SanDisk's Extreme IV CompactFlash cards

Today's speed record for fastest CompactFlash writes set by: SanDisk. Their new SanDisk Extreme IV CF cards come in sizes up to 8GB, and offer speeds of at least 40MBps, not to mention the extreme environmental conditions they can suffer through (-13°F to 185°F). The cards are surprisingly affordable, however, weighing in at $160 for the 2GB, $320 for the 4GB, and $640 for the 8GB. Perhaps it's overkill for your puny mid-range DSLR, but from the looks of it you'd probably hang on to this memory card a lot longer than your average digital camera.

[mpeng @ Jul 20th 2006 11:00AM]

now go back to dpreview who announced this yesterday and read about this http://www.dpreview.com/news/0607/06072001nikondslrteaser.asp

[Nathan Loden @ Jul 20th 2006 11:49AM]

There is definitely a market for these. I work in the water utilities industry and a lot of our equipment has to handle some extreme environments.

[RacetrackOwner @ Jul 20th 2006 12:09PM]

It's too bad Sony and others worked so hard to kill of Compact Flash as the memory card format of choice. This announcement is the precise reason CF is such a great format: speed is dependent largely upon the media, rather than the device. Any random Sony MemoryStick camera is never going to be any faster than it is today, whereas my six year old Nikon CP990 camera can take advantage of today's much faster cards. Naturally, the device itself (cameras, generally) will have some inherent upper limit, but the general point is valid.

[Brian Stuckey @ Jul 20th 2006 2:13PM]

Might be overkill for most semi-pro photographers - but I could see this being a great addition to an automotive PC or something like that. These are much more durable than a hard drive - and I believe they can take more of a temperature range.

[ZZ @ Jul 20th 2006 2:42PM]

The reason Compact Flash isn't that popular anymore is because the cards are rediculouly large. It's hard to make compact devices when the card slot takes up half the body of the thing.

[Kevin @ Jul 20th 2006 3:00PM]

I agree with RacetrackOwner.

My parents 6/7 year old 1 mega pixel camera that uses Compaq flash cards and currently they have a 64 meg one that they never use to full something like is just over kill times 10. In fact my parent’s camera is the only one I have personally seen that uses compact flash cards in years.

Maybe some manufactures will clue into the advantage of this and start making them again.

[josh @ Jul 20th 2006 5:09PM]

"The reason Compact Flash isn't that popular anymore is because the cards are rediculouly large. It's hard to make compact devices when the card slot takes up half the body of the thing."

I don't know what compact flash cards you are talking about, but the ones I have seen are only marginally larger than SDcards or Memory Sticks.

Besides, how small do you want your digital camera to be? At some point, you won't even be able to use the thing!

[Jarrod Turner @ Jul 20th 2006 8:07PM]

This is great on a higher end photo perspective. One of the H2D's several bottlenecks was the write speed to the CF card, hopefull this will speed things up. What was the Extreme 3's speed?

[Rory @ Jul 20th 2006 10:09PM]

SanDisk is claiming a MINIMUM (provided the device writing can support it) read AND write speed of 40MB/s, providing the device can support it - not "up to:

[RacetrackOwner @ Jul 21st 2006 7:22AM]

"The reason Compact Flash isn't that popular anymore is because the cards are rediculouly large. It's hard to make compact devices when the card slot takes up half the body of the thing."

ZZ, keep in mind people use card storage for more than just cameras and cell phones. For example, I have a requirement for a 1GB CF2 card which replaces an IDE hard drive (and here the CF standard shines again, since this can be done with a simple converter cable) in a small single-board video-capture PC that needs to be very robust (no moving parts, high ambient operating temperature, minimal power consumption, etc). A cheap, fast CF card is perfect for this -- and as time goes on, they just keep getting faster, which is pretty convenient.

It also occurs to me that the CF standard seems to be the most physically rugged of the various card memory standards. SD cards strike me as especially fragile feeling.

[mike @ Jul 22nd 2006 2:55AM]

Also remember all DSLR's use compact flash cards, so just because your cell phone or thin point and shoot camera doesn't use it doesn't mean there is no market for such an old card.

[paul Irwin @ Jul 22nd 2006 11:34AM]

the Lexar 8 GB compactflash model is about $430. not impressed.

[Richard @ Jul 23rd 2006 6:25PM]

Guess my whimpy Sony F828 with dual memory card capabilities isnt a high end camera, but there are more cameras that support CF then most people here realize, maybe its because its out of their budget, or out of their level of experience, either way, if you've got a camera that you paid over $800 for, then you know what it means to be able to take a LOT of 8+ MP images, or shoot high quality video, or astro-photography. Before so many people come back and say too bad sony killed CF, why do their TOP camera's support CF? Hmmmm ....

[Peter Lien @ Aug 24th 2006 10:54AM]

CF Cards are great. I am a professional photographer who does a lot of work in Africa. Size is not a concern, but data security is. I am concerned about the security of SD cards not CF. I welcome the new standard. But will the 8GB EX IV work with my Canon 5D? Normally I work with multipals of 2 GB CF cards as I never like to leave all my eggs in one basket.

[Alan White @ Oct 16th 2006 6:09PM]

Large storage, robust and very high write speeds - just what you need to underwater photography. No messing around downloading when you are out on a boat all day. Niche market possibly - but just the job! My next purchase.