SanDisk 8 GB Extreme III CF Card SDCFX3-008G-A31 (Retail Package) Reviews

• Huge, Fast, Reliable

  
  By AGXV8E7XK9J6H on 2006-10-04
  I recently switched over to shooting RAW (7-9 meg a shot) instead of jpeg (2-4 meg a shot) so I decided to get some extra memory (I already had 1-4Gig and 5-1Gig cards.) I must say, I have not been disappointed. This card is very fast, it out preforms my Ultra IIs and the transfer rate to my computer is amazing when I use this card with the Sandisk Extreme Fire-Wire Reader.
  
  I can put over 1,000 RAW files or about 4,000 jpegs on this card and then transfer them all over to my computer in just a few minutes instead of closer to a half-hour. It seems to average around 1Gig a minute. Using burst mode with my camera has also never been faster, this card writes the images almost instantly, with no noticeable lag time, which means you can basically shoot as fast as you camera can handle and the card will keep up.
  
  I have been using this card for a few months now and have taken several thousand shots with it without any problems. If you have the need and the cash this is a great product.
  
  
  

• Great Memory Card

  
  By A2ZTI6CV56ESV3 on 2007-11-12
  This is a great product and fast. Fast enough for most of us. I was thinking in getting the ver. IV but for the money and how fast my Canon 40D can write, this is the right one to get. The IV is much faster but there is no DSLR capable of writing at such high speed yet. Save some money and get this one. You will be happy.
  
  

• The Usual high quality SanDisk Card

  
  By A16SRDVPBXN69C on 2008-01-11
  Once I started shooting RAW I quickly realized that the 2 GB cards just weren't large enough for my weekend trips. I bought the Extreme III 8GB card and am confident that this is what I need. It writes quickly with the 40D and is a very good value for the amount of memory. Highly recommend. Typical SanDisk quality card; I have used a lot of them over the years and never had a failure.
  
  

• IO Errors - but replaced under warranty

  
  By A1JVC1SE0K59O2 on 2008-02-27
  I purchased 2 of these cards from Amazon. One works OK the other consistently gives IO errors. The RescuePro 3.2 disk that comes with this cannot read the card at all. Vista can read most files on the card but I have 5 or 6 photos bad each time I write to the card. 3/26 update - SanDisk replaced the defective card with a new one. Took about 3 weeks after filling out their on-line form and a few emails to answer their questions. I have gone back to using my 4 GB SanDisk cards - I still have not completely restored my trust in these 8GB cards. I paid extra for the Extreme cards - I expect the quality to be better. And I am disappointed in their rescue software if Vista can read the defective card better than their special software.
  
  
  

• Had some problems, but overall very pleased...

  
  By A25DYJK93VN88C on 2008-07-19
  Bought the 8gb Extreme III before going to a friend's wedding, as I had also just picked up a Canon 40D and wanted to give the camera's burst shooting a workout. All of the shots were captured quickly, I never had to wait for the camera/memory to "catch up" so I was generally pleased - until I got home...
  
  Apparently it's not such a good idea to mess with the file structure outside of your camera. I popped the card into my computer's card reader and started to delete some blurry and duplicate shots I just didn't need. I then popped the card back into the camera to take some shots around my house and the camera read "card not formatted". At that point, I decided to pop the card back into the computer to see what the deal was. I almost had a heart-attack when I saw an empty folder where there had once been about 1300 JPG files. Luckily the story has a good ending... I used the RescuePRO software that came with the card and it found the files (even files that I had deleted manually from my camera during the wedding).
  
  I would strongly recommend that you format your card upon first use and each time you swap between computer and camera (obviously, save the files to your computer before your re-format). After the RescuePRO memory recovery (took about 2 hours) and a fresh re-format, the card seems to work fine. I hope my incident helps current and new E-III buyers.
  
  
• fast, fast, fast CF card
  By A346NR6PLMIZWF on 2007-07-22
  Unlike the Ultra II, the Extreme III never slows down my photography no matter how many shots i take in quick succession. (My camera's a Canon EOS 5D). The Ultra II almost always makes me miss some 'perfect' shot (you know, when the otter finally dives right in front of you), but the Extreme III has never slowed me down or caused me to miss a shot. For this, it's definitely worth the extra $$$.
  
  
• 8GB is The cost "Knee" (as of 11-2007)
  By A203OCQQ12MAVT on 2007-11-18
  If you divide dollars per gigabyte, the Extreme III 8.0 GB card represents the cost knee where you get the most bang for the buck. The 12GB is higher, as is the 4 GB in %/GB. At 8GB as I write this in November 2007 it is the best value in memory cards. Now tomorrow Amazon may re-price everything and this may not be true - so be sure to divide dollars by gigabytes in the 4, 8 and 12 cards unless you just want the biggest -- then buy the 12 GB. They all perform wonderfully fast on devices with firmware to handle the fast read/write CF interface. I'm using it with an E300 camera from Olympus and found the camera was the limiting factor in write speed compared to using it on my computer. With 8GB you can take hundreds of uncompressed photos at maximum resolution using your 8-12 Megapixel camera. Compare that with the old 36 exposure roll of film and you see how convenient it is to never have to open your camera and load film!
  
  Keep on shooting!
  
  
  
• Great Card
  By A33W65GBBRUVGM on 2007-12-03
  I purchased 2 of the 8gb cards for use with my Canon EOS 40D and they are fantastic. I have yet to find a situation where my camera has been limited by the speed of the card. I highly recommend this card.
  
  
• Great memory card
  By A1UBUIEL35YRUK on 2008-04-04
  I have enjoyed having the larger memory card in my new dslr camera. The only reason why I didn't give this product a 5 star review is because it required me to buy a new memory card reader just to be able to get photos off the card. My 3 year old sandisk reader was useless with this memory card while connected to a mac. After upgrading to an Extreme sandisk memory card reader, everything is good.
  
  
• Great CF Card
  By A2Q5GAIFJSHQZY on 2007-06-27
  This is a great CF card. I've been using Sandisk cards for years and have never had a problem with any of them (CF and SD). If you shoot RAW, then you're going to need a good sized card that is fast. With a firewire CF reader, I can download a full card in less than 5 minutes, compared to 30 minutes with USB. I'm sure the Extreme IV is a great card as well, but for the money you can't beat this one.
  
  
• Lots of room and very fast.
  By AKKCR0KXTVVGN on 2008-12-29
  I own 3 of these cards and have never been let down. They are very fast and can hold much more than I expected. I have only ever filled one once...around 1300 photos and about half of those were RAW + JPEG with the rest simply JPEG.
  
  When I purchased I was debating between a couple 8 GB, a 16 GB or multiple 4 GB cards. Ultimately this 8 GB card seemed the best value when you purchase 2-3...you get as much or more space than the 16 GB and you don't have to switch cards cards as much as a 4 GB or less.
  
  Great product at a great price.
  
  
• Fast and High Quality Memory
  By A178RRNBTHOAZR on 2008-05-15
  I purchased the SanDisk 8 GB Extreme III for my Canon 40D and it has performed perfectly. The speed and quality are exactly what I wanted. I fully recommend this product.
  
  
• Awesome Speed and Performance
  By A39IJQZAG52MNS on 2008-01-28
  This compact flash card takes wicked fast pictures, and has more storage capacity than I could ever use in one photographic session. My Canon Digital Rebel, the old 6.3 megapixal version, can not even report its total capacity in picture space available, it only continues to show 999 shots left, no matter how many shots I take!! This CF card is awesome!
  
  
• The Extreme III 8GB CF card by SanDisk works Great!
  By A139084IQ5GB0I on 2008-12-21
  The Extreme III 8GB CF card by SanDisk works great as expected. I have used it with my Canon 350D, 400D, and with my Canon 40D with absolutely no problems. My Canon 40D's maximum burst rate is approximately 6.5 - 7 frames per second and the Extreme III has had no problems keeping up. I recommend this item for the quality and great price at Amazon.Com.
  
  
• Monsterous Storage! GET ONE!
  By A3QQGPI3CTV9SX on 2008-05-09
  Very fast, very reliable and used in an olympus 8080 with thousands upons thousands of super fine resolution huge jpegs. I used it with a Nikon D200 with well over a 1,000 raw files and 4-5,000 jpegs on various fine settings. I recommend it and watch the pricing, I paid about $10 less than I currently see it listed, however, go to a local store and see it at triple the pice easily. If you use or want to give a gift for a photo person this is it!
  
  
• Fast and reliable
  By A1R5MH7VMMWWJ on 2008-04-06
  I've used this card with my Nikon D300 for a little over 4 months, it's fast and works great. I've used SanDisk CF and SD cards for many years, never had any problems or complaints with them personally.
  
  
• digital camera memmory cards
  By A127GKOEUWT35B on 2008-01-25
  Works great with 5 fps or greater digital SLRs. On a Nikon D300 I can shoot continuously for 15-20 seconds generating more than 100 frames w/o any errors and amazing refresh rates!
  
  
• Great product, great price
  By ASGVEIOWH54U9 on 2008-01-18
  The San Disk Extreme CF card is a great product. I was amazed at Amazon's price which blew everyone else away. And of course Amazon's service and delivery were outstanding.
  
  
• SanDisk gone Bad
  By A8WW14RCIUX2H on 2009-07-27
  I bought this SanDisk 8GB back in March 2009 and it has gone bad with almost 200 pictures on it. Nothing like telling a family that I have lost every photo taken because of a bad SanDisk. I will never buy SanDisk again because I need to know that what I'm photographing is going to be there in the end. Very upset and just might have cost me a customer because my Canon 5d never gave a warning that the card was bad until I went to upload my pics.
  
  UPDATE: After long phone calls I finally sent the card back to SanDisk. So it has been a month and still no new card has been replaced. Another LONG phone call placed today and couldnt get a answer out of two people other than "we will e-mail you within 24-48 hours". I'm calling BS on SanDisk because if you say your going to back your product then you should replace ASAP. I'm shooting a wedding in two weeks and would like to have a new card. I did branch out and bought the Lexar Pro UDMA and there have not been any problems (knock on wood).
  
  
• Sandisk Ultra III CF
  By A11C9LBB2FC7XD on 2008-12-28
  The card is very fast to save images, making the camera the bottleneck in saving pictures. Loading images into the computer is noticeably faster than when using slower cards. If faster shooting or data transfer is important to you, this card will be beneficial.
  
  
• Great Price, Great Performance
  By A1NNMOD9H36Q8E on 2008-04-13
  Excellent price/performance ratio. I use this in a Nikon D300 and its write speeds are excellent. You might need a little more performance if you are doing serious action photography but for what I need it is plenty fast for 6-7 rapid fire shots in RAW.
  
  
• Great storage but...
  By A1TL7WFKGAU9PR on 2008-04-07
  ... I have lost data a couple of times, but i was able to eventually recover the data using the software provided by SanDisk. It was usually from having the memory card out and probably because i was walking around with it in my hand not in a storage container. But half of the photos would disappear according to my computer, but would be perfectly visible on my D300 camera. It was just unusual. But I still use this card, I am just very careful with it!
  
  
• I take a lot of pictures and 8 GB is really nice to have
  By A3QU3O79AGNWCY on 2008-04-07
  I seldom shoot in the auto mode and render almost all photos in RAW format. This card handles my demanding shooting requirements. I have purchased CF cards from other makers but NONE even come close to SAN disk in performance.
  
  
• dependable and reliable brand
  By A2ZNIV241SWN5L on 2008-03-02
  This item has not let me down yet. I have taken over 4000 shots and still refreshing new pictures after format after format of the memory card. Great CF. Thanks Sandisk.
  
  
• SanDisk 8GB Extreme III
  By A2U4JO3HC7O0Q1 on 2008-02-17
  I recently, purchased this card for my Nikon D300. Previously, I was using a few SanDisk 4GB cards. I've used SanDisk for years and have never had any issues.
  
  The SanDisk 8GB Extreme III works great with the D300 or D2x and write times have not slowed down any of my action shooting. Shooting at 8fps though, the card can feel up quite fast. I shoot RAW uncompressed and get about 409 pics with the 8GB card. I'm now using the 16GB Extreme III and it provides me with plenty of space for my type of shooting.
  
  
• Put it through it's paces
  By AP04UMK9IEKVF on 2008-12-01
  I've been using this flash card in a new Nikon D700 camera for the last month. The D700 can write a full Nikon NEF format picture AND a JPEG version simultaneously if you so desire. I set the camera up to do this and took about 450 photos (that's 900 NEF + JPEG) shots over the course of a middle school wrestling match. Not once did the camera stall writing to the flash. So, no problems with write speed. I've shot, in total, over 3000 photos at various sports meets in the last month with no problems. I've also had no issues accessing the flash over an external USB Flash reader with my computer (Dell D620). By the way, helpful hint, some external readers are happier if you plug them into the USB port without the flash card installed in the reader. Once the reader is recognized by the computer, then plug in the flash card.
  Performance test: Number of files 349, total size 751MB. Time to read from flash to hard drive: 110 seconds. 6.83MB/sec. Took the same file and wrote from hard drive to flash: 450 seconds. 1.67 MB/sec.
  Finally, its just really cool having 2500 pictures or more showing on your camera's info panel with an 8GB card :)
  
  
• Good solid product and works as advertised
  By A2RCL8YCQZLCL6 on 2009-10-19
  I use it on a Canon 40D. This gives me around 580 photos per 8GB RAW format. The writing is fast considering the 6.5fps from 40D. After the 17 RAW continuous shots, I need to wait for 3-5 seconds for all the data to be recorded.
  
  I am happy with the purchase and recommend it.
  
  Given 4 stars as I have taken max 1000 shots and yet to put it to real stress. The lag of 3-5 seconds after continuous shooting also is a downer but this is not a very regular scenario and hence I am satisfied with the purchase.
  
  
• Defective - Still Waiting for Replacement
  By A3CBKKEUYGAGPR on 2009-10-11
  I have used many memory cards from San Disc and they have been fine. So I bought this Extreme before taking a trip to Alaska, I used it a few times before leaving and it stopped working. My Nikon D300 would give a warning stating it was defective. I went on a Flickr forum to see if others had the same problem with their d300s. I found that they did and there were comments on what to do to see if it was the camera or the card. I went through a series of tests to determine for sure it was the card.
  I called San Disk for a rpleacement. The young man from some foriegn country ezplained to me how to use a memory card, it drove me nuts. Then he suggested that I do some of the same tests that I had already done. I complied and of course it still was the card. He then suggested that I completley load the card with photos then re-format the card and call back. He gave me a an event number.
  I did as he asked, knowing it woudl not work. I called back the next day to what ever country they are in, what is wrong with using Americans???? I did get a return number and sent the card back more than a month ago, and am still waiting.
  Befor my Alaska trip, I had to buy two 4g cards to rplace the defective one, not not San Disk cards.
  I am still waiting for the replacement.
  I know that it is possible for any manufacturer to put out a card that might be defective, my main complint is the long period of time to replace this card.
  I once had HP replace an entire printer before I sent them the defective one and they sent it overnight!!
  I may still buy a San Disk card again, but if I ever get another bad one, it will be my last.
  
  
• So far so good.
  By A25EPLCBAOLY67 on 2009-10-11
  Ever since getting a Sandisk Extreme SD card for my compact camera, I decided to stick with this line. When I got my 40D over a year ago, I got the 4GB Extreme III. I've taken shots in the middle of summer and winter here in Minnesota, and I've had no problems with this card. I use to shoot JPEGS (10MP) and would get a little over 1000 shots; however, I switched to RAW and the number of shots I could take fell to roughly 250. This is usually enough for short outings or events, but today I had to take shots of a long, dance event. For events like this I tend to take a lot of shots without flash, so taking them in RAW format was important for post processing. I picked up the 8GB card at Best Buy (if I had more time I'd order it online for cheaper). A quick format of the card and I was ready to take 500+ shots. I was able to take shot after shot (sometimes less than a second) without any delays or hitch. The only thing I did notice was that the number of shots remaining that was displayed on the top of my camera seemed accurate but in the view finder it was set to 16. I suspect that this was more of a camera issue as it didn't prevent me from taking 500+ shots. If you plan on shooting RAW, I'd suggest getting nothing smaller than the 4GB card (will fit a single layer DVD). I may end up getting a second 8GB card for those really long photography events, plus 8GB specifically to avoid taking too many shots without backing them up. For a new card that I've filled on the day of purchase, its holding up great. If you shoot RAW with a 5D Mark II or comparable in MP, then 8GB may be too small.
  
  
• LOST PHOTOS
  By A2XFUEXZ6QM1LM on 2009-07-31
  I used the flash drive in a rebel EOS. the flash card froze and could not be recongnized by the camera (or any other devices) after I took several hundred shots of my neice's wedding. I'm hoping a recovery firm can save it, but it all looks bad right now. this may be a fluke but several smaller cards would have been a better solution.
  
  

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