Memory cards are important, but something we seldom give much thought. Let’s give them some attention. After all, they are holding your hard work and artistic vision in the form of the photographs you took the time and energy to create. You took time and effort to take your gear out, travel to some location to photograph, and make your photos. Heck, even if the photos are not artistic masterpieces that would make Ansel Adams jealous and are “just” snapshots of your family vacation or your kids playing, they are your memories. You’ll want to share those photographs and memories with family and friends, place them on social media, put them on your holiday cards, and even print some to put in your home or office. Our photographs are important to our lives and memory cards are what keep them until we can store them more permanently elsewhere. So, with that in mind, here are my thoughts on memory cards.
First, buy name brand cards. Avoid the “Brand X” cards that you can grab at the discount store. I say this because the memory cards are holding photographs that are distinct moments in time. They cannot be recreated. If you’re taking your camera on vacation for example, odds are the location is not right around the corner from home. You will not be able to simply recreate the photographs if your card dies. Even though the name brand cards may cost a few dollars more than the “Brand X” cards, they are still inexpensive. In fact, over time, memory has been getting cheaper.
Buying the good branded card is the cheapest insurance that your card will work and keep your photographs safe until you get back home where you can store them in a permanent location. In fact, if you shop smart, you can often find name branded cards at a very reasonable price. (Think Amazon, Costco, or sales at Target or Best Buy). Compared to the cost of your camera, lenses, other gear, and travel, a good branded memory card is the cheapest insurance you can buy for your memories.
Second, think about the capacity (or size) of the memory cards you are purchasing. Card size is measured in gigabytes (GB). The larger the size of the card, the larger the capacity of the card (duh). A 64GB card can hold 8 times the capacity of an 8GB card. (Thanks Captain Obvious!) I point this out for a reason though. You may be tempted to simply purchase one huge card that will hold your entire vacation on it. Personally, I think that’s a bad idea. While (luckily) it has never happened to me, even branded cards can fail. If that occurs and all of your vacation photos are on that one card, you just lost all of your photos. Instead, if you bring multiple cards you can split your photos between cards. Then, heaven forbid, one of your cards should fail, you still have at least some of your photos on the other card. (I will do another post about traveling and photo backup and storage that discusses my travel methods in greater detail.) Suffice it to say for now at least, that you should bring multiple cards with you when you travel. One you can take more photos, and two, you can split your memories and photos between multiple cards to guard against losing everything should a card fail.
Additionally, by carrying multiple cards and extra cards, you never have to worry about running out of storage space. You can keep shooting. I’d rather take an extra shot or two and decide it was no good later than avoid taking a shot because I am worried about running out of space on my memory card. Missing what could be a great shot for fear of running out of memory card space is a terrible situation that is easily avoidable with extra memory cards. After all, you are not likely to be back at that location anytime soon if you’re on vacation. Get all the shots you want without worry by carrying extra memory cards.
The third consideration for memory cards is card speed. Faster card speed, which is listed on the card as their read/write speed, leads to faster writing to the card by the camera. The read speed is the speed that your computer will read the data from the card. The write speed is the speed at which the card is capable of being written to by your camera. Faster write speeds lead to faster transfer from the camera to the memory card. Faster transfer from the camera to the memory card leads to longer bursts when shooting sports or even landscape and wildlife shots. This is because the camera’s buffer will not fill up because the photos are able to get to the memory card faster. (I will do another post on shooting in burst mode, but for now, I always recommend shooting in burst mode.)
If you take three or so of each shot by shooting in burst mode, odds are one will be the best and you can always delete the other ones later. A good example of this is taking photos of a group of people. If you only take one shot someone may have their eyes closed or be looking away. If you take three or four, you’ll likely get at least one where everyone has their eyes open and their best smile. Having faster cards will give you the opportunity to shoot bursts without having to wait while the shots transfer from the camera to the memory card. That will keep you from having to keep your friends standing still for a long time as if you were shooting an old camera from the 1800’s.
Finally, ALWAYS buy new memory cards. NEVER buy used cards. Even though you can probably save a few dollars buying a used memory card, you don’t know how the prior owner treated the card. Just as discussed with “Brand X” cards above, a new name brand memory card is the cheapest insurance for your memories and art that you can buy. You won’t save that much money buying used (just like with buying “Brand X”) to offset the risk associated with losing all of your vacation photos, family photos, or artistic visions from having a used memory card fail. Additionally, newer cards have faster read/write speeds than older cards as well. The cost difference between a new card and a used card is less than the price of a cheeseburger. You don’t want to lose your photos over the price of a cheeseburger! And remember, this advice is coming from a guy who always wants more money for cheeseburgers!!!
Now that you have some knowledge about memory cards, go get some and shoot away. Remember, you can’t learn if you don’t shoot, and you can’t shoot without memory cards.