Memory Cards

Memory cards comes in several formats - CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD), xD, Memory Stick and Smartmedia. The format of your choice will almost certainly depend on the format used by the item you plan to use the card with - most commonly today, this will be a digital camera.

The memory cards used in most modern cameras are virtually indestructible, according to tests conducted by Digital Camera Shopper magazine in 2004.

All Five memory card formats survived being boiled, trampled by a skateboard, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee and cola, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy.

Most of them did fail to get through two additional tests - being smashed by a sledgehammer and being nailed to a tree - although, even then, data experts were able to retrieve photos from the xD and Smartmedia cards.

Photo printing retailers are seeing a drop off in traditional camera film processing and are, instead, pushing services that turn electronic images into prints.

Around eight out of 10 digital pictures are thought to never make it into printed form at all - but for the end user this means that every picture which is printed is a picture we want. No more waste.

The different types of memory card are physically different and not interchangeable.

SD Cards

Currently (2005) the most popular flash memory format for digital cameras is undoubtedly the Secure Digital (SD) card.

SD and MMC (MultiMediaCard) cards are nearly identical on the outside but technically different on the inside and SD cards are much faster than MMC cards.

SD cards have become the flash memory card of choice for digital cameras because of their small size and low power consumption.

SD cards come in a range of storage sizes and in different transfer speed ratings. Most SD cards not marked "High Speed" or "Ultra High Speed" are probably only 2Mb/s capable but the latest cards are capable of transferring data at 8-10Mb/s.

MiniSD Cards

MiniSD cards, for cellphones, MP3 players, and potentially digicams, are both electrically and software compatible with the existing SD standard but only 21.5 mm long, 20 mm wide and 1.4 mm thick.

Adapter to allow miniSD cards to be used in devices with regular SD card slots.

CompactFlash

CompactFlash cards contain both memory chips and a controller. Most digicams that use CompactFlash (CF) cards can use any capacity card up to 1GB and poissibly 2GB with no problems but CF cards above 2GB use the FAT32 file system and the camera must be able to read this format or it won't work.

There are two types of CompactFlash cards

• Type I (3.3mm thick)
• Type II (5mm thick)

Cameras with Type I slots cannot use Type II cards but cameras with Type II slots can use either.

Physically a CF Type II card looks like a CF Type I card in every dimension except thickness. CF Type II cards are 5mm thick whereas Type I cards are 3.3mm.

SmartMedia

Physically smaller than a book of matches and thinner than a credit card, SmartMedia (SM) cards have no controller. They are simply memory that has been laminated on a plastic card.

This means that the controller has to be built into the camera and this causes incompatibilities with cameras made before 2001 and the higher capacity 64MB and 128MB size cards.

If you have a pre-2001 camera, before you buy a 64 or 128MB card, it's important to check and see whether your camera can accomodate it.

Fuji and Olympus were two of the biggest users of SmartMedia cards and they are both now using their new xD-Picture Card media, so SmartMedia cards may be on the way out!

xD-Picture Card (xD)

Olympus and Fuji have jointly developed the xD-Picture Card, a new type of memory media with an ultra-compact design about the size of a postage stamp, image storage capacity of up to 8 gigabytes and compatibility with different digital camera brands.

The xD-Picture Card is in response to the needs of consumers using today's high resolution digital still cameras that require greater memory capacity. With initial sizes from 16 to 128 megabytes at introduction, and followed by larger sizes up to 8 gigabytes in the future.

There are xD-Picture Card PCMCIA adapters, CF card adapters and a dual xD and SmartMedia USB card reader available.

Sony Memory Stick (MS)

In 1999 Sony brought out their own flash memory product called the Memory Stick which is being used in most of their Cyber-shot digital still cameras and many of their Handycam video camcorders.

The new Sony Memory Stick Pro memory cards have capacities up to 2GB but are not compatible with most pre-2003 Sony digicams. A newer card reader is also required to handle the MS Pro cards, older card readers will not work. MS Pro cards have much faster transfer speeds.

External Card Readers

The fastest way to get information from a flash memory card is to use one of the readily available card readers. These come in many varieties depending on the desired computer interface. The most common type are made for PCs and connect to the USB port.