Thoughts on the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Line

streegshooter · April 18, 2008

Hello everyone...

Just wondering what your take is on the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Line of Compact Flash cards.

Worth the money? Live up to the hype?

I am looking into getting one of them bad boys but thought I'd check around with the best, first! Thanks much :thumb

gus · April 18, 2008

Ive never heard of it & am always a little wary when manufacturers team up with names as i think its a new coat of paint on a current item. I will have to google it now...is it supposedly faster or something like that or red/yellow ?

Whats it give you over a normal sandisk card ?

TralfazPhoto · April 18, 2008

The ducati line has faster write speeds then the extreme iv, pretty much the next evolution of the CF card:

Ducati 45 mb/sec read and write
Extreme iv is 40 mb/sec
Extreme iii is 30 mb/sec
So on and so on down the list...

Then there is price:
4 gig ducati... $109
4 gig extreme iv $89
4 gig extreme iii $59

Depends on the performance you want out of your cards.

My take on CF cards... You should get the card that suits your needs. I have 8GB extreme iii and 2gb extreme iii

Shooting at a paintball tournament, for instance, i am sometimes focused on one person filling up the 25 frame buffer on the camera at 5 frames a second trying to catch some minute detail that hapens in a split second. Then the frame rate slows down while the camera finishes writing those pictures to the card.

Meanwhile, a colleague swears by the $19.95 2GB no name brand cards he gets on sale at Circuit City, Frys, Walmart etc. He uses them as digital backup for work. Thats about all he does with them, 5-10 pictures on the card, he's done for the day.

Sure they have a 15x write speed compared to a 266x write speed of the Ducati series from sandisk. Hew also doesnt worry too much about data loss if one of the cards goes bad and the data is lost.

The difference depends upon your perception of what you need a card to do. If money is no object and you need a super fast, extremely reliable card that will be used in extreme conditions, then by all means go for it.

If you are going out for a weekend and taking 30 or 40 pictures of landscapes and are not particualrly worried about how fast you can download images from the card, then perhaps the 19.95 cards from Wal Mart will suffice.

LUCKYSHOT · April 18, 2008

TralfazPhoto wrote:

The ducati line has faster write speeds then the extreme iv, pretty much the next evolution of the CF card:

Ducati 45 mb/sec read and write
Extreme iv is 40 mb/sec
Extreme iii is 30 mb/sec
So on and so on down the list...

Then there is price:
4 gig ducati... $109
4 gig extreme iv $89
4 gig extreme iii $59

Depends on the performance you want out of your cards.

My take on CF cards... You should get the card that suits your needs. I have 8GB extreme iii and 2gb extreme iii

Shooting at a paintball tournament, for instance, i am sometimes focused on one person filling up the 25 frame buffer on the camera at 5 frames a second trying to catch some minute detail that hapens in a split second. Then the frame rate slows down while the camera finishes writing those pictures to the card.

Meanwhile, a colleague swears by the $19.95 2GB no name brand cards he gets on sale at Circuit City, Frys, Walmart etc. He uses them as digital backup for work. Thats about all he does with them, 5-10 pictures on the card, he's done for the day.

Sure they have a 15x write speed compared to a 266x write speed of the Ducati series from sandisk. Hew also doesnt worry too much about data loss if one of the cards goes bad and the data is lost.

The difference depends upon your perception of what you need a card to do. If money is no object and you need a super fast, extremely reliable card that will be used in extreme conditions, then by all means go for it.

If you are going out for a weekend and taking 30 or 40 pictures of landscapes and are not particualrly worried about how fast you can download images from the card, then perhaps the 19.95 cards from Wal Mart will suffice.

Thanks for doin the research, you summed it all up for me
All the Best
Chris
www.longislandimage.com

ivar · April 18, 2008

TralfazPhoto wrote:

The ducati line has faster write speeds then the extreme iv, pretty much the next evolution of the CF card:

Ducati 45 mb/sec read and write
Extreme iv is 40 mb/sec
Extreme iii is 30 mb/sec
So on and so on down the list...

The fact that it *can* do 45 mb/sec may be nice, but do you (OP) have equipment (camera/cardreader) that can make use of that speed?

claudermilk · April 18, 2008

IMHO, it's too much price premium for too little extra performance. More of a marketing thing I think. Consider the difference showin in the Extreme III 2GB vs Extreme IV 2GB on Rob Galbraith's database, looking at a 1Ds MkII (the MK III page isn't working right now); it's 7.8MB/sec vs 8.0MB/sec write speed for RAWs respectively. So, for your $20 extra you might see a few more KB/sec write speeed. Whoopee!

streegshooter · April 18, 2008

I am currently shooting with a 40D and so all action sports stuff (Racing, football, baseball, ect) I've got a 70-200mm f2.8 IS

So...can MY equipment outperform what I currently use in my extreme III 8gig ? And or...would I notice a difference with the newbie. I know that I would obviously, but how noticeable with my setup.

Thanks much. And I know...it's simple stuff, but im just tryin to learn! hehe

TralfazPhoto · April 18, 2008

claudermilk wrote:

IMHO, it's too much price premium for too little extra performance. More of a marketing thing I think. Consider the difference showin in the Extreme III 2GB vs Extreme IV 2GB on Rob Galbraith's database, looking at a 1Ds MkII (the MK III page isn't working right now); it's 7.8MB/sec vs 8.0MB/sec write speed for RAWs respectively. So, for your $20 extra you might see a few more KB/sec write speeed. Whoopee!

Ohh i like that site. http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007

I didnt even think about how fast the camera itself can write to the card. Nikon D200 7.201MB/sec jpegs

Looks like i need to get a D300 now!

SloYerRoll · April 18, 2008

I don't think it's worth it at all. I shoot w/ 4+GB cards and I hammer down on the shutter at 5FPS. I've never had one time when the memory buffer on my camera loaded out so I couldnt take any more shots.

The only real advantage I see is the write speed when transferring images to your puter. And that's pointless to me. I just toss the memory card in my reader, start the import and walk away.

FWIW:
I use Lr, render 1:1 previews and convert all my images to DNG.

JMO

-Jon

Tee Why · April 18, 2008

I think those write speeds are theorhetical as even 20MB/sec would mean that most RAW files would be written in under one second.

Personally, I don't think it's worth the price premium.

jww · April 20, 2008

fwiw - SanDisk is having a Spring Savings event with some great rebates depending on what you get. For example buy 3 - 8gb extreme III cf cards and get $160 rebate. ..but 2 and get $100.

I decided to go down to my local dealer to check out a larger pelican case and nose around.. They were having a product rep day for all sorts of stuff including SanDisk. cool! ... they musta knew I was coming!

I've been using the extreme III cf cards.. I don't see any value for anything more than that regardless of what nifty name they tag it with. To me, the only real savings would be in download time and that would be on the much larger cards, which frankly still make me a bit nervous. The speed rates are so close, I don't think anything smaller would add up that much.

Tee Why · April 20, 2008

Rob tests the actual write time on various cards with various cameras.
At least for the Canon 1D MIII, it looks like the extremem IV and III's are faster than the Ducatis. And it appers to be the opposite for the Canon 40D.

But the difference is so small, I don't think it's a significant difference among many of the fast cards.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9309-9398

Fred Maurer · April 20, 2008

Be wary of the Sandisk rebates! The cards may be fast and reliable, but the rebate program is slow and painful. Apparently worthy of a few threads on other forums:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1014&message=27034722

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=26440189

http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.phpaction=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=754089

jww · April 21, 2008

Fred Maurer wrote:

Be wary of the Sandisk rebates! The cards may be fast and reliable, but the rebate program is slow and painful. Apparently worthy of a few threads on other forums:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1014&message=27034722

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1032&message=26440189

http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.phpaction=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=754089

wow... I guess I have been lucky! Thanks for the tip!

..thankfully I got a pretty good deal on cards that I needed anyway. I guess if I get the extra $100 back, I will consider it a nice bonus.

Icebear · April 21, 2008

Tee Why wrote:

I think those write speeds are theorhetical as even 20MB/sec would mean that most RAW files would be written in under one second.

Personally, I don't think it's worth the price premium.

Mb OR MB. There's a big diff, ya know. Factor of about eight.

Rhuarc · April 21, 2008

Icebear wrote:

Mb OR MB. There's a big diff, ya know. Factor of about eight.

Beat me to it, was going to say the same thing! LoL

Thoughts on the SanDisk Extreme Ducati Line

Comments