Memory cards: why bigger isn't always better.

The most common question I get from my students (other than "What kind of camera should I buy") is "What kind of memory card do I need" In this post I will be explaining why there's really no need to go after the larger more expensive memory cards and give you some recommendations as to which ones, in my opinion are best. 

First of all, I am confident to say that the average photographer probably doesn't need more than 32 or 64GB on an SD card. Now a days any photographer can more likely than not get by with a 16GB or even 8GB card if you really wanted to.

It's been my experience that when it comes to SD cards, bigger isn't always better. Larger SD cards are more expensive and even unnecessary. Instead, I encourage photographers to make it a habit of format their card after ingesting the photos to their computer. To learn more, read this post about learning to format your card and making it an essential part of your workflow. 

Do yourself a favor and put the money you save from purchasing the smaller size cards toward the buying the faster cards instead. Personally, I recommend SanDisk. I've been using these memory cards without any issues for more than 10 years. They come in various speeds and sizes but 16GB seems to be the sweet spot for most photography applications. At only ~$8 a pop (at the time of this post), these cards are fast, reliable, and fairly affordable. So much so that you may even want to consider purchasing more than one. Obviously, there are other alternatives out there so feel free to shop around to make sure you get one that best fits your needs.

16 GB San Disk Extreme

At this point you are probably wondering "then why are there 128 or 256GB versions of these cards?"

The size of those cards are typically reserved for recording video or large format photos.
Unless you are shooting everything in RAW and 4K and have hundreds of TB of space to archive this media, its quite pointless.

(Since most camera's now a days take SD cards, that's what I have referenced throughout this post. Please keeps in mind, that not all cameras take the same type of cards. Some take CF's instead of SD's. Other's even take both. If you need further clarification as to the types feel free to leave a comment below.)