Compact Flash Cards For Image Storage

Compact flash cards, also known as compactflash cards, are popular for storing images in digital cameras, especially with high-end DSLR cameras. Compact flash cards have been around for about a decade and are about the size of a matchbook. Compact flash cards use flash memory, which does not need power to hold memory in the chip. There are two types of compact flash cards, Type I and Type II. Type II cards generally hold more capacity than Type I. Cameras designed for Type I cards can only use Type I, while those designed for Type II can use either. For a long time, compact flash cards topped out at about 1 GB of data. But recent breakthroughs in digital memory technology push the capacity of compact flash cards as high as 8 GB. Compact flash cards are used in virtually all DSLR cameras, although some DLSRs use both compact flash and SD cards and a few low-end DLSRs use only SD cards.

Bottom line: Choose a camera that uses compact flash (or compactflash) cards if ultra-high capacity -- up to 8 GB -- is important to your digital photography.