February 16, 2011
 February 16, 2011. Copyright ©
2011
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Most of the cameras have built-in memory, typically on the order of
32MB to 128MB. However a good quality 10-12MP (mega pixels) image takes
up about 3-4MB (megabytes), so such storage is sufficient for only a
few images. To really make good use of your camera you need to buy a
flash memory card. And the camcorders are increasingly using flash
memory as well.
How do you decide what card to purchase? There are five things that
matter in selecting the card to buy: the
type of card, the capacity, the speed, the price, and reliability.
First you should check what type of card your camera takes. Most
cameras will use Secure Digital (SD) or Secure Digital High Capacity
(SDHC) cards. SD cards go up to 4GB (gigabytes), SDHC up to 32GB. Some
use (in addition or instead) microSD cards, CompactFlash (CF),
Multimedia Card (MMC) xD-Picture Card (xD), Smart Media (SM) or Memory
Stick (MS). Check your camera’s specifications to make sure you are
getting the right type of card – you can’t fit an SD card into a
microSD slot, etc.
To figure out what capacity you will need, you should determine what
are you going to use the camera for. Are you going to be taking many
pictures or few pictures? As we mentioned, for a good quality picture
you should “budget” 3-4MB. So a low-end (capacity-wise) 2GB card can
store 2GB : 4MB = about 500 images. If you typically take a few
pictures and upload them to a computer, a 2GB card would be quite
sufficient. On the other hand, if you are planning to go on a long trip
and not taking computer with you, you may need larger capacity card.
But the most important capacity question is whether you plan to take
videos with your camera. Even if it’s not a camcorder, most digital
cameras can take videos, some can even take HD videos. If you plan to
take videos, you have to check what format(s) the camera uses to store
videos. Many of the digital cameras use low-compression video formats
such as Motion JPEG, where 720p video can easily take 8-12 GB per one
hour of content. Camcorders typically use higher compression, such as
MPEG-4, where even high quality video takes only 2-4 GB per hour. So a
32GB SDHC card will give you 8-16 hours of HD video content on a
camcorder, but only 3-4 hours on a typical digital camera.
SDHC cards also carry “Class” designation, which refers to their
writing speed. Class 2 is 2MB/sec transfer speed, Class 4 is 4MB/sec,
Class 6 is 6MB/sec, Class 10 is 20MB/sec. If you plan to take videos,
look for at least Class 4 and preferably 6 or higher.
If you are using a digital camera with Motion JPEG video encoding,
Class 4 will work but it’s better to get a Class 6 card.
Price-wise, SDHC cards are the cheapest, they now cost only
$10-20 for an 8GB card that would store about 2,000 images taken with a
12MP camera. If you plan to take videos, buy at least a 16GB SDHC card
which will cost $20-30. 32GB SDHC cards run about $50. Non-SDHC types
of cards typically cost at
least 50% more per GB. If you plan to upload pictures to your computer
and erase them from the card, it does not make much difference. Some
people like to keep photos or videos on cards as a storage backup. With
many inexpensive online storage options this is probably not necessary
anymore, but if that’s your choice, you may want to stick with SD
card-compatible cameras to keep the costs down.
Lastly, consider what company you should buy from. There are many
different companies to choose from when one buys a flash memory card.
SanDisk, Kingston and Lexar have been around the longest and are
considered highly reliable. However this is not to say you should never
consider the other cards from the other companies, such as PNY, Centon,
PQI, or Dane-Elec.
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