SanDisk CF confusion

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I'm looking to pick up a 16GB Compact Flash card. What confuses the bejesus out of me are all the cards in the SanDisk range which seem to have conflicting price points. For now I've narrowed down my search to the following cards (I'm not going with their latest 'PRO' range given its price at the moment - also not sure my D300 would benefit from a 90MB/s card)


SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash 16GB (45MB/s) - £126 (amazon)

SanDisk Extreme CF Compact Flash 16GB (65MB/s) - £84.99 (amazon)

Does anyone have any idea why the 65MB/s card is cheaper than the Extreme IV version which has a transfer rate of 45MB/s?
 
Sandisk have recently realigned their various products and speeds.

The old Ultra II / Extreme III and Extreme IV are now Ultra, Extreme and Extreme Pro.
Ultra is 30mb/s, Extreme 60mb/s and Extreme Pro 90mb/s.
Personally I'd go for the cheaper version.
 
Great! So the 65MB/s 16GB is both cheaper and faster than its old Extreme IV equivalent.

Cool beans!
 
I'd like to know why you feel the need to use a 60mb/s card in a D300. I have 2 D300's and I use the 30mb/s cards and have never had the slightest problem with the speed of them.

You can get an 8Gb Ultra 30mb/s for £19.99 delivered so why not just buy 2 of them for £40 rather than double the price for speed you won't really benefit from?
 
The benefit in part comes not from the card in the camera but importing a full card onto the Mac. That's where I've seen a significant difference in the past. Even then I could of course put up with the 30Mb/s. It's a horses for courses thing and the price plays a part in that for sure. I'm into Motorsport photography and while the camera may not make the most of 65Mb/s right now the card will at least have some future proofing in it for when I later upgrade to something that can burst transfer at closer to those rates.

I don't think £84.99 is that bad for a 16GB Compact Flash with long future life. I take your point though.
 
I suppose it depends how far in to the future you are future proofing for. I'm sure it won't be too long before the 60mb/s cards come down to the price the 30mb/s cards are at now.

I agree it is frustrating waiting for a full card to download to your computer but you just drag and drop, walk away for a few minutes then it's done by the time you get back. I don't see it as an issue but each to their own I suppose.
 
I love fast cards mainly because they upload to my PC quicker. especially using the Sandisk Firewire reader :thumbs:

In terms of these prices I think it's just a case of Amazon having less of an idea of what these cards can do than us lot. The £85 one would be my recommendation.

HTH
 
The Extreme IV is the older product. The newer and better Extreme cards are cheaper than the equivalent older version (because an Extreme Pro has also been launched - mega $$$) and some shops havent realised this yet and are still seliing the older cards at the higher prices. Get the newer Extreme card. They are really fast - significantly increased the number of burst shots i get on my D3 and transferring images to my computer is rapid also.
 
I don't like the idea of all my eggs in one basket to be honest. I would rather have 4 x 4Gb or 2 x 8Gb with me. If you shoot on 4Gb you can still just switch at strategic moments and if something happens to one card you still have all the rest. Just my opinion.
 
cowasaki said:
I don't like the idea of all my eggs in one basket to be honest. I would rather have 4 x 4Gb or 2 x 8Gb with me. If you shoot on 4Gb you can still just switch at strategic moments and if something happens to one card you still have all the rest. Just my opinion.
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I totally agree there Darren, I've heard a lot of pros still only use 1 and 2GB cards for the very reason you state, but card will have to get bigger as file size go up not many shot on a 1GB with the expected 30 megapixel 1Ds IV .


As for the new UMDA 6 cards , there are VERY few camera that can take advantage of the speeds (90MB/s) and they are VERY expensive Lexar 16GB Professional UDMA 600X CompactFlash £ 265.99 inc VAT (Devon Camera)
 
whiteflyer said:
As for the new UMDA 6 cards , there are VERY few camera that can take advantage of the speeds (90MB/s) and they are VERY expensive Lexar 16GB Professional UDMA 600X CompactFlash £ 265.99 inc VAT (Devon Camera)
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that really is quite silly, if you stick a couple of those in a d3x in backup mode you are looking at over £500 and you will still not get that much of a bonus. So what if it takes 6 mins rather than 3 mins. Just go make a brew!
 
You could also try digital depot. I got a 45mb/s lexar 4gb pro card for under £20
 
As I understand it the new Ultra (30Mb/s) is roughly equivalent to the old Extreme III (30Mb/s). I have just bought a couple of 16GB Ultra's from 7dayshop and I can't discern any difference in use between them and my older 16GB Extreme III's in my 5Dmk2.

£43 delivered for 16GB is pretty good value imo too.
 
MadFrankie said:
Try ebuyer, we use them for most electrical orders at our work and they are great on delivery and price...

I got this for my 50D and I'm very happy with it

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143252
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Just a word of caution to nikon users that these Kingston cards for whatever reason don't appear to be very compatible with some or all Nikon cameras. I had one for my D300 and had to get rid because it was very very slow but it worked perfectly in a Canon camera.
 
cowasaki said:
that really is quite silly, if you stick a couple of those in a d3x in backup mode you are looking at over £500 and you will still not get that much of a bonus. So what if it takes 6 mins rather than 3 mins. Just go make a brew!
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The reason for these cards is not the download time saved , but the Camera Buffer to Card transfer time .

If you shoot burst mode on say a Canon 7D taking 8 RAW files a second, or about 160 MB or more a second worth of data. Now that buffer is going to fill up very fast. The faster your card can clear the buffer the more shots in the burst/ less time between bursts your going to get, ideally a card that can read faster than you can shoot is what you want.

If your only shooting in single shot mode than any speed of card will do.



As for price yes they cost a fortune, but somebody will come on saying they paid £200 for a 512MB card back in the day. :)
 
whiteflyer said:
The reason for these cards is not the download time saved , but the Camera Buffer to Card transfer time .

If you shoot burst mode on say a Canon 7D taking 8 RAW files a second, or about 160 MB or more a second worth of data. Now that buffer is going to fill up very fast. The faster your card can clear the buffer the more shots in the burst/ less time between bursts your going to get, ideally a card that can read faster than you can shoot is what you want.

If your only shooting in single shot mode than any speed of card will do.

As for price yes they cost a fortune, but somebody will come on saying they paid £200 for a 512MB card back in the day. :)
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I saw a review recently (can't remember where at the moment) that was testing the camera buffer empty time using different cards and it made pretty much no difference.

Is there anyone who can sit there with 3 different speed cards in the same camera and hold the button in in order to see how quickly the camera fills and then reaches saturation time then how quickly in empties.....

I remember spending £80 on a 1Gb card :)
 
whiteflyer said:
The reason for these cards is not the download time saved , but the Camera Buffer to Card transfer time .

If you shoot burst mode on say a Canon 7D taking 8 RAW files a second, or about 160 MB or more a second worth of data. Now that buffer is going to fill up very fast. The faster your card can clear the buffer the more shots in the burst/ less time between bursts your going to get, ideally a card that can read faster than you can shoot is what you want.

If your only shooting in single shot mode than any speed of card will do.

As for price yes they cost a fortune, but somebody will come on saying they paid £200 for a 512MB card back in the day. :)
Click to expand...


My stepdad told me about when he used to hire out 2GB hard disks for thousands of £'s at a time... :lol:

I'm not a pro, and I don't have a rapid fire camera, so I find that a 4GB Sandisk Ultra II does the job for me. It's 'only' 15MB/s, but it's great. I did have a 4GB Fuji card which I got cheap, only to discover it's about 6MB/s... Firing off 3 or 4 RAWs started to slow the camera down :bang:
So I swapped it for mum's 4GB Sandisk ultra II, mentioned above :) She just takes occasional shots of the kids, landscapes, etc. A typical 'mum with a camera', you could say :lol::p
 
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