Digital Camera Memory Cards
05 Feb 2009
Understanding digital camera memory will help you make better choices about what camera to buy, how much memory you need, and which memory card is best for you.
Most digital cameras come with very low capacity memory cards. If you’re shopping for your first digital camera make sure to budget for an additional card. It’s a safe bet that the card that comes with your camera is woefully inadequate. And as camera megapixel counts grow, higher capacity memory cards become necessary.
Now that you know a little more about memory cards, you can start thinking about what to buy.
Memory Card Type
SD (Secure Digital)
The smallest available memory cards, Secure Digital card memory allow for very small cameras and can also be used in selected PDAs, organizers, phones, and MP3 players. The current maximum capacity for Secure Digital cards is 512 MB.
SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity)
SDHC is basically an upgrade to the older SD cards. The reason they upgraded it was to achieve greater data transfer speeds and capacity than previously possible with normal SD cards… and to do this, they had to redesign the card (which is why it’s not compatible with normal SD devices). This was necessary because digital cameras and digital video cameras these days have higher resolutions, which equate to larger file sizes and faster data transfer needs.
CompactFlash
CompactFlash is one of the most common types of digital camera memory. Most high-end digital cameras, and all digital SLRs are CompactFlash compatible.
MultiMedia Cards
Like Secure Digital, the only difference between Secure Digital cards and MultiMedia Cards is secure digital have a write-protect switch for added data security.
SmartMedia
SmartMedia used to be one of the most common types of digital camera storage media. It was used in most Olympus and Fuji digital cameras until the introduction the xD Picture card, in 2002. SmartMedia is available in capacities up to 128 megabytes.
xD
Abbreviated as xD (Extreme Digital), the xD-Picture Card is a type of removable flash memory designed for use in digital cameras. The xD is ultra-compact with its size of 20mm x 25mm x 1.7mm. The xD-Picture Card was developed by Fuji film and Olympus and are used in many models of digital cameras made by Olympus and Fujifilm.
Memory Stick
Memory Stick was developed by Sony for their CyberShot digital cameras and other Sony electronic devices. With the exception of a very few cameras, Memory Stick is only compatible with Sony digital cameras. Sony MP3 players, PDA’s and selected Sony Vaio computers also accept Memory Stick media.
Memory Stick is available in capacities up to 256 MB, and Sony’s new Memory Stick Pro is available in capacities up to one gigabyte.
MicroDrive
The MicroDrive card is actually a miniature hard drive housed in a Type II CompactFlash chassis. The IBM MicroDrive was the first compact memory card to offer a full 1 Gigabyte storage capacity. Although flash memory has bypassed the MicroDrive in capacity, the MicroDrive is still the best buy on a dollar-per-byte basis.
Check more spec and prices at Amazon.com
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2009 Feb 12
[...] images to SD/SDHC/Multimedia cards (not [...]