Digital Photograph: Memory Cards explained
Digital Photograph: Memory Cards explained
By Jennifer Clarkson
What is a Memory Card?
A memory card is a storage device commonly used by digital cameras to write digital photos. It is a mechanism to store your photos, and later transfer them to computer for processing and printing. Essentially, a memory card is to a digital camera what a hard drive is to a computer. That means that the size of your memory card directly affects how many images you can store, and the speed of your memory card directly affects the how fast your camera can read and write photos!
The Need for Speed
As digital cameras evolve to store higher quality images, image size increases, and it becomes more important to find a memory card that is fast enough to write these images before you want to take another shot. Compact Flash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD) formats are two types of memory cards that are improving their speeds dramatically to keep up with high megapixel counts in newer cameras. Not only does a faster memory card allow you to take a second shot sooner, but it also results in quicker download to your computer. The larger your memory card's storage limit, the more important transfer speed becomes. Otherwise, a 2 GB memory card might require an hour of transfer time!
Memory card speeds are measured based on a standard where 1x equals the transfer of 150 KB per second. That means that a 10x memory card transfers data at a rate of 1.5 MB per second and a 133x memory card transfers data at a rate of almost 20 MB per second. These numbers usually indicate the best possible rate when the card is used with a camera that has a super fast recording capability. Certainly not every digital camera is coded in such a way as to take advantage of these peak transfer rates, so you may wish to research very fast cards before purchasing. For example, Lexar has a line of 133x memory cards, but the super fast rates required cameras to be designed specifically with their card's technology in mind - in this case, they provided a list of cameras that would result in fast rates, but my camera wasn't on the list.
There are two types of speeds you should be aware of, each of which is measured relative to 1x:
1) Write speed - the time it takes your camera to save an image to the memory card
2) Read speed - the time it takes your camera to open an image on the memory card
For more tips on memory card care and maintenance, or to read more photography articles, please visit Jennifer Clarkson's website at http://www.jclarksonphotography.com. To learn more about the books in her eSeries on Digital Photography, or to promote sales, please visit the following sites: Choosing your camera and accessories
Getting the Most out of your Camera's Basic Settings
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Clarkson
By Jennifer Clarkson
What is a Memory Card?
A memory card is a storage device commonly used by digital cameras to write digital photos. It is a mechanism to store your photos, and later transfer them to computer for processing and printing. Essentially, a memory card is to a digital camera what a hard drive is to a computer. That means that the size of your memory card directly affects how many images you can store, and the speed of your memory card directly affects the how fast your camera can read and write photos!
The Need for Speed
As digital cameras evolve to store higher quality images, image size increases, and it becomes more important to find a memory card that is fast enough to write these images before you want to take another shot. Compact Flash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD) formats are two types of memory cards that are improving their speeds dramatically to keep up with high megapixel counts in newer cameras. Not only does a faster memory card allow you to take a second shot sooner, but it also results in quicker download to your computer. The larger your memory card's storage limit, the more important transfer speed becomes. Otherwise, a 2 GB memory card might require an hour of transfer time!
Memory card speeds are measured based on a standard where 1x equals the transfer of 150 KB per second. That means that a 10x memory card transfers data at a rate of 1.5 MB per second and a 133x memory card transfers data at a rate of almost 20 MB per second. These numbers usually indicate the best possible rate when the card is used with a camera that has a super fast recording capability. Certainly not every digital camera is coded in such a way as to take advantage of these peak transfer rates, so you may wish to research very fast cards before purchasing. For example, Lexar has a line of 133x memory cards, but the super fast rates required cameras to be designed specifically with their card's technology in mind - in this case, they provided a list of cameras that would result in fast rates, but my camera wasn't on the list.
There are two types of speeds you should be aware of, each of which is measured relative to 1x:
1) Write speed - the time it takes your camera to save an image to the memory card
2) Read speed - the time it takes your camera to open an image on the memory card
For more tips on memory card care and maintenance, or to read more photography articles, please visit Jennifer Clarkson's website at http://www.jclarksonphotography.com. To learn more about the books in her eSeries on Digital Photography, or to promote sales, please visit the following sites: Choosing your camera and accessories
Getting the Most out of your Camera's Basic Settings
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Clarkson
posted by Richard's Photography | Wednesday, November 15, 2006
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