Capturing and Storing your Digital Files

Digital cameras use removable storage cards to capture and store images. There are quite a variety of memory cards available, but it isn’t too confusing deciding which one you need because most digital cameras only use one sort.

Some of the more popular memory cards include;

SD (Secure Digital) which are a very popular memory card type as they are small, reliable, and have a high capacity.

SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) which look identical to an SD card, however these memory cards employ a new technology, giving them a greater capacity than SD cards. You should be aware that while you are able to us SD cards n the majority of cameras that support SDHC the same is not true in reverse so make sure you check before purchasing one.

Compact Flash cards are in larger, high end digital cameras and they come in a very wide variety of storage capabilities scaling all the way up to 16 gigabites of picture data.

Some camera manufacturers have their own memory devices like the xD-Picture Card designed by Fuji and Olympus, and Sony’s Memory Stick.

It is always wise to read through your digital cameras manual (I know it can be boring and sometimes a little confusing but you may learn a few things and can save you some heartache and frustration) to see what maximum capacity memory card your camera will allow because some older cameras won’t accept new high capacity memory cards.

Speed is also worth looking at when purchasing a memory card. Speed refers to the time it takes for your images to be recorded onto the card and how long for the images to be downloaded onto your computer. You can view the speed which is marked on the card with a number and an x sign : 66x, 90x, 133x etc. The higher the number, the faster the memory card. Speed is important when you are shooting a lot of pictures quickly because if the card is too slow there will be a delay between pictures as the image takes time to buffer. So if you hate missing pictures (I know I do) then go for the fastest card speed possible.

As a professional photographer who shoots enormous numbers of images every week, it is important to employ efficient digital asset management systems. Now that is simply a fancy way of saying  I need to store and catalogue my images. Now you may not have as many images as me to worry about but as your photographic library increases you will need to think about where to store your pictures.  So that’s what we will discuss next and show you how not to bog your poor old computer down to a snails pace.

Compact Flash memory card

SD Secure Digital memory card