It wasn't too long ago that SanDisk announced the largest commercially available CompactFlash at 8GB and now they have raised the bar again with two new releases - a 12GB CF card and a huge 16GB card. For most of us, a card of this size would see us through a year of photography but for the professional its designed for it may just about last one session. To put the idea of 16GB of memory in easier terms, if you put the card in a seven MP camera you should be able to get over four thousand photos.
The new 12GB and 16GB cards are available in SanDisk's Extreme III range which has minimum read/write speeds of 20mb/sec and both this speed and the capacity will let you shoot in RAW mode without having to wait for file transfer or filling up the card. Expect to see an Extreme IV card soon, which will push speeds up to 40mb/sec. The cards will be out in December, but they won't be cheap! The 12GB card will be $779 (475 euros) and the 16GB will be $1049 (633 euros). Unfortunately no UK prices are available yet, but they should be based on a straight exchange rate conversion from Euros.
At the same time, SanDisk announced a new addition to their SD card line up with the 4GB Ultra II card. The card uses the newly announced SDHC format (SD High Capacity allowing up to 32GB) to push capacity up to 4GB and being in the Ultra II range it has a minimum read/write speed of 10mb/sec.
SDHC is a very new format but there are some backwards compatibility issues, so you should watch out if you are buying one of these new cards. If you have an SDHC camera then you can use SD and SDHC cards, but if your camera is only SD you cannot use SDHC in them, so a lot of older cameras will be affected. Thankfully some manufacturers, Casio in particular, are releasing firmware updates to their cameras so they can use SDHC and the majority of new cameras will use it - plus it has a new logo to differentiate it.
The card is available now for $219 (123 euros) as a pack with a SD/SDHC USB 2.0 card reader which will make things easier when getting photos off the cards. A Plus version will be due in the new year, which has a hinged design with a USB connection built-in.
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