Confused about memory cards..........

[Dizzyworld]

It looks like I have decided to get the Canon S3 IS. I finally found one locally to play around with. Sadl,y the Canon A700 I don't think will ever hit the market for me to check out before vacation. And the 12x zoom is calling me a little too loudly.

Question..........will there be a difference between an Ultra Memory Card and an Extreme memory card? I plan to use the sports mode a lot for my Ds soccer games. Is there one brand that I should consider besides SanDisk?

Also from what I'm reading here, it is recommended to get get two smaller cards instead of one larger card?

Thanks again for all your help. This has been a long process for me.

 

[0bli0]

the only difference Ultra and Extreme CF cards is the Extreme is designed for hot and cold temperatures. the Ultra and Extreme are faster reading from and writing to than the standard blue SanDisk cards. this may or may not have an impact on your style of shooting depending on the camera. where it makes a noticeable difference is offloading images to your computer. SanDisk, Lexar, and PQI have treated me well. in terms of 1 big card or 2 small cards - it's a bit of personal preference. i like using 1 and 2 gig cards and have lots of them. but i won't get a 4 gig card cos a) they're overpriced still and b) i wouldn't want to have 4 gigs of pics fail if i ever do have a card go south on me. if i were shooting .jpg, i would probably only shoot on 1 gig cards again for the same reason.

 

[PoohJen]

Congrats on the new camera Shirley! I think you will love it!!!

I've just recently bought two 2 gb cards - a Sandisk Ultra II at Circuit City for about $74 after rebates, and a Kingston (?) elite pro something or other from Dell (w/ free s/h) for about $55.

like obli0 said, the idea of getting smaller cards is in case one gets lost or corrupted, you won't have lost all your pics.

I find w/ the XT, the 2gb gets a little over 550 pics - and I easily shoot that many at a baseball tournament! Hopefully the two cards will get me thru the cruise - 40 days to go, Shipmate!

HTH,
Jen

 

[Dizzyworld]

Thanks Jen. All of this gets so confusing. I am a simple point and shoot person. So many choices out there. I did have fun with the S3 the other day though.

Looking forward to meeting you and your family in a few weeks. I told my DS about the other guys crusing with us that are scouts. He can't wait to meet the guys. Doreen and your son are both scouts correct? Or am I confusing you with other people? If so sorry.

See ya real soon Jen.
Shirley

 

[WillCAD]

Ultra II and Extreme III are both product lines by Sandisk. They are not the same; the Extreme III is rated for transfer rates of up to 20mb/sec, while the Ultra II is only rated at 10mb/sec. Standard Sandisk CF cards have about the same write speed as the Ultra II, but about half the read speed (which makes a big difference if you are downloading 500mb of photos to your computer!)

Faster cards are better for two things:

1) Multiple picture taking - take a pic, it saves faster to the card, the camera is ready to take another pic faster. Not all cameras are capable of writing fast enough to take advantage of the Ultra II or Extreme III cards high transfer rates, so you could save money by buying the slower cards.

2) Uploading pics from card to computer. The larger the card you have, the more data you'll be copying, and the more difference you will see from a faster card.

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1026)-SanDisk_Ultra_II_CompactFlash.aspx

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1024)-SanDisk_Extreme_III_CompactFlash.aspx

 

[0bli0]

thank you, WillCAD, i stand corrected. i do like how SanDisk puts disclaimers on their ratings. i did a test last week (posted the results here) with the fastest reads from the Extreme 3 coming in at about 11.2 MB/s and about the same for the Ultra 2. i'm sure the limiting factor is my card readers although i tried it on 3 different readers (2 USB and one firewire) on a few different computers. in camera, Robgalbraith's page lists my camera write at just under 6 MB/s for compact flash and about 7.3 MB/s for SD. i'm also fortunate that my camera will buffer 20 RAW or 40 .jpg (i seldom burst and if i do no more than a few).

 

[WillCAD]

thank you, WillCAD, i stand corrected. i do like how SanDisk puts disclaimers on their ratings. i did a test last week (posted the results here) with the fastest reads from the Extreme 3 coming in at about 11.2 MB/s and about the same for the Ultra 2. i'm sure the limiting factor is my card readers although i tried it on 3 different readers (2 USB and one firewire) on a few different computers. in camera, Robgalbraith's page lists my camera write at just under 6 MB/s for compact flash and about 7.3 MB/s for SD. i'm also fortunate that my camera will buffer 20 RAW or 40 .jpg (i seldom burst and if i do no more than a few).

You might also want to check carefully to be sure that your Sandisk Ultra II is real. There are a lot of fakes going around that look very convincing, but the fakes are not high-speed cards:
http://martybugs.net/articles/fakesandisk.cgi

I recently bought two Ultra II cards from an eBay vendor - a guy with three years of over 90% positive feedback and not one mention of counterfiet cards - and they were both fakes. I returned them both for refund.

 

[PoohJen]

You might also want to check carefully to be sure that your Sandisk Ultra II is real. There are a lot of fakes going around that look very convincing, but the fakes are not high-speed cards:
http://martybugs.net/articles/fakesandisk.cgi

I recently bought two Ultra II cards from an eBay vendor - a guy with three years of over 90% positive feedback and not one mention of counterfiet cards - and they were both fakes. I returned them both for refund.

yup; I was originally gonna try out an Amazon reseller with a real low price (and positive feedback score) but the price was so low I figured it could only be counterfeit, and why bother... I'd rather just know what I am getting, have some peace of mind and move on.

 

[0bli0]

You might also want to check carefully to be sure that your Sandisk Ultra II is real. There are a lot of fakes going around that look very convincing, but the fakes are not high-speed cards:
http://martybugs.net/articles/fakesandisk.cgi

I recently bought two Ultra II cards from an eBay vendor - a guy with three years of over 90% positive feedback and not one mention of counterfiet cards - and they were both fakes. I returned them both for refund.

given the Ultra two cards i've had for several years, i'm pretty darn sure they're real SanDisk. and besides, since i'm getting over the rated read speed and have never had an issue with them, i wouldn't care. all of my SanDisk cards have edge stamps - when i bought the ultra 2s, there were several series that had issues with my body when toshiba made a slight design change early last year.

since then i've only bought Extreme 3 SD cards.