The magic of digital photography is that it is a completely electronic medium. It has replaced the mechanical process of exposing chemical sensitive film to light to create an image. Debate still rages among professional and amateur photographers alike as to the quality of those digital images. Whether they will ever truly rival and one day replace film for all applications is still unclear. However, one thing is certain digital memory storage is far more convenient, and far less expensive, then film.

How then are digital photographs stored? All digital cameras use what is called a memory card. A memory card is basically a portable storage device, much like a drive on a computer. Photographs are written to the card in much the same why any data is stored on and retrieved from the hard drive on your PC. There are two types of memory cards commonly used in digital camera's: the CF, or CompactFlash Card and the SD, or Secure Digital Card, with the SD Card being the later technology of the two. Like a CF Card an SD card uses Flash memory, this makes it what is known as a non-volatile RAM memory device, which is a very high-tech why of saying it retains its memory without being attached to a battery or other power source. Most "consumer level" digital cameras use the SD Card, while the higher-end Digital SLR's almost exclusively use the CF Card, probably because it is somewhat faster and currently available with more storage capacity then SD Cards. CF Cards can be purchased up to 8GB, whereas currently the greatest capacity SD Card available is 4GB. The reason an SD card is called "secure" has to do with its origins. The cards a based on a technology called MMC, Multi-Media Card that was first developed as a storage device for digital music. The Music Industry feared using these cards because of issues of piracy and ease of copying copyrighted material, so in the next generation the SD, or "Secure" Card, encryption technology was added to the chip as an anti-piracy device. But using an SD Card in your digital camera does not make your pictures any safer, or less likely to be lost or erased then on a CF Card.

Some 665 companies worldwide already support the SD card, and it will likely become the standard portable digital media storage device. With the CF card relegated to specialty applications, much like VHS won out over Beta in the analog video tape format wars of so many years ago to become the consumer system of choice, while Beta evolved into Betacam, still the choice of broadcast professionals worldwide. Some computers and other media player devices already have SD slots built into them. There are recent SD card that are being made by some manufactures that have USB plugs built right into them allowing them to be plugged directly into your device's USB port without an adapter - another advantage of the SD Card and indication that it is being marketed to be very consumer friendly.