UltimateSLR.com presents

Ultimate
Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide
The Ultimate Guide to Buying Your First Digital Camera

Memory prices are dropping every day. Watch for rebates which can save you even more!

Don’t Forget the Memory

More Memory = Better

Today, the most popular memory cards are in the $40-60 range, which is for 64-128MB of memory. While some people might recommend getting one massive card, say 256MB, to avoid having to change cards frequently, I disagree. I had two 128MB cards two years ago, and one went bad after 18 months. If that had been a 256MB or 512MB card, I would have been upset. If you think you need 512MB of memory, I think it's best to split that in half and go for two 256MB cards.

The most popular types of flash memory cards for use in digital cameras are:

CompactFlash (CF)

SmartMedia (SM)

Memory Stick (MS) MultiMediaCard (MMC)

Secure Digital (SD)

xD-Picture Card (xD)

What Is Flash Memory?

Flash memory is a safe, highly reliable form of storage that doesn't need power to hold the images after they are saved. It won't erase the images unless you choose to do so.

If you’re interested in the technical side of flash memory, check out this article at Intel, and a nice description of the different types of flash memory are here.

How Many Pictures on One Memory Card?

This is a tough question to answer, but the people over at Crucial Technology have a nice page that describes the number of photos you might get on different sizes of memory cards.

Microdrives

Professional photographers that take many large images swear by these devices. The same size as a normal compact flash memory card, they can store anywhere from 1GB to 4GB (yes, gigabytes) of data! The downside is that they really are a tiny hard disk, which means that while they designed to withstand some shock, I would not want to have thousands of images on it and accidentally drop it!

Storing Thousands of Images While on the Go

I spotted the Photo Wallet from VideoChip Technologies some time ago, and have since found other devices that let you dump the contents of a memory card to a large hard disk, then erase the memory card to continue taking pictures. These come in really handy if you’re going to be away from your PC for a long period of time, and don’t want to have to buy a ton of memory cards.

The Photo Wallet is unique in that it has a display on it that lets you see the images, and optionally delete them. Most other devices only store the images with no viewing capabilities.

Where to Buy

I’ve had good luck buying memory cards at both Amazon.com and Buy.com. Watch for rebates at both companies, as well as for free shipping offers. BestBuy and CircuitCity, as well as WalMart, often have sales on memory cards.

I’ve used Viking and SANdisk compact flash memory cards without problems... stay away from generic ‘no name’ cards. One of my first buys was a card called “Mr. Flash”, and it stopped working 18 months after I got it.

Mr. Flash is nowhere to be see on the internet anymore.

More Information

Search Froogle for Flash Memory Prices.

Steve’s Digicams has a nice review of the different memory card options.

DPReview compares different Compact Flash memory cards.

HowStuffWorks has an article on how these memory card work.