All About Digital Camera Memory Cards

Memory cards are a type of memory data storage device for digital data. If you have a digital camera you will probably need a SD card which means Secure Digital. These cards can store up to 2 GB of data. If you need something with more capacity you will need a SDHC which can store up to 32GB. Recently we have seen in the market SDXC of 64GB. As digital cameras, including the point and click, become more powerful memory cards with higher capacity become a must. All the major digital camera producers including Canon, Nikon, Sony and Olympus endorse SD memory cards. SDHC and SDXC have also a faster transfer speed (if you want to take a quick succession of fast action photos you will be better off with a faster memory cards).

Not all older digital camera will support SDHC and especially SDXC and might have problems accepting cards that can hold more than 4GB but as they tend to be cameras with a lower resolution that those currently on the market a 2GB SD card should be just fine. If you have a much older camera it might not even accept SD and might need something like a Memory Stick.

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When you first buy a camera you will be able to take some photos with the inbuilt memory but beware this might mean that you can only store up to ten photos at a decent resolution therefore if you want to go out and take several photos you need to have a memory card. You are advised to buy at least one memory card when you buy your camera (and you might also get a discount). It is very wise to buy several memory cards, especially when shooting an important event or going on holidays, as one can get corrupted and you don't want to lose all your photos. Digital camera memory cards are rewritable, which means you can use the same again again once you have deleted the data, and are not very expensive.

SDHC cards have different speeds which are marked on the front of the card with Class 2,4,6,8,10. Class 10 is the fastest to write the data down and therefore it will ideal to take photographs of fast action and record videos (although it can only go as fast as the camera allows it, most cameras are more than happy with a Class 6 and a faster memory card will not make them any faster).