SanDisk 256 MB CompactFlash Card (DHSDCFB256A10)

A friend of mine who is a retired pro photographer gave me this memory card as part of a gift bundle. I myself have only tried out the card for slightly over 1 week, but he has shot 10,000+ photos with it over a period of several years using a PENTAX *ist D digital SLR camera. My review here is built around the performance of this CF card with the *ist D and the multi-card reader.

From what I've experienced so far, this memory card works OK. Not “hyper-fast”, but does the job of transferring/viewing photos. Not great for high-res TIFFS, and terrible for RAW files.

I would recommend instead to buy a faster card, and also with a larger storage capacity.

• Durable.
• Feels and is sturdy.
• Rigid – does not bend at all.
• Reliable.
• OK for medium-resolution JPEGS.
• No error messages or lost data yet.

• Rather small storage capacity. (I use this card mostly for back-up now).
• Painfully slow when writing/accessing TIFFS, RAW or high-res JPEGS.
• Not good when fast shot-to-shot speed is a necessity. (e.g. sports, small wildlife, birds).

• Lexar 2GB 133x speed professional CF memory card.

• Panasonic 1GB high-speed SD card.
• Lexar 2GB SD card.
• Lexar 128MB SD card.
• Panasonic 16MB SD card.

• Optex OR200 multi-card reader.
• Iogear GFR212SDW6 SD & MMC memory card reader.
• Transcend JF10 512MB USB flash-drive.

• Haven’t contacted SanDisk.

Well, somebody had to be first.

I have been using this card for over four years now and it has never let me down. It's fairly swift compared to a lot of other cards. In my D60 it cleared the buffer of 12-15 RAW images in under 2 minutes, letting me get back to shooting in under 20 seconds. With JPEG it would just go and go until the card was full.

I have used this card in a Minolta DiMage 7i, Canon D30, Canon D60, and Canon Powershot A60. I just ordered an Olympus E-500, and this card will be serving as a trusty backup to a new highspeed 2gig card I ordered on Amazon. Here is a link to that card, as I will soon write a review for it too...

http://www.photographyreview.com/sf-1/befid-96259/pid-35128794/productreviewscrx.aspx?dnatrs=2_gb-kingston

(My value rating is partially based on the fact that I got this card in a bundle with my first digital camera, the Minolta DiMage 7i)

Reliable

Durable

Not unbearably slow like some other low priced cards.

None that I can tell, other than lower capacity with today's higher MP cameras.

Delkin e-Film, Lexar, Canon, Kodak, PNY

N/A