Compact Flash prices take a dive (1 Viewer)

First the one giggers drop to $65 at Costco, and now this smoking hot drop!

http://www.calumetphoto.com/pr.jsp?p...24&t=e388&US=1

Yeah, I'm extremely interested in the Extreme III 2 GB CF; there was this other website (robertsimaging.com) that had the Extreme III 4 GB CF for $239.97 (OOS but that's besides the point--that's a pretty good deal for a very high-speed 4 GB CF card).

Nice prices! Is there that much of a difference between the Extremes and the Ultras? I have a Canon Digital Rebel XP

That would have been nice before Christmas. I spent $100 on two 512MB Ultra 2 CF cards just before christmas. The Ultras are working great for me. We've had a lot over time and they've always been good cards. We use them primarially with Nikon D70s.

Tiger Direct had 4 giggers yesterday for $159!!!!

I reckon that for the majority of non-DSLR cameras, the Ultra II should suffice. Owning a DSLR myself (Canon EOS 20D), I can't speak personally as to whether there would be a difference in performance between the Ultra II and Extreme III, when used in my camera...but I reckon that since CF memory prices are pretty good these days, spending a few dollars more (okay, so it's not really a few more dollars but you know what I mean) on even faster memory isn't really a complete waste of money.

Check out Rob Galbraith's site that has a complete workup of flash cards for the pro cameras:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/mul...e.asp?cid=6007

There's not that much difference for you with a Digital Rebel XT. I'm planning on getting a 4GB Extreme III card in the near future once I get a Nikon D200 to replace my current D70. The performance in the camera won't be that big of a different to me but the speed added in downloading the images onto the card will increase, and that's the part that I care the most about.

This week CompUSA has PNY 2 gig Compact Flash cards for 69.99 (after rebates off of their 99.99 price)

Is PNY any good? I was gonna order from the Calumet Photo link above. But these prices just seem too good.

If you want to get a CF card primarily just so that you can get by until manufacturers come out with even faster/higher capacity cards at even lower than current prices...sure, the PNY should be more than adequate for your camera..

Well, that will always be the case won't it? I'm going on a trip in April. Right now I have 2 and a half gig worth of capacity. I'll probably be shooting in Jpeg and raw, so I just want to make sure I have enough!

At the speeds I shoot, Ultra 2 is just Groovy.

Sam

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't like using those huge capacity cards simply because there are too many images to potentially lose in one mishap. I stick with 1 GB and smaller and avoid filling them up as it is.

Prices are definitely nice though.

I do the same as JohnRice, using multiple cards to avoid losing everything.

Point taken (using smaller-capacity cards to reduce risk of losing a bunch of images), but...isn't a loss a loss? Or put it another way--how much is "too many"? Unless you're taking shots in either RAW or RAW+JPEG format, even a 1 GB card can hold quite a few images (almost 300 JPEG-only images taken at 8 MP at highest PQ setting). What happens when double-digit MP capability becomes the norm (they are currently the exception, just in case someone pipes up to say that they already exist)--are you still gonna settle for 1 GB cards...or smaller? Besides, it's only a matter of time before companies won't even bother manufacturing such small-capacity flash cards anyway; I mean, how many companies still mass-produce 3.5" hard drives that are smaller than 80 GB in capacity for sale to the general public?

For those of you in the "1 GB or smaller" group--if I were taking 8-MP pics in RAW format, I would not trust the safety (as far as image loss/corruption) of my pics on such a relatively small-capacity storage card unless I could readily offload them onto a hard-disk based card reader/storage device.

And why would a higher capacity card be any less risky?

I shoot raw, back up to two computers, and DVD backup, 2gb cards are groovy for me, thats more than I will shoot in a weekend most of the time, and I've got 6 gigs total so even if I need more room I got it.

I wasn't meaning to imply that the use of 2+ GB cards was any less risky than using

Tony, your argument of "it's only a matter of time before you can't even get anything smaller than 1 GB anyways" makes absolutely no sense. 1 GB (and smaller) cards are available now and they are cheaper than the 2GB+ ones, and there is a viable reason for spreading your shots over more, smaller cards than one huge one. Plus, for what you would typically pay for a 4 GB card, you can get 5 or 6 1GB cards, maybe more. Yes, that will probably change eventually but you can't buy things now at the price they will be in 2 years.

John, why wouldn't my argument make sense? Besides, I know 1 GB and smaller cards are readily available today; I dunno how/why you could possibly link my stating "matter of time" comment with your "available today" comment--I mean, I thought that "matter of time" and "available today" were two different things...especially since my comment had to do with what would be eventually be available, not what was available today.

I do understand that there are advantages to using multiple smaller-capacity flash cards; I don't think I stated anything in my previous posts that would indicate the contrary. I guess what I should have conceded was that in five years or so from now (arbitrarily speaking), folks won't have much of an option to spread their shots over multiple smaller-capacity (yeah I know that in the current context of flash card size, "smaller" is relative, depending on what era we currently live in) cards. Even though many folks would rather use multiple small-capacity cards, there are clearly more than a few who would prefer to use one or more higher-capacity cards--surely you're not implying that these folks are being foolish for deciding to use such larger-capacity cards?

Have you tried buying a 32mb card lately? )