Buying a Memory Card

So you have your digital camera and your lovin' it. Now you are thinking about purchasing some accessories and one of those accessories is a memory card and you're asking yourself - which one do I buy and what do I need?

An extra memory card for your camera is a good purchase. They have also become more affordable over the last few years. Some things to consider when purchasing a memory card for your digital camera.

Storage Capacity:

Size:

Is bigger always better? Let's consider this by asking a few questions.

Do you shoot primarily in a JPG format or a RAW format or do you mostly use JPG and once in awhile switch to RAW?

Smaller Point-and-Shoot Digital Cameras:

Let's use a Canon PowerShot 8 mega pixel for this example using a 1 gig memory card. Using the large JPG image format you will get about 375 pictures with this JPG setting.

If you were to use a smaller JPG setting you will get more pictures on your memory card. On a smaller camera such as this you most likely won't have an option to use the RAW format so we won't cover that here.

So for a camera of this type - fitting over 300 pictures on one memory card isn't bad for casual photography, vacations, kids sporting events, etc.

Should you purchase more than one card? Sure, it's always nice to have extra memory card for backup and if you are on vacation and don't have a way of downloading your pictures from the memory card to a computer then you have your backup waiting to be used.

The other option; knowing how many pictures you can get on a 1 gig card, would be to purchase a 2 gig memory card and double the pictures you can take.

Type of Photography:

To help you determine what JPG setting you should use, next ask yourself what type of photography are you doing.

If you're just taking pictures for websites, blogs, and digital photo frames, then you don't necessarily need your camera set to the largest JPG setting - a smaller JPG setting will work and you'll get more pictures on your memory card.

If you will be taking pictures knowing your going to print them out and give them as a gift or hang them on your wall then you will probably want to use the larger JPG setting.

Using the 1 gig memory card example above along with the type of photography you will be doing should help you determine what size memory card you need to buy.

Digital SLR Cameras:

For this example, let's use the Canon 20D 8 mega pixel digital camera, again using a 1 gig memory card as our base example.

JPG Setting:

We'll be using the larger JPG image format to start. If you own a digital SLR camera you will have spent the extra money to get good quality pictures plus the convenience of being able to use other lenses and additional advantages and features with your camera - so I won't cover the use of smaller JPG formats in this example.

With a camera of this type you will get about 250 pictures on a 1 gig memory card. This is not bad for walking around taking casual pictures on a day outing or again one of your kids sporting events or a party.

But - if you are using your camera on the larger JPG setting and are shooting in burst mode because your photographing a motorcycle race or a golfing event - you can blow through 250 pictures before the events are done; so chances are you'll want to have a larger memory card.

RAW Setting:

If you will be photographing a wedding or some other special event and you choose to photograph it using a RAW image format you will only get a handful of pictures.

For instance if you're using a medium RAW image format for the Canon 20D you will only get about 90 pictures using a 1 gig card and if you're using a large RAW image format you will only get about 80 pictures on a 1 gig memory card.

That's not a lot of pictures before you have to change to another memory card. Shooting in a RAW image format gives you higher image quality over JPG, therefore less pictures on the memory card. RAW image formats are uncompressed or use lossless compression, meaning more detail within the file and larger file sizes.

So overall for a camera like the Canon 20D 8 mega pixel range a 1 gig card won't get you far; so in my opinion, bigger Is better.

Again having a backup memory card or two is always a good idea; after all - a memory card can fail. I have quite a few memory cards that keep in a case that clips on my jeans.

Brands of Memory Cards:

I will typically purchase the Extreme SanDisk compact flash memory cards, my husband likes the Kodak SD memory cards.

Because I never know what I can end up taking pictures of, I like to keep larger memory cards in my carrying case.

There are other brand names in memory cards such as:

• Lexar memory cards
• PNY memory cards
• Sony memory cards
• Panasonic memory cards

Have fun with your photography, whatever you do.