We're not chatting human memory here - although that type of memory is important too. We are chatting digicam memory. Electronic camera memory is where your image data or stills are stockpiled in your digital camera.

Almost all of the more recent cameras have limited amounts of internal memory. Virtually all digital cameras rely on media or memory cards for storage. A memory card is like re-useable film. Fill it with your photographs, download the pictures, and then fill the card continually. Media cards don't wear out easily.

To employ a media card, insert it into the matching slot on your camera. When you take a picture, the camera saves the image information to the media card. When the card is full, it has got to be emptied or downloaded to your computer's hard drive. There are many ways to do this. One way is to insert the card into the corresponding slot on the PC. Software does the rest. Another way is to attach the camera to the PC using USB or Firewire technology. The latest method is wireless or Wi-Fi technology-no removing the card from the camera or hooking up wires. At this point in time, only the newest camera models use Wi-Fi.

There are a few kinds of digital memory. The choice of media is dictated by the camera. SmartMedia, SecureDigital, Compact Flash, Multimedia, Memory Stick and xD Picture cards are the commonest. Media cards are available with capacities ranging up to 2 gbs. (GB).

After your photographs are moved to you computer's drive, remember to back up your pictures to a separate storage device. As reliable as hard drives are, failures do occur. A second internal hard drive, an external disk drive, a Zip disk, a CD or DVD is common back up devices. Web sites are available to store back up pictures for a little fee.