Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Digital Photographer's Essential Accessory? Storage Cards!

By Sylvia Howard

Digital cameras may not need film like in olden times anymore, but the amount of pictures that you can store is still a fundamental facet. And as most digital cameras have a picture capacity which is less than a single analogue film, you will have to get a storage card as the first accessory equipment.

After having bought the first one, you should consider investing in one or more extra memory cards. These cards are an extremely portable accessory and the price of storage is decreasing quickly, and you will be able to do much more with your digital camera if you have the possibility to take lots of pictures between stops to a PC where you can store your pictures.

For example, if you are about to go on a remote trip, somewhere where it will be difficult to transfer the images to a computer on a regular basis, such as on a sailing boat for instance, having a lot of digital camera memory cards will allow you to take more pictures.

In fact not having to think twice every time that you press the shutter will turn you into a bolder photographer. You will find that several risky pictures and framings give great results, which is why digital camera memory cards will make you a more experienced and ultimately better photographer.

Thanks to memory cards you will be able to use advanced features, such as digital camera settings that automatically take several pictures with different exposures every time that you press the shutter, without worrying about finding yourself without photo storage.

Just visualize the difference between being able to take dozens, or hundred photos a day while travelling. Taking a lot of extra pictures means that you will also end up with more photos to choose from at the end of your trip, resulting in nicer photo albums.

Another good thing of considering storage cards as crucial digital camera accessories is that if you ever forget to download the pictures onto a computer or other storage, you will not find yourself with a lot of interesting thing to snap but no memory to do it, because the memory you have is full.

You never know when your existing memory card will fail so keeping an extra card can pay dividends when the time comes. Just be aware though of what type of memory card your digital camera uses as there are various types of cards available for different digital cameras such as SD cards and Sony memory sticks. You don't want to buy a memory card that is not compatible with your digital camera.

Modern memory cards for digital cameras can have over thirty gigabytes on a piece of plastic and circuitry as big as a thumbnail. As a guideline, take as much memory for twice as many pictures that you would expect to shoot on a trip. Spread over three or four cards and not all on one, for extra security.

If you get the recommended digital camera storage cards, you should also consider buying a memory card reader, which makes transfer very easy, whether to a computer or directly to a digital photo printer. - 16651

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