Size Limitations of Film Based Cameras

For many years the cameras were limited in their sizes by the sizes of the film cartridge, the introduction of the APS photographic film format, which was smaller than the traditional 35mm film cartridge, allowed the size of the camera to be reduced, although I can only remember one manufacturer producing an APS SLR.

With the introduction of digital photography, again the cameras were limited by the size of the memory cards, especially in the case of those cameras using the compact flash memory cards and the smartmedia cards (the latter of which have since been replaced by the much smaller XD cards which offered much larger capacities than the larger smartmedia cards which were limited to 128Mb), but with the introduction of smaller memory cards, like the Secure Digital (SD), the Sony Memory Stick, and the XD card, this limitation has been removed, and because the memory card does not have to be in any particular position, as opposed to traditional film cartridge which had to feed the photographic film directly behind the lens aperture.