stupid question

[hijynx54]

but am buying my FIRST ever digital camera, and wanted to know if they all use flash memory cards and if so what different kinds there are or do all cameras use the same?

I am looking at a few different kodak/cannon cameras that are 4.0 and 5.0 megapixel in the 150-200 range for black friday sale, but am unsure what memory or whatever I need.

Also what kind of interface should I look for if I want something simple and easy to move to my comp off the camera. USB?

Sorry for the dumb questions, just new to this

thanks in advance.

 

[BillLeeLee]

Most cameras you find will probably use one of the big two - compact flash or secure digital (SD) cards. SD cards are smaller in size than CF cards (like size of the top of your thumb).
Other, older cameras might use MMC (Multimedia cards). Sony cameras might use memory stick, which tends to be more expensive than CF and SD. Some Olympus and Fuji digicams use xD cards, which are very expensive compared to CF or SD.

A lot of cameras will probably have a USB interface, but worse comes to worse, just save battery life and buy a separate card reader that hooks up to your computer.

But anyway, it all depends on the camera you're buying. It's easy enough to tell what kind of memory the camera uses once you actually buy the camera.

 

[hijynx54]

Well is there a certain storage that is better than the other? I.E more storage for a better price? That would be a big plus (yah I know, duh) but I would also be willing to shell out some bigger bucks too if I could get a storage of 50-100% more with one (if they make a large storage stick/card) vs the largest of a different brand just so I have to worry less about limiting my pictures each run. Or would that just require a physically larger card/stick period? Am unsure if all are same size/storage or they differ in price/storage but stay the same in physical size.

Thanks.

 

[BillLeeLee]

If I understand what you're asking in your second post, you're looking for a price to storage ratio.

In that sense, compact flash and secure digital are probably the best choices since they are the most widely used and are basically the cheapest flash media you can find. I bought a 1GB Kingston Elite Compact Flash card for my camera for about $56. A 1 GB SD card costs roughly the same, and my Kingston Elite is one of the faster flash memory out there (it's a 50x card, there are much slower cards out there that would write pictures more slowly to card).

1 GB of MS or xD memory might be around $80 - 100 (haven't checked in a while as I don't really care about them).

Also, there are CF cards up to 4 GB in capacity, and I'm pretty sure there will be 8 GB cards coming out if they're not already available. I think I've seen SD cards in 2 GB capacities, but I think there might be 4 or 8 GB available at some point.

I personally won't use anything over 1 GB though, and I'd prefer 512 MB cards since you spread out your pictures over multiple cards so that, in the off chance that a card dies on you, you have them all spread around and only lose some. 1.5 GB of flash memory is more than enough for me right now - I shoot in RAW mode and can get around 250 - 300 shots if I fill up both cards. If I switch to my camera's JPEG Hi Quality Large mode, I can get around 600 shots at a time, and when I'm actually photographing, I probably don't take nearly that many pictures.

A 5 - 6 mpixel camera in the highest quality JPEG mode would probably take somewhere around 2.5 - 3 MB per picture, so even with a 512 MB card you'd still get around 160 - 200 shots.

In general though, I'd prefer compact flash. It's one of the oldest types of flash memory, has pretty good performance (if you buy the hi end ones, but your camera might not take advantage of the speed), is reasonably cheap, and a lot of cameras support them, so if you move on to a different camera, you could reuse your flash memory. SD is becoming the new rage though, since it's the size of a postage stamp and can pretty much deliver the same performance and capacities as CF.