Which Memory Card Should I Get for My New Digital Camera?
This Chistmas, my father and my sister-in-law both received digital cameras as gifts. My father got a 5-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 5600 and my sister-in-law got the 4-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 4600. This was an interesting coincidence, because the cameras were purchased independently by different people.
In my sister-in-law Mary's case, she received the camera and a set of four rechargeable AA-sized batteries, but didn't receive a memory card on which to store photos. This means that she has plenty of power available to shoot photos but can only store between 10 and 15 shots in the Coolpix 4600's internal memory before having to upload the photos to her PC. The question then became which memory card should be purchased for this camera?
I shot about 150 photos on my Canon PowerShot A95 on Christmas Eve and didn't fill up a 256-Megabyte memory card, so I recommend that people buy memory cards for their digital cameras that have capacities of 256 Megabytes or higher.
I looked at the cost of SD memory cards at Amazon.com and I was surprised to find that you can get a 512-Megabyte SD Card for less than $35 including shipping. Look for the Kingston 512 MB Secure Digital Card for that deal. In my opinion, if you are willing to buy a memory card from an on-line retailer like Amazon.com and you're not in the market for anything else at the moment, you need to try to buy one that costs a bit more than $25 to take advantage of the Free SuperSaver Shipping offer. Most of the 256-Megabyte SD memory cards
I also want to point out that most of the digital cameras currently being marketed by Canon
Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Nikon Coolpix 5600, Nikon Coolpix 4600, Secure Digital Memory Card, xD Memory Card, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts
Comments
You can never have enough memory. Buy the largest memory that you can afford. I wasted money buying a 64MB SD Card, then a 516 and now have a 1GB card and am thinking of buying a 2GB.
Don't buy the cheapest as I've read some reviews about the cheaper memory cards losing all the data. Priceless photos lost and unrecoverable. I've used SanDisk and never had a problem with it.
Happy Holidays and thanks for your blog - it's great.
Cheers
Fiona
Posted by: Fiona Black | December 27, 2005 5:20 AM
I don't know if simply avoiding the least expensive memory cards is the answer. I would suggest sticking with established brand names.
SanDisk is certainly a good choice as is Kingston, Viking, and Lexar. Cards with the brand names of major electronics manufacturers (digital camera manufacturers, Sony, Panasonic, etc.) should also be fine.
Dave Aiello
Editor
OperationGadget.com
Posted by: Dave Aiello | December 27, 2005 12:25 PM
I would also suggest shopping by brand rather than price alone. SanDisk and Lexar are both solid choices. I have also used Kingston and PNY SD cards in my PDAs (my cameras are CF based) and both of those seem to be OK too.
Retail outlets seem to charge significantly more than online stores too; I've seen as much as double the price in local stores here in the SF bay area compared with Amazon and Buy.com prices.
One other thing to consider for the larger MP cameras: it might be worth getting the faster cards so you can be ready to grab that next shot more quickly.
Posted by: John | December 27, 2005 5:43 PM
I've never had any problems with 'generic' brands in terms of memory function; I think the cheaper stuff has flimsier material. The Sandisk Ultra II Plus is the coolest with integrated USB plug.
Posted by: Doug | December 31, 2005 2:56 PM