If you have a laptop with a PC Card slot or a CardBus 34 slot, then you can get card readers that will fit in those slots. You should be able to find card readers that connect to your computer’s USB 2 or FireWire port. Also, most card readers support lots of different formats, so if you have multiple cameras (say, the D90 and a small point-and-shoot) and they use different formats, then you need to carry only one card reader and a cable.ĭepending on the type you get, a card reader might provide faster transfer than the D90. The advantage of a card reader is that it doesn’t consume any of your camera’s battery power. You can plug the camera directly into your computer, or you can remove its media card and place it in a media reader that is connected to your computer. You can transfer images from your camera in two ways. Before you can do any editing of your images using your computer, you have to copy those image documents from your camera’s media card onto your computer’s hard drive. The file is a document just like you might create on your computer. I use a holder made by Lowepro ( Transferring from Your CameraĮvery image you shoot is stored on your camera’s media card as an individual file. That way, I can easily see how many cards are remaining and be certain that I’m grabbing a card that’s ready for use. When I fill up a card, I place it back in the holder, facedown. This makes it simple to keep track of which media is ready for use. Second, if you have a camera bag with a lot of pouches and compartments, consider using one pouch for unused cards and another for used cards. Also, if you erase beforehand, when you put the card in the camera, it’s ready to use, right away. If you become uncertain, you might be less willing to use the card, and then you can end up short on storage. After you’ve transferred images, if you just throw the cards back in your camera bag with the idea of erasing them when you’re ready to use them, you can easily end up confused as to whether the card has already been transferred.
We’ll look at how to do this later in this chapter. You can ease your card management hassles when shooting in a few ways.įirst, after you transfer your images to your computer, erase the card. If you’re shooting on the go, you don’t want to have to worry about whether the card you’re about to use already has images on it. When you’re in the field, you’ll need to keep track of which cards you’ve used and which are available for shooting. You may have to change them more often, but your images will be safer in the event of a card failure. So, you might want to consider using more, smaller cards so that if one goes bad, you won’t lose as many images.įor maximum flexibility, you might want a combination: a big card that you can use when you’re shooting events such as a performance or sporting event and don’t want to miss shots because of a card change, and smaller cards that you use for everyday shooting. Although the card probably won’t be permanently damaged, its contents can be rendered unusable. Sometimes static electricity can do it sometimes a glitch in your computer or in your camera can mess up a card. Though it’s rare, a Secure Digital card can be corrupted. The risk, though, is that if something happens to the card, all your images will be lost.
The advantage of a high-capacity card is that your shooting won’t be interrupted with a card change. You can get a few high-capacity cards or more lower-capacity cards. With the range of capacities available, you can carry storage in several ways. In fact, because the D90’s battery is good for “only” about 500 shots, if you’re carrying a couple of high-capacity cards, you’ll probably run out of battery power before you run out of storage. The camera creates folders on the card and stores files in those folders, each with a different name.īecause cards are so small and because they can pack huge capacities, it’s possible to shoot a tremendous number of images with just one or two cards. Your camera treats the card just the way your computer treats your hard drive.
Consequently, it’s perfectly safe to take out a full card and replace it with another. So, after you turn the camera off, the images remain on the card, even if you remove it. As you’ve already learned, the D90 uses Secure Digital cards (or SDHC cards, a faster, higher-capacity version of SD).įlash memory cards are similar to the RAM that’s in your computer but with one important difference: They don’t require power to remember what’s stored on them. For that, a digital camera employs a memory card of some kind. With a digital camera, the image sensor does the capture, but it doesn’t have any capability to store an image. Film is an amazing invention because it’s a single material that can both capture an image and store it.