I recently had the extreme pleasure of purchasing a new digital camera. My camera might not be the most professional or top of the range but I don't mind that, I just love digital cameras photography. Taking pictures and playing around with the functionality (try stitching pictures and skew the overlap for some weird effects) filled up the memory card that came with the camera pretty quick! If I was going to use my camera as much as I wanted, both for work and play, and not have to think about constantly backing up the pictures and deleting from the memory card I was going to need a bigger one!

I almost got into hot water with my hubby! I didn't realize that there are different formated memory cards. Luckily hubby does the actual buying online when I find something as he knows all the passwords and such. He is very sharp with tech stuff and spotted the format straight away and questioned it. If you are like me and are not aware of this and don't have a spouse that is you can waste a bit of money learning. I hope that I can help a few people avoid this!

The memory card formats available are 

• CompactFlash - This card offers a very high storage capacity. This used to be the most popular memory card but in recent times cards that are physically smaller are storing increasingly larger numbers of photos. CompactFlash cards are now only used in some Digital SLRs and sometimes in very advanced compact digital cameras.
• Secure Digital - This card is currently the most widely used card. The reason is that its physical size is smaller and its has more useful storage capacity. There are cards of up to 4 gigabytes available now.
• Memory Stick - This card is used by Sony digital cameras. Memory Stick is just a name, it is not a stick it is just a name given to a type of memory card.
• SmartMedia
• MultiMedia Card (MMC) - This card has the same physical characteristics as Secure Digital Cards but the technology inside is different. This card is usually used as an alternative to SD cards meaning that some digital cameras can use both SD cards and MMC cards.
• xD Picture Card - This card is the smallest digital camera memory card available and is used in the Fuji and Olympus digital cameras. There are currently 3 types available. The first type is the standard card and its drawback was its maximum capacity was limited. The M type xD card was developed with most of the aspects of the original but with greater capacity. This is not compatible with some older Fuji and Olympus digital camreas. The third type is the H type xD card. This card is high speed! I will cover speed in a minute but do want to say here that movies should run smoother when played back using this card.

There are a few exceptions but digital cameras require specific memory card formats and are not compatible with any other type of memory card.

CompactFlash is currently the most popular memory card among manufacturers and is available in the largest size- up to 2 gigabytes. The SmartMedia format may be on the decline with the recent advent of xD cards by Fuji and Olympus.

The price of memory cards is dictated by its brand and speed, there is no need to feel obliged to buy the most expensive card. So long as the format of the digital camera memory card is the right one and the card has a one year warranty you should be fine and the prices of memory cards will fall as the technology develops larger storage capacity. When your new memory card reaches the end of its life you should find there are bigger, better and faster memory cards out there!

Why am I talking about the speed of the memory card? High speed digital camera memory cards record data more quickly allowing for faster shot to shot times. If you really need that speed a few cards to look for are

• Lexar high speed cards
• SimpleTech ProX cards
• SanDisk Ultra cards

In wrapping this up I would like to offer you this suggestion, have a look for a good memory card reader to go with your memory card. This will make life much easier when you want to move pictures to your computer for storage. The operation of a reader is much simpler and eliminates the need for connecting your camera to the computer. Some readers will even plug directly into your PC card slot on your laptop.

I hope this has helped and happy snapping!