A compact flash card is a type of memory card

Compact flash cards (CF) were introduced in 1994 by SanDisk. compact flash cards are used widely in portable electronic devices such as digital cameras, digital SLR cameras, phones and video recorders, they are high performance memory cards, with high reliability and memory integrity compact flash cards are also used where memory integrated within the device is too small, making them invaluable to photographers.

You find the memory card slot usually just inside the camera where the battery is.or on the side of the device usually with easy access It is important to check what type CF card you need as they come in two type's type I and type II, with type two offering higher storage but also is a much thicker card.

compact flash cards can also be known as flash memory cards or CFast cards

What you need to know

Size of The card

The CF Card comes in Gigabytes i.e. from 1 GB up to 256GB. This defines how much you can store on the card, i.e. photos, files or videos

Maximum write speed

This is shown on the card as MB/s which stands for megabytes per second, this relates to how quick the card can save your images or videos, ideally you should chose a card with plenty of capacity on it

UDMA rating

This is the readability speed of the card

UDMA 7 CompactFlash cards are the fastest. Most compact flash cameras and readers support cards with this rating

The size, speed and UDMA rating are all on the front of the card