• Today's cameras use digital storage, rather than film, to capture photographs.camera image by Yury Shirokov from Fotolia.com
  
  Digital cameras use a storage device, rather than film, to capture photographs. With many different cameras on the market, there are also many different storage devices. It is important to understand the differences between the storage devices in order to ensure that you purchase the correct one for your camera.
  
  

CompactFlash

• Square-shaped, CompactFlash cards are very common and are used in many different brands of digital cameras. Just about all high-end digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras use CompactFlash memory. There are two different versions of the card, Type I and Type II. Type II is slightly thicker than Type I, so cameras that accept Type I may not accept Type II.
  
  

Secure Digital

• Secure digital (SD) cards are small, thin, rectangular cards that look like they've had a corner cut off. SD cards are not only found in most of today's small cameras, but also in cell phones, PDAs and MP3 players. SD cards have a switch on the side of them for write protection, meaning that if the switch is moved, the card will not write over or delete any information currently stored on it.
  
  

xD

• Olympus and Fuji developed the xD card as a small storage device for their digital camera line. The xD card is very small and has allowed the companies to release smaller and lighter weight digital cameras. To further the reach of the xD card, the companies released a CompactFlash chasis, which allows the xD card to be used in digital cameras that accept only CompactFlash.