SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB CompactFlash Memory Card SDCFX3-004G-A31
by SanDisk
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB CompactFlash Memory Card SDCFX3-004G-A31
Customer Review: Simply the best
Summary: 5 Stars
I thought I was dreaming a nightmare when I read a review that gave 3 stars to this product because of a limitaton in the product it was used in. I have several SanDisk Extreme III CF and SD (1 gig SD) cards, and they are nothing less than rock solid awesome. I use the SD cards in a Canon S2 IS, and a 1D Mk II N. The CF cards live in the 1D pretty much all of the time.
Other companies make pretty fast and durable flash cards, but SanDisk Extreme III cards are the fastest, and damn near bullet proof to boot. In my humble opinion, they are the best you can buy at the present time. If I happened to have an older camera that is limited in it's data transfer speed by virtue of it's vintage, I would still buy the most reliable, and fastest flash media available for it.
The day will come when a new camera tickles your fancy, and it would be a shame to have to discard your current collection of flash cards just because they are too slow to work with your new camera. CF and SD flash cards are here to stay for awhile. They have a lifetime of very active use rated at better than ten years. I can only speak for myself, but in a ten year period, I might buy several cameras.
Go for the best price, but go for the best product too. The SanDisk Extreme III cards cost as little as fifty Dollars per gig, and leave plenty of room for future camera updates.
Customer Review: great speed, but not reliable
Summary: 3 Stars
This card has the best rated speed for the Olympus E500, and the performance was great for about 5 months. In that last couple weeks, however, it has failed twice. The first time was when trying to transfer photos to the computer, and the computer could not recognize the card. After my husband reformatted it (and losing pictures in the process), it was working fine. The second time was fortunately while practicing with a new filter. It gave a "card error" message. At this point, I'll contact SanDisk. I will update here with the results.
Customer service update:
SanDisk was good about replacing this. They were a little resistant initially and required I perform some tests to prove to them that it was failing, but after I jumped through their hoops, they provided me with a UPS number, I took it into UPS for shipping to their technicians, who promptly had me sent a new one.
Update Sept 2007:
If possible, I would now upgrade my rating from 3 to 4 stars. The new card has been in use for 9 months with no problems. So, I would purchase this again, especially for an Olympus Evolt. I would just take lots of practice pictures with the card before relying on it for anything important.
Update Nov 2008:
The replacement card has worked without fail.
Customer Review: Both cards corrupt by 6 months of use
Summary: 2 Stars
I ordered two identical SanDisk Extreme III 4GB compact flash cards and used them without issue for almost six months, when one unexpectedly became corrupt (while sitting in my living room scanning through the images on the viewfinder of my Canon 50D). This camera & card were not exposed to any type of extreme weather and they definitely were not mishandled. I was very disappointed when the recovery software did not recover the lost files (although it did bring back all of the items I recently deleted). I discontinued use of the first memory card and proceeded to use the second. Only weeks later, the exact same issue occurred with the second card, this time while on a photo shoot with a client. The card simply could not be read and would not allow other images to be saved (only 127 images were on the card). My camera continuously said there was an error and that the card needed to be formatted. I had to end the photo shoot early knowing my other backup card was corrupt and that I now have two compact flash cards that are useless. They both have serial numbers & I've done troubleshooting via email, livechat, and recovery software with SanDisk. VERY disappointing and will not be purchasing from them again.Customer Review: Sandisk Compact Flash has retained excellence
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this for a Konica Minolta A200 not long after it came out. Previous I had used a micro drive (which no one should ever use) which had been somewhat more economical for it's size at the time, though ultimately failed due to it's design.
Compact Flash such as this one is far more reliable and faster (this one does 30mbps.) If you were to switch it out with a slower drive you will immediately start noticing how much better the Sandisk is. Even to this day when smaller SD cards are being used, the CF has a significantly faster read/write speed, and you will be hard pressed to take advantage of the capabilities using anything less than a good CF card such as this.
Now there are much larger CF cards and faster (UDMA is 60mbps or more) cards, and even if I don't end up replacing this 4 gb Sandisk with a newer one, I will certainly consider the advantages of CF in a camera purchase and only buy a camera with CF capabilities because the smaller cards simply don't function well enough.
The Sony A77 looks promising if it allows for CF as they initially claimed. Will see hopefully.
Customer Review: Extremely Good Value
Summary: 5 Stars
Sandisk Compact flash has performed very well for me for about 4 years. This model is great, especially at today's prices.
The Extreme III product is fast enough to take RAW+JpegFine images on my Nikon D200 up to about 12-18 images non-stop. At five frames per second, I never miss the action. My key objective is great photography, not videography. Some people may be conflicted between a CAMERA and CAMCORDER usage.
Speed can be more of an issue during uploading onto my computer, where USB 2.0 is good, but I don't expect hard drive speed from Compact Flash. I simply take a break while uploading the images.
This product will allow high speed photography on a Nikon D200. Some cameras models don't have enough in-camera memory BUFFER storage to capture a long burst of images. I wouldn't blame the Extreme III compact flash speed for this shortcomming, but recommend an upgraded camera body instead.
Of course, I don't want or need 50 frames of "motion picture" sequences, yet this is possible with small jpeg ONLY image sizes. A 10 megapixel RAW image requires lots of storage.