How much memory do you need?
In the past few years, memory card manufacturers have broken technological barriers, enabling themselves to produce high capacity and ultra-fast memory cards for all sorts of electronic gadgets, including PDAs, cell phones, music MP3 players and of course digital cameras. These days 1GB or 2GB memory cards are not so uncommon even with amateur photographers. Some memory cards can store up to 8GB of digital information, but who really needs that much? To answer this question, let's take a look at the chart below, which shows the approximate number of photos that can be stored on various size memory cards.
Most digital camera manufacturers no longer produce cameras with resolution below 5 megapixels. But for the sake of argument, and because some of you may be looking to buy memory cards for older model cameras, 2 and 3 megapixel cameras are also listed in the chart. As you can see, cameras that are capable of capturing larger number of pixels can store less number of photos per memory card. This is because every pixel takes up storage space on the memory card. Another thing to consider is that higher end digital cameras all the user to choose varying amounts of file compression in their cameras for a greater degree of freedom when it comes to modifying/adjusting/enlarging their photos. This is especially true for digital SLRs (DSLR), as they allow the user to capture the shots in RAW format.
You can read more about file compression in digital cameras here.
Use the chart below to get an idea of how much memory you will need for your camera.
| Capacity Chart |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
128MB |
256MB |
512MB |
1GB |
2GB |
4GB |
| 2 Megapixel |
134 |
268 |
552 |
1119 |
2245 |
4494 |
| 3 Megapixel |
120 |
240 |
490 |
996 |
2000 |
4000 |
| 5 Megapixel |
48 |
95 |
195 |
395 |
800 |
1595 |
| 8 Megapixel |
36 |
69 |
143 |
290 |
582 |
1164 |
| 10 Megapixel |
26 |
53 |
109 |
221 |
444 |
887 |
* Actual number of photos will vary depending on camera/device model, format resolution and compression, usable capacity, and bundled software. Actual usable memory capacity may vary. 1MB equals 1 million bytes; 1GB equals 1 billion bytes.
** MB = megabytes, GB = gigabytes
Westwood Printers is an authorized reseller of Lexar Professional products.
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