Sandisk Extreme III vs Ultra II

[Fedaykin]

I ordered my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XS. What I am unsure of is what SDHC card/s to get. Is the difference between the Ultra II and Extreme III Sandisk cards enough to warrant the big price difference? Does the camera body I'll be using matter?

I'm leaning towards the Ultra IIs as they are much cheaper, I can get an Ultra II 8GB card for almost the same price as an Extreme III 4GB. I appreciate the feedback, don't want to regret getting the Ultra and finding it isn't as fast as I'd liked.

[Firenut]

I guess that it depends on what kind of photography that you are doing. If you are taking sports shots, I would recomend the Extreme III's as your photos will load to your card quite a bit faster. I use the Extreme III's myself and I like their speed.

[bevilaquafoto]

Yes, the difference is in how fast the card can accept the images.....how quickly the card can be written to. It does you no good either way if your camera has a small buffer and can't send to the card quickly anyway. You only need very fast cards if you are shooting very fast like for sports, or rapid-fire flash-on-camera event stuff. If you dont need the speed, then you can go for the cheaper Sandisk. I WOULD recommend sticking to a brand like Sandisk, though and not cheaping out completely and buying an untried brand of card.

[Eero Makela]

If the Camera Supports Ultra DMA transfer speed then you may benefit from higher speed cards

My D300 does UDMA however in practice I have not seen a difference between 266x and 300x cards, I also have sandisk III that run both 20 and 30mb speeds.

I am currently slowing down my clicking so speed is not an issue, also it never really was before either.

Speed is only needed if you are in the habit of shooting 5+ frames/second.

Larger cards are cheaper now. however I still do not like the 16+gb as you are saving your photos on one card and if something happens you can loose all.

I run with 4gb usually and this way you can also copy to DVD very easy as it fits easy onto 4.7gb disk.

I have never tried the Sandisk IV CF so no idea if they are actually better.

My D300 still slows down with the III's once the internal buffer is full.

I use Transcend 266x and 300x CF cards

Also you benefit from speed if you use a firewire transfer device to copy card to computer when the speed is higher

[Joves]

Originally Posted by Eero Makela

Also you benefit from speed if you use a firewire transfer device to copy card to computer when the speed is higher

This is the reason I get the fastest card I can afford, even if my camera is slower than its write speeds. I have used the slower cards and it felt like an eternity waiting for the photos to load on the computer.

[Fedaykin]

Thanks for the input guys. I think I'm going with the Ultra II for now. First because I won't be shooting faster than 3 fps since my camera won't do faster than that, plus it's buffer isn't that great and probably wouldn't benefit from a very fast card. Only thing left is card to computer speed, but that's not a problem for me as this will just be a hobby for me and I spend most of my time on the computer anyways(hopefully soon that'll change to shooting haha).

Even when working with my sister in one of her wedding jobs the write speed through USB wouldn't be that important. Plus she uses Ultra IIs anyways :P

Anyways, probably gonna order a couple of 4GB Ultra IIs soon. And no I don't plan on switching from Sandisk, I've heard some bad stuff of other brands, even Lexar. I am not familiar with transcend though....

[tomrit]

The cards with the roman numbers are as far as I know older cards, the current cards are labeled Ultra, Extreme, and Extreme Pro. Currently they seem to be 30mb/s, 60mb/s, and 90mb/s respectively.

[Dirk]

well the most has been said earlier , i would recommend to go to a good photo store and buy the memory there on ebay there a re unfortunately a lot of counterfeit cards around . i have also good experiences with sandisk , kingston, apacer, hema , silicon power .

one warning stay away from extreme memory (brand ) they s*ck the hardest ..

i have 4gb (2x ultra ii sandisk ) 1 x sandisk basic sdhc 4 gb(panasonic dmc-fs62) and 8 gb
the slowest is the one in my panasonic and the fastest the 4gb kingston folowed after the 8 gb silicon power than the ultra's II