Sandisk Ultra or Extreme for A200

I know this has been addressed, at least partially, in other threads, but I was not able to extract a definitive answer, at least not with my rudimentary forum search skills.

I need to get a bigger storage card for my A200, and with the recent price cuts, now seems like as good a time as any. I am mainly looking at the Sandisk Ultra II 2GB or the Sandisk Extreme III 2GB (off topic - I wonder what "outrageous" word Sandisk will use for their next generation cards).

I shoot only JPEG, not RAW, and I am generally ambivalent about computer/card reader speeds. I just want to get more storage space (right now I am swapping among a bunch of 256M cards left over from a Canon S40) and want to have good in-camera speeds for JPEG.

Is there any real-world difference between the Ultra II and the Exteme III? Or are both cards really faster than the A200's ability to generate data? I can get the Ultra II for $80 and the Extrme III for $100, so I guess what I am trying to determine is whether the extra $20 actually gets me any benefit, or if I am just throwing my money away.

I have the 1GB Ultra II in my A200, which I think is quick enough. Since you are just doing jpeg I don't think you will notice any difference.

I have an A2 and apparently even with the latest FW upgrade it is not able to take full advantage of the potential of the Extreme card, tests seems to show only marginal differences to the Ultra 2. That could well be a hardware design issue that no FW upgrade can improve on beyond some hard limit. I don't know if the A2 shuffle data by SW or employ DMA. The potential of the Extreme depends on protocol handling that may not have been known at A* HW design time but which more recent models support. The arrival of faster cards and the successive FW upgrade improvements have increased the amount of high resolution images that can be shot per time unit. The A2 buffer can store three consecutive RAW shots and these be written to card in some 13 seconds. Latest FW also means it's possible to continue shooting RAW every 1.5-2 seconds or so and the camera keeps on allowing further shots at that pace for quite some time with these faster cards. I assume the A200 offer similar capability ?

--
gunnar

dondon said:

...I can get the Ultra II for $80 and the
Extrme III for $100, so I guess what I am trying to determine is
whether the extra $20 actually gets me any benefit, or if I am just
throwing my money away.

Click to expand...

I don't know the answer to your question regarding card speed, but can you believe how cheap this memory has become? For a while, it looked like SD cards were going to get cheaper than CF cards, but now it seems CF is catching up. Also, that's a really, really good price on a 2 GB Extreme III. I just bought a 2 GB Ultra II (for an A1, not A200), and the price difference just a week ago was much more than that.

I have an A2 with an Extreme III. I doubt it is much faster in the camera (or most other cameras for that matter) than the Ultra II, but it probably has faster download time to the computer. It was a no-brainer for me because the III was only a few $ more for a 2GB than the II. I bought mine in November, and the price is now 1/3 less!

As a recent convert to the RAW cause, I use 2xSandisk Ultra 11 1024 cards, in tandem with 3xPNY 512 cards, with my A2 plus 1.14 firmware. All lightning quick - even for 3-burst 'candids'.

This gives me potentially apx. 300 shots - who could possibly need more!! -and, as with others on this and other forums, I find this combination of cards to be MUCH more convenient than the larger capacity ones.

Not to stir the pot, but the above card is now available for USD 80 with rebate. Really fast, too.

Could you please expand on this? Why is several "smaller" cards better than one big one?

--
Jannik - KM Dimage A200

http://www.fototime.com/users/[email protected]

http://www.pbase.com/janniklindquist/

To my understanding, the Extreme III series is supposed to be more rugged, and be able to withstand harsh conditions such as extreme temperatures and altitudes.

For this reason I opted for the extreme CF before setting out for a safari in Kenya. Conditions there were, to my surprise (not to say ignorance) extremely mild and pleasant, LOL.

BTW, In the SanDisk website the price difference between Ultra & Extreme is huge, more like 100% than 25%!

Jannik Lindquist said:

Could you please expand on this? Why is several "smaller" cards
better than one big one?

Click to expand...

You limit how many pictures you lose if a card goes bad (happened to a friend on a trip to Italy -- Sandisk happily replaced the card, unforunately wouldn't spring for another trip).

I'm getting an A200 in a few days (may be tomorrow if time permits) and also wonder the differences between the two CF's -- the Ultra II & the Extreme III.

I'd like to know if having either high speed CF's will have considerable speed benefits in an A200 with RAW+JPG, (X)Fine JPGs and movies. Or should I get cheaper, lower speed CF's.

I plan to transfer the files using card readers instead of using the camera.

Please advise. Thanks.

Historically, I use 512MB cards. The reason for this is that 512 MB will fit comfortably on a 650-700MB CD, important when burning CDs on the go during trips.
Nowadays I have a portable storage device, so it's not really an issue anymore.

RitterSport said:

Jannik Lindquist said:

Could you please expand on this? Why is several "smaller" cards
better than one big one?

Click to expand...

You limit how many pictures you lose if a card goes bad (happened
to a friend on a trip to Italy -- Sandisk happily replaced the
card, unforunately wouldn't spring for another trip).

Click to expand...

Good point! I've already ordered a SanDisk Ultra 2GB card, though. I've got it for $90 here in Copenhagen. It's extremely rare that I shoot more than around 600 MB of pictures before I transfer them to my pc so my risk of loosing 2GB of images because of card-failure should be pretty low.

--
Jannik - KM Dimage A200

http://www.fototime.com/users/[email protected]

http://www.pbase.com/janniklindquist/