SanDisk Ultra II 1 GB Compact Flash Card 60X (SDCFH-1024-901)

At one time I was an avid film photographer and took and processed thousands of still pictures and color slides using my Contax III. Today, I take a great many digital pictures with my Nikon Coolpix.. On a recent cruise to the Orient, I accumulated over 1,000 pictures. After all, the lack of film-processing costs is the big benefit of digital photography; if you think you want to get a good picture of something, snap many shots so that at least one will turn out. After all, it cost a great deal to get to the destination and you will probably never go back, so it’s now or never.

Therefore, I knew that I wanted a huge memory chip for my camera and one that would be fast enough to let me take pictures as quickly as possible. I ended up getting the SanDisk Ultra 1GB CompactFlash card (model SDCFH-1024-901) for my Nikon and it works beyond my expectations.

This CompactFlash card has the same small size as other CompactFlash cards and will fit into any device that uses CompactFlash, assuming that the device can handle the card's 1GB of memory. The SanDisk Ultra 1GB is a solid-state card that is fast enough to take multiple shots of the same subject and consumes relatively little power to preserve battery life.

The card is rated to store data at nine megabytes per second and playback data at 10 megabytes per second. Since there are eight bits in a byte, this is a store rate of 72 Mbps and a playback rate of 80 Mbps. That's pretty quick. This is the equivalent of 60X.

The SanDisk Ultra 1GB card quickly formats in my Coolpix and has not caused a single burp. I have repeatedly taken shot after shot as fast as I could compose them, perhaps as many as eight in sequence, without any delay caused by writing to the SanDisk memory card. At an average size of 3.2 MB per picture file, this is a lot of data moving quickly. (The camera has sufficient internal memory, which probably helps smooth out intensive card-memory access.)

At home, I remove the card from the camera and stick it into my SanDisk reader. The SanDisk Ultra 1GB works perfectly in this reader and, again, has not hiccupped once in at least 10 sessions. Picture files read into the computer at the rate of about one per second, for a data rate of around 25 Mbps. That's pretty good in my book.

Just how many pictures can be stored on this SanDisk Ultra 1GB card? At eight-megapixel resolution and with the camera set to save the images as JPEGs with "fine" compression (that's better than the "standard" setting), I can save around 245 pictures. Even at the rate I take pictures, that's far more than I've ever taken in one day. At 5 megapixels, the number is 279. For uncompressed pictures, the card will hold 136 at 5 megapixels and 80 at 8 mrgapixels. In my opinion 5 megapixels is ideal considering image quality, print processing and file storage.

The SanDisk Ultra II compact flash card easily accommodates 5 megapixel cameras and the speed of the card lets you capture high resolution pictures, even with rapid-fire shooting. Doing this with very low power drain is a real technical achievement. The operating power consumption is typically 40 mA, and the transient is 120mA. That is remarkable for memory applications.

In addition to the cavernous space of a 1GB CompactFlash card, the SanDisk Ultra 1GB card's high-speed capability reassures me that it can handle the torrent of data from my camera. Its easy compatibility with my camera and existing card readers is another plus. If you crave your memory big and fast, I recommend the SanDisk Ultra 1GB card without any caveats or reservations.