The new SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash memory card has a minimum sustained write speed of 9 megabytes (MB) per second and a read speed of 10MB per second. Get faster speed for all the things you do.
In the fast-paced world of Digital Photography, you rely on your camera and its capabilities. You also rely on your CompactFlash card to be fast, reliable and compatible with your camera.
To meet the needs of professional and advanced photographers, SanDisk has developed new, optimized CompactFlash cards that:
- Have a minimum sustained write speed of 9MB per second and a read speed of 10MB per second.
- Take advantage of the advanced features of high mega-pixel digital cameras.
- Deliver superior speed. Now you can capture those high-resolution images even faster!
- Do it all with low power consumption, which means longer battery life.
SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash cards are ideal for your most demanding photo shoots, including photojournalism and event, sports, nature and fashion photography. All CF cards from SanDisk are Type I format, including SanDsik Ultra II CompactFlash cards.
Features: - Faster write speed means less time between shots.
- Ready for rapid-fire shooting.
- High-density flash memory and optimized controller.
Technology lets you save large image files faster. - Lifetime Warranty.
1 Good price; fast write speed; no trouble
I haven't had this card long, but I've been very pleased with its performance. I have a Canon S10 IS. This particular camera takes very good movie clips--approaching that of DVD. This card keeps up with all that information as the movie clip is being taken, and finishes up very quickly when you stop recording. It, of course, performs well taking pictures, too. The short story is: I've been pleased with the Ultra II and like to think it's worth the extra money.
2 don't forget to backup your camera
The Ultra II CF card is a great product, but with all microelectronics there will always be the possibility of a DOA, or catastrophic crash when you least expect it. Yet we see these painful reports about people who've "lost all the pictures from the trip of a lifetime, and it's all SanDisk's fault!"
Hey, it's a computer! Back it up! If you can afford the high end digital camera and the ticket to Paris, you can afford something like the EZDigiMagic 20GB backup device that fits in the palm of your hand and lets you save your stuff whenever you want. And voila, your life won't be ruined again!
3 Totally disappointed
I brought the card brand new, used it less than 5 times and it died during my own wedding.
To make it even worse, pictures were not recoverable.
My tips:
*Think twice when buying this card
*Buy couple small cards (say 256Mb)instead of one big card.
4 Your reader may not work with this card!
I purchased this card for use with my Canon Digital Rebel. I had been told by other digital SLR users that they did not notice an increase in performance with the high speed cards and I now must agree with them. This Ultra II card does not work any faster and does not impact my camera performance under normal picture taking because my camera buffers images. The only time that I can foresee an advantage would be during rapid picture taking, but how often does the average photographer do that?
The BIG DISADVANTAGE is if you want to use this card with your existing card reader. I tried using the Ultra II card with my card reader and ran into trouble when I tried to read or to write to the card. The computer either reported I/O errors or the process took a minute per image. Not exactly the blazing speeds which were promised. I contacted Sandisk about the problem and they told me that Ultra II cards will not work with older readers including older Sandisk readers. If you want to use this card, you need a new reader. This is a big disadvantage for someone like myself who travels a lot and counts on using internet cafes to transfer images to CD's to clean space on the compactflash cards while traveling. I dont have a choice of which reader the internet cafe uses and therefore, I may not be able to use this card while on the road.
I also notice no significant difference in speeds when downloading from my camera via a USB connection. This may be because I am not using USB 2.0.
In summary, this card is not worth the extra expense if you do not have a brand new reader using USB 2.0. If you have an older reader, you will need to upgrade to a new reader that can work with Ultra II (I am sure that Sandisk will happily sell you one.) For my money, I will stick with Viking compactflash rather than to ever purchase another Ultra II.
5 fast and worth every penny
This card is fast, holds 127 pictures taken in Ultra Hi Res on an 8MP camera and the download speed using an external card reader is phenomenal. So much so that the xD card that is also in my camera is now rarely used, because it is so much slower.
The only advice I give to friends is that they be sure to factor the cost of a high performance memory card into any camera purchase, because frankly you may find yourself hating using a perfectly good camera just because of the type of card you got. And this product is one that I consistently recommend.
Happy shopping.
JB
6 Great card, much faster than normal SanDisk
I have a 512 MB SanDisk Ultra II, and a 256 MB SanDisk (normal). I compared the read/write speeds using a Firewire Delkin DDREADER 24 Compact Flash card reader. I copied the files to the CF card then copied them back to the HD to test the read and write speeds. Here are the results.
Files: 75, Total Size: 236.5 MB. These were all jpg's from a 6 MP camera.
Ultra II card: Write time: 1 min 5 seconds, Read Time: 54 Seconds.
Normal card: Write time: 2 min 1 second, Read Time 1 min 11 seconds.
The write speed for the Ultra II was about twice as fast as the normal card, and the read just slightly faster. If your camera can benefit from the extra speed; it is deffinitely worth buying the Ultra II over the regular. I would also like to add, you won't get that fast of a transfer speed over USB 1.1 because it is slower than the card is capable. You should use a USB 2.0 or Firewire connection for optimal performance.
7 Great Card - Great Value
To those 1 star reviewers before - the rating is for the card, not for the poor service you received from Amazon. This card is terrific, and well worth the cost.
8 Fastest thing I've got
I did an informal speed comparison between several storage cards in an olympus c8080wz. The Ultra II was the fastest, followed by the Olympus 32MB xD card that came with the camera, then a 128MB SanDisk Ultra (not Ultra II) card, then Lexar (8x speed rating) 16MB, then SanDisk 128MB (no fancy speed qualifiers).
I timed Raw images shot handheld, with one hand holding the camera and one hand running a stopwatch, so this isn't a super-duper scientific experiment. For a raw image, the SanDisk U2CF ran about 14+ seconds, while the UCF and xD ran 15+ seconds. Not a huge difference for the timing method. For those of you wondering about the value of higher speed CF, the unrated SanDisk ran 24 seconds per frame, and the Lexar 8x was in the 17 second range.
As someone with more money than skill as a photographer, the U2CF speed is worth the extra.
Raw not your thing? I ran a 5-shot high-speed continuous burst -- same scene, same camera as above -- duration is time from half-pushed button being fully pushed (5 burst frames captured before camera pauses) for display to indicate room for one more photo (AF and exposure time excluded): The U2CF ran about 8.9 seconds, the UCF ran 9.3, the xD ran 9.1, then Lexar about 9.4, and the unrated SanDisk ran 10.4. Less than 2 seconds difference -- again, not a huge difference, but still fairly repeatable in my testing.
Your mileage will vary depending on scene content, in-camera image processing, shooting mode, and camera model.
Why not 5 stars? You can blame the camera -- I just want more speed.
9 Ultra II is NOT faster than Lexar 12X
I bought a 512mb Ultra II and tested it against my Lexar 12X and a Viking 256mb (no X rating, but similar to the Lexar). In my Canon 10D the Ultra II was only 10% faster, and that was as good as it got. Rob Galbraith's test showed it to be 30% faster (I did the same test he did).
I tested it in a SanDisk USB 2.0 reader hooked up to my desktop (Windows XP, Athlon 2800) and in a Delkin CardBus 32 PCMCIA Adapter (which is 5X faster than my old PCMCIA adapter - buy this!)in my laptop. The Lexar 12X was 17% faster at its worst, and 56% faster at its best! So is this the same card Rob tested, or are they putting Ultra II stickers on 12X cards?
I called SanDisk tech support. They were very nice and exchanged my card for a new one. But the new one tested the same.
10 Got mine from Amazon. 60X write, 66X read.
I pre-ordered this item from Amazon. Apparently, there was an initial delay with Amazon's supply, but I just got mine. With a price like this and free shipping (which, despite being "Super Saver," was speedy as usual), I have no complaints.
Works fine so far, and the capacity boost over my old 64MB card has me almost giddy: The "pictures remaining" counter on my 3MP camera jumped from about 40 to over 300.
Helpful info: The manufacturer's "X" speed rating equivalent, which isn't easy to find online, is 60X write and 66X read.
11 Amazon can't deliver
I ordered this before tax day in April and I am now told that I won't see it until August. Amazon has blown past expected delivery dates several time so far, so I have no reason think that they will meet the August date. Order this product only if you never want to receive it.
12 Works fine - but not from Amazon
I have two of these, one in a Canon Powershot S500 and the other in a Powershot S1 IS and both work fine. No problems at all.
The ordering issue was something else, eventually I gave up on Amazon's extended and extending delivery times and bought them on Ebay for $10 more. I buy a lot of gear from Amazon and I was disappointed this time, but that's one in a hundred where they have totally failed my expectations, not bad overall.
It's a fast memory card, it works, it's available on Ebay. What else is there to say?
13 Worth the premium for high end cameras!
I've seen some comments about this card not being worth the extra premium, but those users did not have a professional or pro-sumer level camera. It is worth it to me because of two advantages over 'standard' comapct flash cards:
******Upload Speed*******
Upload (or Read) speeds with a USB 2.0 card reader will definitely be faster with this card. A full card will take just a few minutes to download to my PC while my old 128 MB standard Lexar card takes LONGER to complete! I can only imagine how much longer 512 MB would take on a regular card. Still, it may not be enough to justify the extra cost if that's your only advantage.
******Write Speed******
Here's the real advantage and cost justification: I have a Nikon D70 and can shoot continuously until the card is FULL. I cannot do this with other cards I've tried. They always fill the buffer up, and I have to wait. If getting shots without worry of waiting to take the next one (even in sub-second waits), this is a perfect choice. There won't be a just-missed shot because your camera and card are feverishly trying to write data. Again, users of consumer grade cameras will not notice a big difference in write speeds, if at all. I also have a Nikon Coolpix 995, and the difference in write speeds is completely transparent.
******Conclusion******
The price premium for this card is very much similar to other premium items on the market. If you have a car that normally takes 87 Octane gas and sees no improvement with putting in 93, it isn't worth the higher price for the premium fuel. The same goes with this card -- if your camera can take advantage of the much improved writes speeds, this is one of the best choices. If it can't, then definitely buy the standard card and save some cash.
14 Still waiting
I ordered this card on 'april/15' and today 'may/7', i got an email that the item will be shiped on 'july/17' ( in 2 months)...that rally ruined my planned vacation...
I expected more from amazon..
15 ordered on april 21 -- delivery estimate in june
i placed this order a long time ago on april 21st, and i have yet to recieve it. the description said it usually shipped in about a week, then they changed it to a later date, then they changed in again. Now the description says the item is not in stock. This is too bad because i ordered my Canon Digital Rebel on april 20, and UPS came to deliver it today. Now i won't be able to take pictures until i get this card, and who knows when that will be.. hopefully this card will work well for me, and even though i am complaining about the poor service now, i will rate the "true" product when i recieve it... whenever that is. I have ordered from amazon in the past and this is my only negative experience so far.
16 ordered on april 21 -- delivery estimate in june
i placed this order a long time ago on april 21st, and i have yet to recieve it. the description said it usually shipped in about a week, then they changed it to a later date, then they changed in again. Now the description says the item is not in stock. This is too bad because i ordered my Canon Digital Rebel on april 20, and UPS came to deliver it today. Now i won't be able to take pictures until i get this card, and who knows when that will be.. hopefully this card will work well for me, and even though i am complaining about the poor service now, i will rate the "true" product when i recieve it... whenever that is. I have ordered from amazon in the past and this is my only negative experience so far.
17 Is it worth the premium?
I'm not sure there's a noticeable speed difference for me in either taking pics or in accessing the card as a drive (including image transfers). There is a price bump to consider. Currently, up-to-date CF memory goes for about a quarter/meg. Therefore, there is at this time a 20% premium for speed you're unlikely to notice.
18 31% faster than card that comes with Canon Powershot S400
I did high-speed continuous shooting with the Canon Powershot S400 with both this card and the card that came with the camera. The card that came with it did 10 pictures in 22 seconds and this card did 10 pictures in 15 seconds. A card doesn't have to do much else. I have not yet used it extensively but I don't know of other likely problems other than slow writing speeds.
19 Please match card to camera for best performance
At least one poster indicated that the card in question performed horribly on their Nikon camera. There are compatibility issues (still) between various camera makes and the various compact flash cards and their controllers. Go to http://www.robgalbraith.com and check out the flash speed tests. They are done with about a dozen of the most popular camera types, and you will see that it is a waste of money to get an ultra-fast CF card, if your camera is not built to use it properly. i.e., a fast CF card will not make a slow camera any faster.
Nikon, for instance, has engineered their cameras around Lexar cards, and I've had good success with those cards in my Coolpix 4500. On the other hand, when I tried a Sandisk Ultra (rated fastest in those days) it was slower than the 12X Lexars on that camera.
Nikon now also supports Lexar's proprietary Write Acceleration (WA) technology, but only on more recent, up-scale cameras. Again, a waste of money to buy a 40x WA Lexar card if the camera doesn't make any use of it. At least Nikon publishes a list of tested cards in the back of their camera manuals (unlike Canon). You can also get info on recently tested cards on the Nikon camera tech site.
You should be able to extrapolate to larger size cards from there, but I wouldn't stray from the manufacturers listed there, unless you get a chance to actually check out a card in your camera in a camera store. Don't forget to be nice to the sales folks there, and buy something there, for their time and trouble, instead of saying, "Cool, now I can order this from Amazon!" After all, what good does it do you to save a few bucks on an initial CF purchase, if it doesn't do what you want? Kind of an expensive keychain charm, if you ask me.
I recently got a Canon EOS 300D, and was dismayed to find that Canon support wouldn't tell me what speed or manufacturer of card to use with the camera (I suppose the engineering department used core memory for their tests, for all I know). Since I bought a Digital Rebel before any flash tests with that camera appeared on http://www.robgalbraith.com, I was pioneering. I subsequently discovered that Canon was selling Simpletech 10x cards on their web site as 300D accessories (imagine that 8-), so I ordered a couple from Amazon (*much* better price 8-), and have been happy with them. Not the fastest in the world, but the price was right, and they work OK with camera.
Since then, I've seen the review on http://www.robgalbraith.com (as of 11/28/2003, they had tested with 16 different cameras -- also check out an older survey at http://www.dpreview.com, that may cover your camera), with the Sandisk Extreme topping out the list for the 300D. I ended up here, looking for Extremes, but Amazon doesn't seem to be carrying any. 8-(
Sandisk Ultra II's and the "new" Ultra (see the robgalbraith article) rated very closely to the Extreme, though.
If you have a Digital Rebel (EOS 300D), the Ultra II 512MB should work fine for you. Also, to all those folks that say you can get 100+ photos on a 512MB card, you obviously haven't discovered the benefits of shooting in RAW mode. Of course, if you shoot in RAW, you can't squeeze quite as many shots on a card (about 64, +/-) but it's still about the equivalent of two rolls of film, which is OK in my book.
If you do shoot RAW, do yourself a favor and check out Capture One DSLR Digital Rebel edition (http://www.pictureflow.com/). It's cheap ($49), fast (instant preview of your changes, and you can queue RAW conversions for background processing), and will make working with RAW photos a pleasure. Nothing like being able to fix an exposure problem +/- 2 stops *after* you shoot it, and the 'click here' color balance correction is golden. A RAW file is a lossless compression with 12-bits of data, so if you convert to 16-bit TIFF, you can edit to your heart's content without seriously degrading the image (unlike 8-bit JPEG).
If you have a 300D, you've bought a first-rate sensor and electronics (same as the more-expensive 10D). Don't cripple it by shooting JPEGs. Have fun, and explore what your camera can do.
20 Canon Digital Rebel
This is the card you want if your getting a Digital Rebel! The 512 will get you about 142 pictures.It downloads fast ,and gives you great pictures,what more do you want.If you are spending at least 1000 dollars on a camera don't go cheap on the compact flash cards! Get a good one! This card I got online for about 150 dollars.Make sure you are getting the Ultra 2 not just the Ultra there is a difference the Ultra is good but not as fast as the Ultra 2 ,you will be thankful you spent a few a
extra bucks and got the best card for the Canon Digital Rebel
21 Fast !!!
G'day from down under... Bought this Card from Amazon recently and it is fast! Writes to memory in about 1.5sec at 6.3mp. Not so good in the nikon 54-5700s. I use it in my Canon 300eos digital and there's no problems at all.
22 can't be worse
I have my nikon coolpix 5400, it comes with a start memory card from lexar media 8X (1.2M/s) speed, which has about 2 seconds delay on each shot. I bought this sandisk ultra II as it claims 9M/s writing speed and 10M/s reading. However, it tooks about 4~5 seconds for each shot EVERY TIME!!. I can't believe how they can put such brag in their ad...
23 I agree, great card!
I purchased this card for my new Garmin Street Pilot 2610 GPS unit. I wanted to simultaneously load the map/address/routing information for the entire western half of the United States into the Street Pilot. This was almost 400MB of data and it took only about 60% of the time to load for this SanDisk card as it had done with another brand of card.
The speed difference really shows and I recognize now that this speed and quality is worth the extra ten or fifteen dollars! If you have a mega-pixel digital camera this is the card for you, too.
24 Great card!
Bought one of these cards and I love it. I have a Canon 300d/Digital Rebel.
I originally used a Canon 32MB card which performed horribly. It would take on average 10 seconds to write one JPG at the highest resolution.
With the 512MB Ultra II card it takes from 1-2 seconds to write the same image. It also allows you to shoot continuous shots longer.
With 6+ Megapixels--I think the 512MB card is the perfect size for a full day of shooting. I can get about 165-170 shots on a card. I am glad I did not get the 256MB card.
Lastly, it also allows quicker image previewing from the camera, flipping between images is so so much faster. I think the extra money for this card is well worth it.
