1. Reliability – you want to make sure the card is going to work no matter what. You entrust it with your images and you want to make sure you are going to get them back when you get home. Modern memory cards have really good reliability, for most of the major manufacturers at least. Reliability is usually perceived to be related to the Brand Names. Therefore the brand name cards are 2-3 times more expensive than the similar less known brands.

2. Capacity – you want to make sure the card can have enough capacity to hold enough pictures for at least a day or two of shooting. While there is nothing wrong with multiple cards and you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. What capacity card you choose is up to you, I generally tend to pick cards that hold at least 400 pictures. The pricing is generally proportional the card’s capacity (a.k.a. same model card at twice the capacity will cost almost twice as much).

3. Speed – you want to make sure the card is going to keep up with your camera and not drag it down. This of cause mostly becomes important when you do a lot of continuous shooting, like sports and action photography. As far as the pricing goes, the faster the card the more you are going to have to pay, significantly more.

As far as the actual card performances go, you have to keep few things in mind. The speed advertised on the front of every card is not an indication of performance inside your particular digital camera. That is why you maybe well served to visit Rob Galbraith Website, and see actual observe Camera/Memory card combination performances. If you are using an older camera, buying a faster (and therefore far more expensive) memory card may give you little if any performance increase. So save time and money and consult memory card test results before making a purchase.

As far as the actual recommendations go, I’m a big fan of SanDisk and Lexar. Their top of the line cards are at the pinnacle of performance. However they carry a large price tag, a very large price tag. If you are not a professional, or very well off, these are not very economical. 4 of my cards are SanDisk (Extreme IIIs and IVs). 1 is Lexar (300X). All have worked flawlessly. Recently I’ve found a card that has a top notch performance in my camera and cost a fraction of the other cards. The card is Transcend 400X 32GB Compact flash card. And it is the best combination of capacity, performance, and price I’ve found to date. And it comes with Lifetime Warranty just like big boys. That is why it is going straight into Products I Love article.