Customer Reviews

SanDisk SDCFH-512-901 512 MB Ultra II CompactFlash Card (Retail Package)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm not beholden to the SanDisk brand, and did quite a bit of research, and the overall reviews tend to point to this product as a great value. In fact, the "Ultra II" title does live up to its name, and am very happy with the performance of this product. Canon 350D takes 3 frames per second in a continuous shooting mode, and this card had no problem keeping up with the pace, even at the highest resolution. Download is speedy, too.

I went for two 512MB cards instead of a single 1GB card, for redundancy (keep one in the camera and process the other on a computer), and for extra insurance if one card fails for some reason.

Highly recommended.

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.

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

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.

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