hundreds or even thousands)on one card compared to the biggest 35 mm film rolls which is up to 36 photos only.

The number of photos you can store on the memory card is dependent on how big card you use and which resolution your are storing the photos on the card. Different manufacturer use different brands of memory cards, so be aware of this before purchasing your card.

Over the last year the prices on memory cards have dropped significantly, so it is good to have e few extras. No you can get 8 Gb cards and even bigger, but I prefer having several 4 GB cards. Why? Only because of the risk that one of the cards fails. In that case I have not put all my images in one basket (the card that fails).

Write speed
Even if your camera can shoot 3 or more frames per second, how often (unless you are a sports photographer) do you shoot at such a speed? Both my recent DSLR’s (Nikon D70 and D300) have this possibilities but I personally have not used this feature very often. I have of course tried shooting series of photos. In all this cases the “moderate" Extreme II Compact Flash card have had no problems saving at the maximum camera speed – even in RAW format.

The most used digital camera memory cards

Compact Flash Cards (CF)
Compact flash cards come in two types, type I and type II in many different storage capacities. Because of their very good writing capabilities and availability in high capacity cards, Compact Flash is widely used in DSLR cameras.

Among manufacturers using CF are Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Casio, Fujifilm, and Olympus. In physical size CF are the biggest of the cards and not commonly used in the smallest digital cameras.

Secure Digital/MultiMedia Card (SD/MMC)
SD cards are widely supported by different types of consumer electronics. The small size makes the SD/MMC suitable in compact devices.

Among manufacturers using SD/MMC are Canon, Casio, Epson, HP, Kodak, Nikon, Panasonic, Pentax and Samsung.

XD Picture card
XD cards are the most recent and advanced cards on the marketXD cards are very small and save photos very rapidly.

Most of the new Fuji and Olympus digital camera models use the XD Flash card.

Memory Sticks
The Memory Stick Pro or the miniature Memory Stick Duo pro are the type of memory cards used in Sony products.

A limitation with the Memory Stick cards is that very few manufacturer other than Sony is supporting this storage card.

If you already own a lot of digital camera memory, your choice when buying a new camera (if otherwise the same specifications) could be the camera using the same cards as the one you already have. It is however not a big issue as the prices on storage cards have dropped a lot over the last years.


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