Memory cards in your cameras are the film of the digital scene. Memory cards are rated by the transfer speeds that they support. I tend to use SanDisk products because of their reliability. I use both SDHC and CF cards, and I look for the Extreme or Extreme Pro versions of each type. The faster the transfer speed of the card, the faster your camera can cycle its shutter, up to the rated frames per second of your camera.
The second part of this tip is that I always reformat the memory cards, after I download the images from them. Simply deleting the files can lead to error conditions on the memory card. The formatting process helps the card map bad areas on the card and prevents data (photos) from being written in potentially bad regions of the card. After all, you don't want to lose a perfect picture due to a card malfunction.
Finally, don't put your entire collection of vacation pictures on one memory card. If a card does go bad, and it will, you won't have all your photos in one place.
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