Sandisk Compact Flash cards

[jimmy156]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone understand the Sandisk range of CF cards? I'm looking at an 8gb 30mb/s Ultra for £19.99, just seems oddly cheap as the Extreme III 4gb 30mb/s is the same price, despite being the same speed and half the capacity.

Sandisks range of CF cards doesent seem very straight forward (to a simpleton like me), and has lots of over-lapping products, so if anyone can explain that would be great

Cheers, James

[37Flipper]

In this months Photoplus magazine they did a full test of about 30 cards with a full write up of what to look for and all the differences.

I know thats not quite the answer you're looking for but as I'm at work I can't quite tell you what the differences are.

Cheers, Flipper

[SamHH]

Sandisk recently re-jigged their product line when the introduced some faster cards. The old line-up of CF cards was Ultra II (15 mb/s), Extreme III (30 mb/s), Extreme IV (45 mb/s). The new ones are called Ultra (30 mb/s), Extreme (60 mb/s) and Extreme Pro (90 mb/s). Personally, I'd just buy based on the rated speed. Make sure you get them from somewhere legit.

[fastfreddy]

jimmy156 said:

Hi everyone,

Does anyone understand the Sandisk range of CF cards? I'm looking at an 8gb 30mb/s Ultra for £19.99, just seems oddly cheap as the Extreme III 4gb 30mb/s is the same price, despite being the same speed and half the capacity.

Sandisks range of CF cards doesent seem very straight forward (to a simpleton like me), and has lots of over-lapping products, so if anyone can explain that would be great

Cheers, James

It's a bit confusing what they've done with the naming of their cards but this is the current situation:

The Extreme III and IV are now obsolete but some places may have a few left and are selling them off cheap.

The current cards are:

Ultra, 2/4/8/16GB, which is now 30MB/s (apart from the 2GB version which is still 15MB/s I think)
Extreme, 8/16/32GB which is 60MB/s
Extreme Pro, 15/32/64GB which is 90MB/s


The SRP for the 8GB Ultra is about £40 inc VAT. If you can get one for £19.99 inc. VAT then it seems a bit too cheap to me so best to enquire and make sure it's an Ultra and not the old Ultra II.

HTH

[Dogsey]

fastfreddy said:

The SRP for the 8GB Ultra is about £40 inc VAT. If you can get one for £19.99 inc. VAT then it seems a bit too cheap to me so best to enquire and make sure it's an Ultra and not the old Ultra II.

HTH

I'm guessing he's looking at 7dayshop, it's the new version alright.

[fastfreddy]

Dogsey said:

fastfreddy said:

The SRP for the 8GB Ultra is about £40 inc VAT. If you can get one for £19.99 inc. VAT then it seems a bit too cheap to me so best to enquire and make sure it's an Ultra and not the old Ultra II.

HTH

I'm guessing he's looking at 7dayshop, it's the new version alright.

Looks like it. That's a lower price than a Sandisk disti cost price, so good value for sure.

[Dogsey]

7dayshop always is.

[jimmy156]

Thanks for the replies guys that has cleared it all up nicley

Dogsey said:

fastfreddy said:

The SRP for the 8GB Ultra is about £40 inc VAT. If you can get one for £19.99 inc. VAT then it seems a bit too cheap to me so best to enquire and make sure it's an Ultra and not the old Ultra II.

HTH

I'm guessing he's looking at 7dayshop, it's the new version alright.

yup thats the one , cant beat the for price usually.

ETA, the card going to be used in a canon 50d that is fairly new to me, would there be any real advantage for an amatuer/enthusiast like me in getting a quicker card.

I've been making do with a 80x fuji till for the first month or 2, and to be honest it hasnt been a problem, i just need a bigger card as it will only hold about 80 RAW files and i'm covering a hocky, football and rugby match for my local teams on sunday!

Edited by jimmy156 on Monday 26th April 17:30

[ian in lancs]

What is the speed limiting factor? Is it the camera's write speed to the card or is it the card's speed to be written to?

For example - if the camera can write at say 90Mbs and the Card accepts 60Mbs and a file is 14Mb it takes 0.25s to transfer so any faster then 4 frames / sec on rapid fire the camera wouuld slow up - is that about right? With a 90Mbs card it would be 6 frames / sec.

I can't find any write speed data im my D300s or D700 manuals - so I can't determine whether a faster card would be beneficial.

[ian in lancs]

Found this site

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page...

which tested different cards. The SanDisk Extreme IV 2GB was second fastest and managed about 30Mbs yet the card rating is 45Mbs. Based on this data me thinks the limit is the camera rather than the card...

ETA

from Nikon press release "the Nikon D700 is also compliant with the next-generation of high-speed UDMA CompactFlash� cards that will enable recording speeds up to 35 megabytes/second."

reading that implies the camera limit is 35Mbs, seems to fit, so more expensive cards can't perform at the 90Mbs speed in a D700!

Edited by ian in lancs on Monday 26th April 19:55

[fastfreddy]

The factors to consider are:

1. What speed do you want/need to write to the card at? - The camera will have a buffer memory so it's not as simple as working out how theoretical write speed relates to the maximum FPS the camera can achieve.
2. What is the maximum speed the camera is capable of writing at? - This may be a bottleneck
3. Is a fast read speed important? - If you need to get the data off the card quickly, that's another reason to select a fast card.
4. Which cards are compatible with your camera? - This is a very important consideration. Although Compact Flash is supposed to be a 'standard', different manufacturers use different chipsets and architectures in their cards.

The only way to be sure is to test the card in your camera and base your decision on that, or go by the test results of others with the exact same camera as yours.

[GetCarter]

Just make sure it's a real Sandisk. Many cheap ones are fakes.

[john185k]

^^ as above

I bought one off ebay, takes ages to load, sometimes files are missing etc etc...

[Furyous]

Id also be looking at having two 4 gig rather than a single 8 gig.

[john185k]

Furyous said:

Id also be looking at having two 4 gig rather than a single 8 gig.

good point!!

[jimmy156]

Thanks guys, judging on what you guys have said re: cameras being the limiting factor i expect 30mb/s should be fine. I have no need to get data off quickly, and i expect my 4 year old laptop would be the limiting factor there anyway . I'm getting the feeling that card speed numbers are a similar marketing ploy to megapixels in camera's, especially if the Nikon D700 can only write at 35mb/s, makes the really expensive 90mb/s cards seem pretty redundant!

Re it being a genuine card, i think this topic has been raised with 7dayshop before, and i it was concluded that they are genuine, but wont necessarily come with original packing intact. I will probably check the serial number with sandisk for peace of mind, but i think they are quite trustworthy!

[Pesty]

Dogsey said:

fastfreddy said:

The SRP for the 8GB Ultra is about £40 inc VAT. If you can get one for £19.99 inc. VAT then it seems a bit too cheap to me so best to enquire and make sure it's an Ultra and not the old Ultra II.

HTH

I'm guessing he's looking at 7dayshop, it's the new version alright.

this 7day shop place sell legit cards?

[d1d215]

yeah, what I hear is that they break a lot of those multipacks. but who cares. haven't tested them yet, but love the prices there.