Compact Flash? Smart Media? Microdrive? Memory Stick? XD Picture Card?
When you buy your digital camera its bad enough trying to decide which features your camera needs. Then you have to make a choice as to what type of storage you want. Over the years, rather than standardising on one type of memory more and more types seem to hit the shops. This can make the choice rather confusing. At the moment there are eight leading types of storage card to choose from. These are Smart Media, Compact Flash, Microdrive, Memory Stick, Multi Media Card, Secure Digital Card, CD and PC Disks and the XD-Picture Card.
Compact Flash
Compact flash cards are the most popular storage media for the upper echelons of the digital camera market. Over the years compact flash cards have been at the head of the market alongside their long time rival the smart media card. Compact flash has historically been used by the widest variety of digital camera manufacturers and is recognised as a very reliable storage medium. Recently it's been able to gain the upper hand over smart media owing to the greater capacity of a compact flash card. Recently compact flash has broken the 1GB barrier. Another recent development has seen the speed at which the images can be transferred from the camera to the compact flash card increase rapidly. It is the fact that the compact flash card carries a controller chip that has allowed these breakthroughs to occur. The role of the chip is to manage the transfer of the data and optimise the storage.
Compact flash cards look certain to be around for a long time. Despite the digital camera storage market becoming increasingly competitive it looks as if compact flash cards will continue to flourish.
Smart Media
The future doesn't look quite so bright for Smart Media cards. Like the compact flash cards they have been around for a very long time. Up to now they have been the storage media of choice for Olympus and Fuji, but there have been signs recently that for their higher range of digital cameras these companies are looking at alternative storage solutions. The basic problem with the smart media card is it is limited in capacity. Maximum capacity remains at 128mb and although this may be satisfactory for lower end consumer models it is simply too limited for professional and prosumer digital cameras.
Memory Stick
The memory stick is used in Sony digital cameras. The one definite advantage that memory stick has over other storage mediums is that it can be used in products other than digital cameras. This includes data from a PC and music. Memory stick is limited though in the fact that it's maximum capacity is currently 128mb. As with the smart media card this marks it down more for consumer use than for high end digital cameras.
Microdrive
Microdrives have proved to be very popular with high-end digital camera users. They were capable of storing 1gb of information long before compact flash cards were. This fact led to the majority of high-end digital cameras being able to use them. There have been some concerns raised about their reliability owing to the way that the information is stored. One area where they still have a clear advantage over compact flash is in price. A 1gb microdrive can be bought for a little over £200. A comparable compact flash card retails at over £500.
Multi Media & Secure Digital Cards
Both of these formats are aimed more at the consumer end of the market. The multi media card started life squarely in the mobile phone market, whereas the Secure Digital Card originates from storing music. As technologies converge they have turned up in a relatively small number of digital cameras.
CD and PC Disks
CD and PC disks are a declining sector of the digital camera storage market. Their original attraction was their compatibility with computers and their relatively large storage capacity. Both of these advantages have been eroded as transfer to the PC has become easier and storage capacity of other cards has soared with the introduction of the microdrive and the further development of the compact flash card.
XD-Picture Card
The new kid on the block is the XD picture card. It is a joint development between Fuji and Olympus and it is quite feasible that it will prove to be the successor to smart media. At the moment storage capacity is a maximum of 128mb, but in time it is believed that it has the potential to grow to a massive 8gb. The other point worth making is concerns it's size. The XD picture card is very small, roughly the size of a thumbnail. This opens up options for camera designers who are forever striving to produce smaller and more lightweight digital cameras.
Portable Storage
As I mentioned above when writing about the microdrive there is an ever present fear of the storage medium becoming corrupted and vital images being lost. This fear is associated with all type of storage, not just microdrives. A possible solution has become available with the introduction of portable storage devices. These allow you to download images from the storage cards to the portable storage unit, theoretically reducing the risk. To help put the risk of losing those all important images into perspective it is worth pointing out that there have been a fair few films "chewed up" at the lab over the years.
Data Recovery
If the worst does happen and your storage card becomes damaged there are companies that specialise in retrieving lost data. If this ever happens to you then it is well worth paying a visit to www.flash-card-recovery.co.uk.
