Secure Digital cards are fast, reliable and compatible with Digital Cameras, while Ultra Secure Digital cards 60x Higher Density and speed are made to be more effective with your Professional and Advanced Photography Equipment. SanDisk Ultra II Secure Digital card's minimum sustained write speed of 9 megabytes (MB) per second plus their read speed of 10 MB per second makes these cards ideal for photo journalism, nature, sports, fashion photo's and your most demanding shoots.
1 Buyers beware.
If you decide to buy this Ultra SD Sandisk card, make sure you have the newer Sandisk card reader. I have the Sandisk model SDDR-73 card reader and couldn't read the photos taken on this card. Evidently, my card reader needs a firmware upgrade that is not available on the SanDisk site. I wrote the tech support from SanDisk and they are bunch of idiots. They told me to return the ultra SD and sent me another one. When I got the replacement ultra SD card, it also would not read on my card reader. I know my older card reader is not defective because it can read my non-ultra SD cards. Finally, I had to buy the SanDisk 8 in 1 card Reader/Writer which can read this stupid card. This Ultra Card doesn't seems to record photos with my digital camera any faster than my non ultra SD card.
Kevin
2 How many pictures will it store?
How many pictures will it store? It is the most commonly asked question from digital camera enthusiast but usually the question that is the most difficult to get a straight answer about. Well, considering I worked in the memory industry for over 7 years I can help clarify this perplexing question and do so unbiased as I have since changed industries.
The Sandisk 512MB Secure Digital Ultra II, like most 512MB cards, will store on average 568 pictures when used with a 2 megapixel camera, 426 images when used with a 3 megapixel camera, 256 pictures when used with a 4 megapixel camera, 204 images when used with a 5 megapixel camera, and 160 pictures when used with a 6 megapixel camera. These numbers are based off the assumption that you are going to shoot your images at the highest quality JPEG setting available for the camera and understand that they are estimates and may be off by as much as 10 percent due to numerous factors including the complexity of the scene being shot and the compression algorithm used by your specific camera.
I truly hope this review was helpful to you in determining whether this 512MB card is the right capacity for your specific needs.
3 Great Card
I got this card with a Dimage z3 and it works wonders. it can hold 499 pictures at 4mp and standard format. It could hold 3500ish picutres at the lowest setting. and when making a video it can hold alittle above 30 minutes. very good card. i dont have any other cameras i used it with so that is my review.
4 So Far So Good
I have purchased the Sandisk 512 MB Secure Digital Ultra II for my newly acquired Kodak 7590 digital camera. So far I have no problem with it. I also use it on my Toshiba notebook which has a built-in SD-card reader. So far it works fine on the notebook computer too. I have read customers' review for the Sandisk 256 MB Secure Digital Ultra II. People were complaining about the card went dead on them after some time of use and they are returning the card for refund. I hope this will not happen to me.
So far, I am very happy with it. It stores more than 200 pictures at 5MP @ Fine JPEG Compression. As for the speed of the card. I can't really tell the difference when I compare it with a regular Sandisk 512 MB Secure Digital card. Both seems to work just as fast in the digital camera and the notebook computer.
5 Big. Fast.
BIG. If you have a 3 megapixel camera or higher, then this SD card is for you. You should take all your pictures at the highest resolution and the least compression as possible. For 3 mp cameras, each picture will be about 1 MB to 1.5 MB (more than 300 pictures in this card). For 4 mp cameras, each picture will be about 2 MB (about 250 pictures in this card). This card will allow you take a LOT of pictures before you'll have to unload to your computer.
FAST. This card not only carries a lot of storage space, this is also fast. Even if the card is full, you will be able to download all your pictures to your computer in under a minute instead of several minutes on a regular card.
6 Test memory ASAP
This performed as wonderfully as other reviewers describe -- until I came close to filling it. Then it would not format via camera or computers. Of course, this occurred a week out of warranty. Lesson: I shall now exercise every bit of memory as soon as I receive it -- fill it fast or slow with data. That applies to all sizes and speeds of course.
7 Performance is worth the price premium.
I just received a SanDisk 512MB Ultra II Secure Digital card and did a quick & dirty performance comparison with the non-ultra SanDisk SD card. If you just want the results, then go to the bottom of the review. For the more inquisitive, here is my test configuration:
linux-2.4.22 (with ehci to enable usb2.0) connected to . . .
usb2.0 hub connected to . . .
SanDisk SDDR-88 usb2.0 memory card reader
commands for the write test:
- mount -o noatime,sync /dev/sda1 /flash_memory
- cat testfile > /dev/null
- time cp tesfile /flash_memory
The first command forces any writes to the flash_memory to happen immediately, so there is no caching going on. The second command reads through the ~50MB testfile and caches it into memory (no need to access the hard disk). The third command actually copies the test file to the memory card and times it.
commands for the read test:
- umount /flash_memory
- mount -o noatime,sync /dev/sda1 /flash_memory
- time cp /flash_memory/testfile /dev/null
The first command unmounts the flash memory and clears the cache. The second command mounts the flash memory so the computer can access its files. The third command actually copies the file, which must be read directly from the card because we cleared the cache, and times the copy.
The read and writes tests were performed multiple times, and the results varied little between iterations. The 512MB card was completely empty, and the 256MB card had a small 3MB file.
The SanDisk Ultra II card turned in some impressive numbers:
writes: 4.95MB/sec (5048.2KB/sec)
reads: 8.19MB/sec (8389.96KB/sec)
For comparison, here are the numbers for the SanDisk 256MB non-ultra card:
writes: 0.86MB/sec (876.44KB/sec)
reads: 1.53MB/sec (1570.69KB/sec)
If you need performance, then the SanDisk Ultra II series is the way to go. The Ultra II reads and writes more than five times as fast as the plain-vanilla SanDisk secure digital card. In my case, I will be using the card to store MP3 files for a portable audio device, and waiting around while moving MP3s is not how I want to spend my time. So, I bought the Ultra II. Your needs may vary. Buy accordingly.
Also, I realize that other manufactures market "high-performance" memory cards, but since I don't own one, I can't recommend/jeer them here.
