Memory cards: How big & is there an adapter that fits my brain?

Memory cards: they are the often the size of a postage stamp, they store 100’s of photos, but how big of a card do I need and is there an adapter available that fits my brain? I don’t know about you but I could really use some added memory in my brain. Unfortunately, they have yet to make an adapter for inserting a photo memory card of any type.

The memory card that came with your camera is not big enough, that you can be sure of. Most of these will hold fewer than 20 still shots of a descent quality. If your camera is capable of taking video clips, be warned that they can use up a lot of any memory card.

At a minimum we would recommend that you buy a memory card of at least 256 megabytes. This card would hold around 100 jpeg images, depending on your camera settings. For a 6-megapixel camera shooting at it’s maximum resolution and quality a 1-GB card would be in order. It should hold several hundred images.
High-speed cards are available but unnecessary for the vast majority of cameras.

The amount of space that a photo will take on the card is determined by several settings on your camera. It is tempting to leave your camera on the default settings that it came with. Lowering a camera’s resolutions or increasing its compression, increases the number of images that fit on a card. If you want to print larger photos of good quality then you should decrease compression and increase resolution. If you are printing standard 4 x 6 inch prints then a medium resolution and medium compression should be suitable and will allow you to save more images on a given memory card. If you are taking images to only email or use on the internet then higher compression and less resolution is in order.

Leave A Legacy warns you against online photo posting as the quality of the image that they store for you is often web-quality (or 72 ppi) and would likely only print good quality photos that are about 1 inch square in size. We had a client who wanted to make a slide show of his photos from one of these sites and even that was too poor in quality. He ended up asking friends for photos for his own TV slide show.
Leave A Legacy can assist you in transferring your photos from your memory card to a CD so that you will have an empty card to use again. Our computers are equipped to accept nearly any size or shape of camera memory card.