Digital Storage Devices

Digital picture files nowadays take a lot of space up and with every new camera you buy that has more Mega Pixel than your last one the size of the picture files will increase. Cameras usually come equipped with an internal storage that holds somewhere between 20-100 pictures, but for the photography enthusiast this is not enough and you will run pout of disc space in the shortest time possible. Therefore almost all digital cameras are equipped with a technology that allows to add digital photo storage devices such as flash cards, memory cards and other small storage devices to the camera so that a bigger amount of pictures in one session can be taken.

When fist created these storage devices only extended the storage capacity by a few MBs (32 or 64) which back then was enough to hold another few hundred pictures. Currently a digital photo storage device can have up to 16GB (the newest and biggest USB storage device on the market) photo storage. Several digital storage devices can also be used as a portable digital storage device. These devices are a great way to back and save images, especially while being on the road and a PC is not close. Speaking of a PC. For some professional photographers all the PC is is one big photo storage device that also gives them the possibility to edit and render their pictures.

The most commonly used portable digital photo storage solutions also have other functions such as DVRs, MP3 players, video players and much more. One important thing for some people is that some of these units allow you to easily view the pictures taken on the road. In the top five for portable photo storage devices are currently the Archos AV 700 (a 40GB mobile DVR), the apple iPod Video (a 60 GB Media Player), the Epson P-2000 (a 40GB Mulitmedia Storage), the Kodak Easyshare Pictrure Viewer) and the SmartDisk FlashTrax XT (80 GB player and recorder).

Smaller portable devices often used to transfer pictures to the store or other PCs are memory sticks. They actually are general data storage that can be connected to many digital devices over an USB plug and data can be trasnfered to it much like copying data on a regular computer.

You might not have thought of it, but CDs are also digital photo storage devices. Any CD or DVD that can be burned with data can also take picture files and therefore is a good way of backing up picture files or using to transport picture files to the store for printing.