A memory card is so important to a digital camera for its ability to store lots of images. A memory card is just like a film in film cameras. Memory cards are designed to hold a certain number of pictures, which is determined based on the capacity of the card. The bigger the memory card, the more images you can store on it.

Memory cards are small devices that fit inside the digital camera and store each picture that you have taken. It enables you to review the images immediately and also allows you to make actual prints.

You may need memory cards since many digital cameras come with very low capacity memory cards. Sometimes it is not enough to store the pictures you want to take. Of course, you need to upgrade your memory card capacity to the higher one.

Based on the type, there are five main types of memory cards and now available on the market – Secure Digital (SD) cards, XD cards, CompactFlash cards, SmartMedia memory card and Memory Stick.

Memory cards varies in size- from 64 megabytes to 32 gigabytes or more. As a suggestion, it is better if you consider buying a 1GB or higher capacity, as more and more digital cameras also capable to capture video.

Other things you have to be aware of are the speed and brand. You better make some researches on the card speed. What about the brand? Sometimes camera manufacturers have it set up that you need to use their memory card, be it Fuji XD picture card for a Fujifilm camera or Olympus XD card for an Olympus camera. Of course, for some cameras, you can use other manufacturer memory cards.