I had always planned to get a spare memory card. But I thought that a 2gb card would do me fine for a couple of months. Even with RAW+large jpeg files at something like 25mb per shot, you can fit a lot of shots on a 2gb card. Enough anyway for the kind of shooting I do, close to home, or at least close to a car where I could have a laptop if needed.
I had an errand to drop off something across town. I had enough time that I thought I would stop and take a few pictures along the way. The day was unexpectedly sunny, with some clouds and rain to provide interest. I even wondered if a rainbow might appear after getting caught in a rain shower while the sun was still shining.
I got to the top of Mt Douglas Park which has a road to the top for people like me who don't have the time to walk the extensive trails of this park. Mostly I just wanted to take a few shots with my new camera. From near the lookout I set up my tripod and lined up a shot. I took the picture and then was surprised to see "No Card" in the display instead of the expected preview.
That was the end of that outing. I packed up the camera and tripod and headed back to the car. Sure enough when I got home I found my one card in my desktop computer's card reader. Even funnier was that I had thought about "borrowing" a 512mb SD card from one of my kids digicams to take with me. So I had thought about a backup, I just needed to do it.
A spare memory card I can leave in my camera bag just went to the top of my "to buy" list.
