EXTREME III [4GB]: Almost a bargain.

It hasn't been too long when I praised the 2GByte for its new low price near the magic $100 mark. Now, only a few months later I added the 4 GByte version to my collection for almost the same price. Technically, the only difference is in the capacity, but SanDisk offers another juicy argument when deciding for the Extreme III. Since October 2006, a free license of Phase One LE is included ('til March 2007?) So twice the capacity and supposedly free software for the same price ... I am soooo easy (I guess). Or would that be gullible?


Capture One LE

So let's start with the gullible part of the story ...

If you're a digital photographer on a budget and the full version of RAW converters like DxO Optics Pro is too expensive, Sandisk has the answer. With the purchase of any Extreme III card from October 2006 to March 2007 (?), apparently there is a product code for phaseone's CaptureOne LE included. (At least in theory.)

Despite having bought 2 Extreme III CF cards, neither (!!!) had mentioned code included and neither PhaseOne nor Sandisk provide any hint online on what to do, or what the trick is. Submitted support requests on the Sandisk site remained unanswered for almost 3 weeks before I was granted an actual product code on an exception basis.

It appears that the code is included only in specially marked boxes (!) and to this day I have not found any way to resolve this issue. This makes it particularly hard to order online, and the only FAQ states that the software needs to be downloaded from PhaseOne and the code is in the box. The demo can be downloaded from the phaseone website, but I concluded that it wasn't worth my time. After all, I just bought a full version of DxO Optics Pro v4, which meets my needs better and is now very usable with the v4.1 update.


Extreme III

Just recently SanDisk announced the Extreme IV series and apparently dropping the Ultra grade all together (for now). Yet, the Extreme III is still beyond the maximum many cameras could utilize with an advertised minimum of 20MB/sec sequential write and read speed (Based on 1 MB = 1,000,000 Bytes.) Given that even no-name manufacturers now post up to 150x (i.e. RiDATA), it should not be surprising that the Extreme III suddenly looks much more common. So Sandisk in conjunction with phaseOne added roughly $80 of value to the package ... CaptureOne LE for free ... in theory. (Look out for special marked boxes, as this is not across the board of all Extreme III cards -- unlike the advertisement. If it's not the marked box, it sure doesn't have the activation code included.)

With speed being matched by cheaper offers, the main advantage of the Extreme III is now the extended temperature ranging from -13 to 185 Fahrenheit (-25C to 85C), with significant improvements in the cold range. While this is way beyond most camera's ability to work under those extreme conditions, it adds the security of knowing that your pictures should be safe even when your camera quit. Judging from the temperature ranges, though, this is most likely only relevant for professionals. Same may be true for the included lifetime warranty, which basically ensures the card to last until the next technology upgrade (= lifetime?). Should the "unthinkable" happen despite all warranties and specifications, the included mini-CD w/ RescuePro for data recovery software might be able to help in many cases (even accidentally deleted pictures).

As most CF cards, the Extreme III is a CF Type I and that ensures usability in pretty much every CF based device (mostly cameras, PDAs and some mp3 players). It can be used to its full capacity in both FAT16 or FAT32, though the latter is preferable. It also fits restrictive cases like Lowepro's PixelPak v2.


Performance

Overall, I could not find any noticeable difference between the 4 GByte version of the Extreme III CF card and the 2 GByte version I reviewed before. Though rated at 20 MB/s data transfer from and to the card, the impact of such performance is limited to a select few "professional" cameras and Sandisk's ESP card reader.

For details on performance please refer to my review of the Sandisk 2 GByte Extreme III CF. For your convenience, I did copy the performance summary below ...

EOS 20D: 10x RAW (9.3MB) 10x JPEG (3.4MB) pictures
- Sandisk Extreme III (133x): ~19 sec. [6.5 MB/s]
- Lexar Pro 80x WA: ~26 sec. [4.7 MB/s]
- Hitachi microdrive (14x): ~32 sec. [3.8 MB/s]

Sandra2005: maximum Read / Write [MBps]
- SanDisk 2 GB Extreme III: 8.7 / 6.5
- Lexar 1GB CF Prof. (80x): 8.7 / 6.5
- SanDisk 512MB CF Ultra II (66x): 8.7 / 6.5
- Lexar 256MB CF Prof. (40x): 5.5 / 4.3
- Seagate 8 GB microdrive: 7.2 / 2.5
- Hitachi 4 GB microdrive: 5.25 / 2

The limitations of my card reader are very obvious and even the EOS 20D cannot utilize the full speed of the Extreme III cards.

Using my EOS 20D as a reference, the 4 GByte translates roughly into 450 RAW pictures and one might consider a media storage device like the Epson P-2000 to backup those memories. Despite the Extreme environmental toughness, it's still a good idea to have a spare card since any given flash memory degrades over time and with the number of write cycles.

© 2006, theuerkorn