How does it feel when your digital camera suddenly runs out of memory when you are in the middle of capturing though your lens? Obviously frustrating that it, hence it is always advisable not to solely depend of the internal memory of the camera and use additional memory cards for digital cameras.
The memory cards which often come with the digital cameras are not adequate and have less capacity. Camera manufactures who provide memory cards and specify the details of its capacity on its specifications list should not be taken as a conclusive proof of judging the capacity of the memory card. The reason being, as you progress with your shooting you may change and re-change the image resolution, format, size and megapixel count, hence it is most likely that your memory card will not be sufficient for your use.
Hence keeping extra memory cards for digital cameras is always a wise decision. These memory cards range from low to high memory space and you can easily choose one to fit your requirement. Memory cards can be erased or formatted and can be re-used. It is a common belief that memory cards can be used forever; however their quality and capacity may deteriorate with use and time.
Is erasing and formatting of memory cards same? No, people often misunderstand the difference between the two and take it to be the same. The purpose of both the functions are same, when you erase you can delete the selected images from your memory; whereas when you format the memory card you lose all the data on the card. The major difference between both the two is that by formatting the performance of the memory card increases, especially if you have been using the same memory card for a long time. Over use of the memory card can make it go sluggish, hence formatting helps in rejuvenating it.
Some of the different types of Memory Cards for Digital cameras are as follows:
Compact Flash Cards: these are the cards with amazing capacity and ideal for a large amount of data. They are often used by professional photographers.
Secure Digital Cards: also called SD Card, is the most widely used memory card. They are compact and offer good amount of storage capacity. They come in a rectangular shape and are slanted from one corner.
Memory Stick: Sony has a patent over these types of memory cards. They come in different forms like Memory Stick Duo, Pro and original memory stick. They are slightly longer than the SD memory cards and are only used with Sony cameras and other Sony electronic products.
XD Cards: are specific to Fujifilm, they are smaller in size as compared to the SD card. They were commonly found to be used in older cameras. These XD memory cards are not much in use these days and even Fujifilm cameras offer SD memory card slot. However the present day memory card slots still have the capability to read these obsolete XD cards.