In no time at all you can take a picture, connect the camera to your computer or insert the disk into a drive, and have the image downloaded onto your hard drive within minutes. From there you can upload the images to your family or business web site with a few clicks of the mouse. Or, you also have the option of printing the image onto photo paper. However, before you get to this point you must do some preparation. You should understand what your camera can and cannot do, and be aware of your full set of options.
Digital cameras use memory flash cards to store images.
The two leading cards are CompactFlash and SmartMedia . Images demand quite a bit of memory, up to 1.5 MB for a 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. The following table is a representative sampling of some of the leading digital camera manufacturers. Each manufacturer produces a number of cameras with different feature sets. Check the manufacturer's web site for more information.