Contrary to the rating given by the previous reviewer, having a camera that is incapable of keeping up with the speed of the card is not a basis for a mediocre rating on the card itself. I've got an EOS 20D and I find this card much faster than my 512 Mb Sandisk Ultra II card. I highly recommend the card for those with cameras that have a high speed buffer. It allows many more pictures in a burst than the manufacturers claim because they base their estimates on slower cards. This card is well worth the money if you shoot a lot of high speed activities like sports, racing, airshows, fast moving animals, etc. SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB CompactFlash Memory Card SDCFX3-004G-A31
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.
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.
SanDisk is known as a reliable name in flash memory cards. I have purchased SanDisk memory cards for years and have never had any of them fail on me. So when I recently purchased a new Canon EOS 40D digital SLR camera, I knew that I wanted a SanDisk CompactFlash card, to record all of my precious photos. I looked up the specs of the many choices that SanDisk offers. I also read many reviews, right here on Amazon, and decided that the Extreme III series CompactFlash was what I needed.
Wanting the ability to store several hundred photos on a single card, I chose the 4GB Extreme III CompactFlash card. I inserted the 4GB Extreme III into my new digital SLR camera and formatted it. At 10.1 megapixels, and at the largest JPG setting, my camera shows that the card will hold roughly 900 pictures. I began snapping pictures and was instantly amazed at how quickly the data saved to the card. After I had about 50 pictures on the card, I removed it from the camera and inserted it into the card reader attached to my PC. I copied all of the photos from the card onto my PC hard drive. Again I am amazed at how quickly this memory card can move data. This card is awesome! I have always thought that the many claims of faster speed in memory cards was purely hype, to get consumers to plunk down extra cash. Well I can honestly tell you that there IS a difference. Compaired to an older 512 MB CompactFlash card that I use in a different camera, this Extreme III series card is at least 2 to 3 times faster in transferring digital photos.
I have noticed a few low scoring reviews, here on Amazon, from people that have had their SanDisk memory cards fail. I am sorry to hear that others have not had as much luck with their SanDisk cards as I have. I suppose there is always going to be a certain amount of failure with any electronic device on the market. All I can say is that I have been using SanDisk flash memory devices for years, including SD, Memory Stick Pro, MicroSD (transflash), CompactFlash, and even several different Cruzer USB flash drives, and have never had one case of failure. I have worked in the I.T. field for over 20 years and I can asure you that I am not a light user by any means. Any data storage media I own is used frequenty and intensly. In my book there is no better manuafacturer of portable memory media than SanDisk, and I will remain a loyal user until they decide to cut back on quality and I start to experience failures and lost data.
I highly recommend this Extreme III series CompactFlash card by SanDisk. I also recommend that you purchase it from Amazon. I made the mistake of buying mine from a local electronics store, which charged me nearly twice the price of what Amazon is selling it for. I was in a hurry and needed it right away, and boy did I pay a premium! Amazon has a great price on this excellent memroy card, and their return policy and customer service are top notch. - Cf Card - Memory Card - Photography - Sandisk'
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