I've been frustrated since day one by the time lapse between pressing the shutter button on my digital camera and when the photo is finally snapped. The delay has caused me to ruin many a picture because it was blurry from moving the camera too soon. My wife actually refuses to use the digital camera most of the time -- in favor of her reliable film camera -- because the chance of a bad photo is so high.

One day, after shopping for memory cards to fill with photos, a thought struck me that if camera memory cards (Compact Flash, SD, Memory Stick and XD) come in different speeds, then perhaps it's the speed of the memory that determines how much of a lag happens after I press the button. From there, it didn't take much for me to purchase a big 2GB fast memory card the next time I saw one on sale. But even though I had purchased the more expensive faster, bigger card, something didn't feel right.

So I called Mike Wong at SanDisk, a company that manufactures flash memory, and he confirmed my fears -- that I was wrong about the memory reducing the delay. At least I wasn't all wrong; the faster card has advantages -- just not the one I wanted.

When you snap a picture with a digital camera, pushing down the button sets in motion a series of actions. First, a set of sensors collects the light coming through the lens and turns it into pixels or bits, which it stores on memory that is part of your camera. Then, it pushes the photo onto the memory card for storage. Then, if you want to empty the flash card, you either remove it to plug into a card reader on your computer, or you connect it to your computer, usually by USB.

You can almost think of it as you would think about a computer -- where your input goes to main memory (like the memory in the camera), and then is transferred to disk (like the flash card on your camera).

On your camera, the delay is the time it takes to adjust the photo parameters (focus, adjust for light) and push it to the main memory. According to Mr. Wong, the speed of the flash storage card doesn't affect this delay; but it does determine how fast the camera can move the data to the card, and therefore affects how quickly it can reload for your next shot. If you're looking to get an instant picture, you'll need to move up to a more expensive camera that specifically is meant to reduce the delay. He says that usually means a professional digital SLR camera.

Does that mean you should stay away from the fast memory? No. If you don't mind paying the extra dollars, you can still improve your photography experience. Specifically, faster memory will give you two benefits: faster time between shots and faster transfer time to your computer.

But this is data transfer, and that means that there are caveats. Specifically, your transfer will be only as fast as the slowest component. So if your card reader or USB port is slow, you'll be sitting at your computer for a while, waiting for the photos to move from your camera to PC. Similarly, if your camera memory is slow (typically meaning you have an older camera), it may affect the reload speed.

Having a faster flash card won't hurt you, but you might not gain full benefit from it. I kept mine -- and I'll report back on whether it made a noticeable difference.