Digital Camera Memory Cards
Every digital camera uses memory cards as to store place for your photos. It is like ‘digital film’. In this web blog, we give a guideline to choose the memory type you need.
What is Memory Card
Simply, it is the memory what you have in the digital camera. It is physically a small chip. Its alternative name is ‘flash memory’. It stores the entirely data which makes up your photos. It is always removable and stuck into the removable memory card slot. The removal of the card will not mean you loss the images. The card safely keep them up and any later time these images can be printed out or downloaded from it.
Almost every digital camera has some in-built memory as well but these far too small sized that it would be enough for more than a few photos. Usually, you need to buy a fair sized memory extra memory card for your use at purchasing your digital camera. You can find the type of cards you can use on the camera box or in its User’s Manual.
There are numerous types of removable memory cards with different memory capacities. The memory size is measured in megabytes (MB) and in gigabytes (GB). The usual capacity range is 1 MB up to 32GB. We note here that 1 gigabyte card means that it has a 1024 times more storage capacity than 1 megabyte card has.
Compact-Flash (CF) Cards Type I and Type II
These are widely used memory cards. These have been around since we had digital cameras. The are durable memory cards with up to 16GB capacity or so. IBM MicroDrives is Type II CF card. It is like miniature hard discs made for the use of your camera.
MultiMediaCards (MMC) and SecureDigital (SD) Cards
They look similar but they are not necessarily compatible with every digital camera. If a camera accept MMC it may not SD card or the revers also can be true.
The SD card has a built-in copyright protection.
The SD card are nowadays also available in MiniSD format which is the mini version of SD card. Recently, there is new new form – the high capacity version of SD card. It is called SDHC card. This can come out with 1GB.
The MMC cards is ideal for multimedia purposes such as MP3, audio and image files. The MMC also can be used in some mobile phones.
Memory Stick (MS)
It is Sony own memory card. It is used with many other Sony products from TV to digital cameras. The new version of MS are the Memory Stick Duo and Pro. The storage capacity for these cards is 128MB to 8GB.
xD picture Cards (xD)
This memory card format is used in Fuji and Olympus digital cameras. These are very small cards which makes it possible manufacturing the digital camera even smaller. The typical maximum storage capacity for these cards nowadays is 4GB.