In today’s digital world, a camera card is simply a necessity. Most camera’s do allow storage on the actual camera, but it will not hold very many pictures. At this point, your option is a removable camera card.
I will spend some time in another article going over the different types of memory cards available, however the question about size was posed to me recently, and I wanted to take a moment to answer.
The first thing you have to consider when purchasing a memory card or upgrading your current camera card, is how many pictures do you take?
If you take dozens of photographs every time you use your camera, chances are a smaller memory card could be filled up real quick.
This is not fun when you are out snapping photographs and all of a sudden you see the little warning telling you that your camera is full. At that point, you have the option of putting in a back up memory card, if you have one. If not, you have to stop taking photographs, or go through and delete some to make room. This means the prized photograph could be deleted unknowingly.
I have about five memory cards because they came with different cameras and I purchased two. I only use the two that I purchase on a regular basis, and keep the others in my camera bag for back ups.
My favorite card is a Kodak 512mb SD card that cost me about $20.00 and holds about 100-150 pictures before it is full. I rarely take more than about 30 or 40 pictures at any event and I typically dump the photographs onto my laptop or a back up drive after any event that I take more than 25 photographs at. This has helped with keeping the camera card free and clear to take more.
Here is a basic run down of a 6megapixel camera and what it can hold approximately, with different size media cards. You should be able to decide what size you need based on this basic chart.
16mb Card – 5 photographs
32mb Card – 11 photographs
64mb Card – 21 photographs
128mb Card – 43 photographs
256mb Card – 85 photographs
512mb Card – 171 photographs
1gb Card – 341 photographs
2gb Card – 683 photographs
4gb Card – 1365 photographs
8gb Card – 2731 photographs
Nicole Humphrey writes articles for the Scrapbooking Blog, for the Frugal Blog, and for the Photography Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.