Choosing the Right Camera Memory Card

Camera memory is an essential and often overlooked piece of digital photography equipment. There are many types of memory and it's a good idea to consider what type of memory a camera uses before you buy your first digital camera. It's also important to make sure you have enough memory before you take pictures of an important event or leave for vacation. Although memory cards are reusable, they don't have a limitless capacity and it's always good to have more than you actually need.

Most digital cameras come with very low capacity memory cards. If you're shopping for your first canon camera make sure to budget for an additional card. It's a safe bet that the card that comes with your camera is woefully inadequate. And as camera megapixel counts grow, higher capacity camera memory cards become necessary.

Canon camera manufacturer publish tables on their Web sites to show how many images you can save on their included camera memory card. There is no fixed rule for the number of photos you can put on one card because different image file types, different amounts of compression, and image content all affect the size of each file. But the manufacturer's site is a good place to start when you decide how much memory you want. As a general rule, I'd recommend at least a 1 gigabyte or two 1 gigabyte cards if you're buying a 3-5 megapixel compact digital camera. If you want to shoot lots of high resolution TIFF or RAW files, then you'll probably want to look at 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte cards.

While there are several types of memory cards on the market, most cameras are designed to use only one type, with a few having two card slots. You need to buy the right type of card for your camera. If your camera did not come with a memory card (and that’s quite common these days), check your owner’s manual to be sure you purchase the right type.

If it did come with a card, that card is likely way too small. Take it with you to the store and buy the same type in a larger capacity. Cards do have speed ratings that indicate how fast they can store and retrieve data, but only the high-end pro cameras can really support the fastest cards.