Digital Memory Cards Are Pretty Cool
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by: jwjohnson
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Honey, did you remember to buy film? Is there film in the camera? Have we used all the film? Well, those days of questions are pretty much in the past. Thanks to the digital revolution, digital memory cards are the digital equivalent of film. These small removable memory cards are what digital cameras use to store the photos they have taken. Most of these memory cards measured in gigabytes (GB) and still popular, the megabytes (MB) digital memory cards are still available. These digital memory cards can store hundreds of digital images depending upon the format.
Here is the beauty of a digital memory card. When the card is full, you have the option to either delete images from the card or transfer them to a computer or storage device to free up space for additional pictures. Obviously, you aren't buying more film, just storing them on your PC. With the cost of storage continuously dropping and the size of hard drives increasing, you could store thousands of photos on your home computer.
Digital Memory Cards are not just used for digital cameras but can also be used in your MP3 Players, PDA, cell phones, and computers. The most popular use of digital memory cards outside of photographic use is the storage of music so you can play it back on your MP3 player. Do you have a large collection of CDs? Just think how many of those CDs will fit on a 1 GB digital memory card.
JPEG, TIFF, uncompressed RAW formats. Is this some kind of disease? Many digital cameras will you let you store the digital images in these formats. The higher the quality of the image, the larger the digital image size is of your photo. If you plan to do some editing of your digital images, then you want to go with TIFF or RAW formats. Most folks will be happy with the quality of the JPEG or JPG images. It is your call.
The majority of digital cameras come standard with 32MB memory cards that quite honestly do not have enough memory even for normal use. If this is your first digital camera, you will be shooting lots of photos and find yourself not having enough memory. Be prepared to at least buy a 250 Meg digital memory card. If you shoot a lot of photos, you will quickly wish you had bought a bigger digital memory card instead of the 250 Meg card.
Digital Memory cards with storage of capacity of 2 GB are on the market. You can be assured this will change in the future. Remember when computers came out and you had 512 MB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive? You said I will never need anything faster or bigger in storage. Have you eaten those words? Digital memory is changing.
Let's discuss the formats of digital memory cards. There are several memory card formats available, including CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), mini-SD, Memory Stick, SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card (MMC), and xD Picture Card. With all these types of digital storage, you could get very confused. Your digital camera requirements will dictate the format that you use.
With the exception of a few cameras that can accommodate two types of storage device, digital cameras requires a specific memory card format and unfortunately are not compatible with any other type of memory cards. Maybe someday there will be a digital standard for digital cameras. That would sure make life easier. Remember your choice, 8-track, 4-track, cassette now there is CD's and DVD's. It could happen!
CompactFlash is currently the most popular among camera manufacturers and is also available in the largest size - up to 2 gigabytes! Fortunately, the different formats offer comparable image quality, though they vary in speed and available memory. The xD cards from Fuji may be contributing to the demise of the SmartMedia. If you are not hung up on a particular camera, then you might consider bonus of digital media cards being able to swap the memory card from a digital camera to a future device like a digital MP3 players, PDA, or other handheld devices.
High speed memory cards record data more quickly and allow you to shoot faster are available at some retailers or on the web. The brands names for the faster memory cards are Lexar high speed cards, SimpleTech ProX cards, or SanDisk Ultra cards. They are much faster than standard memory cards. Again, remember, these cards for now cost more than regular digital memory cards.
The price of memory cards are falling while the digital capacity is increasing. Think about it, faster and more storage is better in digital photography. Enjoy your new hobby!
About the Author
Jerry Johnson owns the Cool Digital Products as well as several other successful webstores. Visit Cool Digital Products for great values on digital memory cards.
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