Product Description

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 SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash cards.

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Product Details

• Brand: SanDisk
• Model: SDCFH-512-901
• Released on: 2003-09-11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 5.00" h x 2.00" w x 8.00" l, .30 pounds

Features

• Ultra fast up to 9 Mb/sec data transfer rate
• Small size
• Holds up to 100 high resolution images
• Works with any CompactFlash enabled device
• High-density flash memory and optimized controller technology lets you save large image files faster

From the Manufacturer
What is the Ultra II CompactFlash Card?
The new SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash cards have a minimum sustained write speed of 9 megabytes (MB) per second and a read speed of 10 MB per second. Get faster speed for all the things you do.

Superior Performance for Advanced Digital Photographers
In the fast-paced world of Digital Photography, you rely on your camera and its capabilities. You also rely on your CompactFlash and SD cards to be fast, reliable and compatible with your camera. To meet the needs of professional and advanced photographers, SanDisk has developed new, optimized flash cards that:

• 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 cards are ideal for your most demanding photo shoots, including photo journalism and event, sports, nature and fashion photography.

Advanced 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

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Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.