Memory Card Guru

How big a memory card should I use?

With image files in even basic cameras getting bigger and the price of camera cards falling it would seem that the bigger the better would be the way to go with your camera card. This is not always the best idea. With the smallest card available now being 2Gb. it is unlikely that you will be restricted greatly in the number of photos you can take and going for the biggest card available has it's pitfalls. The sheer number of images that can be stored on a large card can make it difficult to organise and retrieve these images easily. We all learned about "all your eggs in one basket" at an early age and perhaps this is the main reason for considering multiple cards over one large one. The other big advantage is that should anything happen to your card while you are out and about you will have another card to fall back on. Cards are very reliable but they will fail from time to time and the last thing you want to do is to permanently lose images or damage your card by trying to use a card that has gone bad. Should this happen we are normally able to recover images from a damaged card but the chances of a full recovery is greatly improved if no attempts have been made to make a bad card work. The golden rule in the unlikely event of a card failure is:

DO NOT PANIC
STOP USING THE CARD
REPLACE IT WITH YOUR SPARE
and
GET IT TO SOMEONE WHO CAN RECOVER THE IMAGES
There are many reasons why a card will fail. One is that the card has been removed from the camera while the camera is still turned on and images are still being written to it. Of the billions of cards manufactured very few fail due to manufacturing faults but they are sophisticated pieces of technology and have to be handled with care. Where possible store them in the plastic container they come with it to prevent the terminals being short-circuited and avoid subjecting them to physical abuse. If you must leave them in your shirt pocket please ensure they are put through the washing machine on the "gentle" cycle.

But the most common reason for the loss of images is that "delete all" has been selected when only one image was intended to be deleted. This is the easiest accident to recover from provided the card has not been re-formated. Never of course the fault of the person who presents the card for recovery, it is inevitable their technically challenged partner who has made this mistake.

Recovery of Media Card Images

516 MB.		$ 25
1Gb.		$ 30
2Gb.		$ 40
4Gb.		$ 50
8Gb.		$ 75

Images recovered are returned on a DVD. No charge for unsuccessful recovery.