Storage

Digital cameras need memory to store data. A wide variety of storage media has been used. These include:

Onboard flash memory

Cheap cameras and cameras secondary to the device's main use (such as a camera phone).

3.5" floppy disks

Mainly the Sony Mavica line of the late 1990s.

Video Floppy

A 2x2 inch (50 mm × 50 mm)floppy disk used for early analog cameras.

PCMCIA hard drives

Early professional cameras, discontinued.

CD single or DVD

a 185 MB small form factor CD, most commonly seen in the Sony CD-1000.

Thermal printer

Known only in one model of camera that printed images immediately rather than storing.

Memory cards

CompactFlash cards/Microdrives

Typically higher end professional cameras. The microdrives are actual hard drives in the CompactFlash form factor. Adapters exist to allow using SD cards in a CompactFlash device.

Memory Stick

A proprietary flash memory type manufactured by Sony.

SD/MMC

A flash memory card in a small form factor that is gradually supplanting CompactFlash. The original storage limit was 2 GB, which is being supplanted by 4 GB cards. 4 GB cards are not recognized in all cameras as a revision was made to the SD standard as SDHC (SD High Capacity). The cards also have to be formatted in the FAT32 file format while many older cameras use FAT16 which has a 2 GB partition limit.

MiniSD Card

A smaller (slightly less than half-size) card used in devices such as camera phones.

MicroSD Card

A smaller yet (less than a quarter size) version of the SD card. Used in camera phones.

XD-Picture Card

Developed by Fuji and Olympus in 2002, a format smaller than an SD card.

SmartMedia

A now obsolete format that competed with CompactFlash, and was limited to 128 MB in capacity. One of the major differences was that SmartMedia had the memory controller built in the reading device, while in CompactFlash it was in the card. The xD picture card was developed as a replacement for SmartMedia.

FP Memory

A 2-4 MB serial flash memory, known from the Mustek/Relisys Dimera low end cameras.