4GB Memory Card

Spend less time downloading.

Memory cards hold the photos (or video) that you take. Once the memory is full, you need to delete those images in order to take more. Naturally you don't want to loose those shots forever, so you download them before deleting so that you can preserve or print them. The more memory you have the less time you'll spend downloading. Clearly a 4GB card will hold far more images than a 32MB card.

Eliminate the need for multiple memory cards.

For the average person a 4GB card will suffice as far as storage space for an entire vacation. There's no need to bring along multiple cards. Of course, just to be sure, it never hurts to have one back up just in case of failure.

Price

A 4GB memory card is a fairly affordable memory device and costs less than those with higher capacities.

The possibility of failure.

It can happen, a memory card can fail although it's somewhat rare. In such instances, it's particularly tragic if you have a large number of photos stored on the card. The risk in reality isn't much different than what people experienced with film and accidental exposure but indeed it is a potential drawback to cards with even higher capacity.

If you're a fairly new digital camera owner, then here are some tips to help you make a rough estimate as to which memory card will offer the storage you need.

Most people shoot their images in high quality JPEG. At this setting you will need 1/2x the number of camera megapixels to store a single image. This means that a 12 megapixel camera would use 6MB of memory to store a single image. Translated this means that a 512MB memory card would hold approximately 85 images at JPEG quality.

From this you can see that the more megapixels a camera has, the more memory it will require. (If you use TIFF or RAW file settings more memory would also be necessry)

As you can see a 4GB memory card on the other hand could handle roughly 666 images; enough to assure that you don't run out of space at an inopportune moment when the right shot appears. With today's more powerful cameras, higher capacity memory cards are often necessary.

Just a few definitions for those who are new to memory cards:

SD memory cards:

Affordable removable memory cards used in digital cameras and many other portable devices. It stands for Secure Digital memory cards. These are the most affordable. The 4GB memory card is the highest capacity of these cards.

SDHC memory cards:

This is a higher capacity and newer version of the SD cards. Their capacity ranges from 4GB up to 32GB. Some older cameras are unable to make use of these cards.

SDXC memory cards:

This is the newest in the line of removable memory cards. These "extended capacity" cards have up to 2TB of storage.

MicroSD memory cards:

MicroSD cards, as the name would imply are much smaller than SD cards. They are often used in cell phones and music players. They can be used in cameras that typically take an SD card only if a suitable adapter is available.

Photo Credits
Introduction: Guillermo Esteves.
Advantages/Disadvantages of 4GB Memory Card: PhotopediaPhotos.
Types of Memory Cards: booleansplit.

This lens is listed at LensMasterWorld and Isle of Squid.