My first digital camera came with an 8MB memory card. At the time that seemed like a lot but with camera resolutions increasing all the time that's nowhere near enough. Factor in that most compact digital cameras can also shoot movies and even the 1 and 2 GB cards around at the moment may not be enough.
Bigger compact flash cards are available but the old format of SD cards limited them to 2 GB maximum. Now a new standard has been announced called SDHC to allow manufacturers to make cards up to a maximum of 32GB.
SanDisk have just revealed their new SDHC cards at a slightly more modest 4GB. Their press release says that this is enough for 2,000 digital pictures or 8 hours of video. That's probably a little on the optimistic side - most people using cards of this size will probably have higher end cameras. A typical 6MP jpeg is about 3.6MB so you can look forward to about 1,100 images per card. Not quite as many as the industry standard figures SanDisk use but still loads. I can see people buying these cards and never taking them out of the camera. With a 4GB card in place and a camera with a dock you may never need to change card - even after a fortnight's holiday.
Since the standard has changed there are a couple of things to watch out for. The cards are physically identical to a normal SD card so will fit in any camera supporting SD but they will only work in a camera designed to support them. There's a compatibility checker on SanDisk's website but at the moment few cameras seem to be supported. Obviously this will change as more companies support the standard. Of course a camera that takes SDHC should work just fine with a “normal” SD card. Also, current card readers will not read these cards. For that you will need an SDHC reader. To get you over this hurdle, SanDisk are bundling an SDHC reader free with all their new SDHC cards. I'm told the reader works with PC and Mac and reads and writes SD and SDHC.
SDHC cards should be available from SanDisk in the UK in the next month or so. There is no UK price yet but the European RRP is €157.40 + vat so I'd expect to see them available for around the £100 - £125 mark.
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