Digital Film

The medium used for storing the images that you shoot is widely referred to as digital film. The two main types of removable storage are Microdrives and Compact Flash (CF) cards although some cameras use Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMedia cards instead while others simultaneously use these as second cards when shooting in dual RAW/JPEG format that can act as useful back-up storage. When I entered the digital arena, the largest storage card available at the time only had a capacity of 1 gigabyte (quite revolutionary in an age when 512mb was considered the norm) and the Microdrive I bought cost me well over £300. Rapid developments have vastly improved card storage capabilities and prices have reduced dramatically. Now you can buy an 8gb flashcard for around £90 and cards are being introduced with even higher storage capabilities. Cards also come in varying speeds; the higher the speed the faster the download and the time it takes for data to be transferred from the camera buffer to the card. Large capacity cards allow the potential to shoot hundreds of images without needing to change cards, but remember a lost or damaged card can be devastating so you may consider it safer to capture your images using several lower capacity digital film cards in place of a single larger one in order to reduce the risks.

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