5 top reasons Every Digital Photographer Needs A Card Reader

In the early days of digital photography, the best possible way to download photos from the camera to a pc was with a cable. The interface was usually USB, but some early digicams used SCSI or Firewire connections as well. As memory cards became popular, card readers were introduced, enabling users to quickly move photos from the card to their hard drive.

Surprisingly, even nowadays, countless digital photographers still transfer their files to their laptop or computer via a USB cable. Card readers are inexpensive, faster and more efficient, yet many digital camera owners still haven't bought one.

1: Card readers offer high speed transfers

Undoubtedly, the key advantage to a card reader is speed. Images transfer at a rate several times compared to a camera USB connection. Obviously, It is advantageous anytime you can decrease the photograph transfer period. As memory cards increase in capacity and digicams offer greater pixel density, however, transfer rate becomes a major problem. My first digital cam only had 8MB of storage memory, and I felt it took quite a while to transfer the files to my harddrive by USB cable. Today just a single raw picture could be double that size. A card with 30 or forty files of that size would definitely take forever to transfer by cable.

2: When reliability is a top priority, choose a card reader

While speed is important, reliability is vital. The problem with connecting a digicam to your desktop computer is that the digital camera has to be switched on all the time the transfer is being executed. If the battery gives out during the download, the transfer will be lost. additionally, there's a probability that the memory card will be corrupted if the battery goes down during a read. It's true that the majority of newer cameras have longer lasting batteries, but sd cards are also getting larger, so that might not be much help. Some digicam manufacturers actually recommend that the dslr camera be powered by an AC cable during the transfer, in order to reduce any issue of the battery dying during the copy.

There are no power consumption problems with a card reader. Power comes right from the USB or Firewire connection. Unless there's a major power failure or the computer system fails, the power to the card reader will always be stable.

3: dslr camera connections are plug and pray

Hooking up a digital camera to the personal computer is fairly straight forward, but I have experienced many instances where the laptop or computer refused to recognize the cam. Rebooting the desktop computer usually fixes the issue, but that is still an annoyance.

On the contrary, card readers are basically found immediately by the computer. Plug the reader, insert the memory card and you can start downloading your photos.

4: Card readers allow you to walk away

Once you've initiated a transfer, you are free to do other things. Have dinner. Watch TV. Go for a walk. Even hit the sack for the night. You don't have to "baby-sit" the file transfer process. I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving my digicam unsupervised in the "on" mode for an extended length of time. Maybe I'm being too conservative, but leaving my cam on all night simply doesn't sound wise. With a reader, there's no off or on. When your data transfer is done, everything just waits until you come back.

5: You are free to use your digital camera while your files transfer to the personal pc

If your camera is connected to your personal computer, transferring pictures, you obviously can't be off shooting. On the other hand, you can load a memory card into your reader, initiate a file transfer and then load a fresh card into the digital slr camera and continue taking photos. The ability to download photos while you're off taking new ones is yet another major advantage to a reader.

So what exactly are you waiting for?

If you're serious about digital photography, I strongly suggest you ditch that USB cable and get a reliable card reader. You'll shortly think how you ever got along without one! website