Just like a traditional analogue camera needs film, a digital camera needs memory to store your photographs. Most digital cameras come with a pitiful amount of internal memory, so you are almost required to buy a memory card as your first accessory.

 

After having bought the first one, you should consider investing in one or more extra memory cards. These cards are an extremely portable accessory and the price of storage is decreasing quickly, and you will be able to do much more with your digital camera if you have the possibility to take lots of pictures between stops to a PC where you can store your pictures.

 

If you are about to take a vacation in remote places where you will be unable to transfer the images, and with no shops readily available in the vicinity, you will quickly appreciate the freedom of not having to ration your pictures.

 

The best thing about having lots of memory, and being able to take lots of pictures, is that it will change the way that you use your camera. You will be able to take advantage of advanced settings such as burst mode, to capture sports events or highly dynamic subjects, and to select the best picture at ease afterwards.

 

Also, most digital cameras have a setting that will allow you to take three simultaneous pictures of the same subject – one slightly underexposed and another overexposed – and here also you will be able to choose the best one.

 

Just visualize the difference between being able to take dozens, or hundred photos a day while travelling. Taking a lot of extra pictures means that you will also end up with more photos to choose from at the end of your trip, resulting in nicer photo albums.

 

Extra digital camera memory cards will also diminish the risk that you will fill up the available storage and that you will have to delete great pictures to make space for new ones.

 

You never know when your existing memory card will fail so keeping an extra card can pay dividends when the time comes. Just be aware though of what type of memory card your digital camera uses as there are various types of cards available for different digital cameras such as SD cards and Sony memory sticks. You don’t want to buy a memory card that is not compatible with your digital camera.

 

Regarding the amount of memory, nowadays storage cards range from one to 32 GB and more. You should take as much memory as you may need and then some more, spread over two or three cards for redundancy.

 

If you get the recommended digital camera storage cards, you should also consider buying a memory card reader, which makes transfer very easy, whether to a computer or directly to a digital photo printer.