SanDisk is perhaps the most well known manufacturer of high end compact flash cards. I had an opportunity to stop by SanDisk’s booth and take a look at their high end offerings. At present I’m using a SanDisk 4.0 Gig card in my Canon 5D and am pretty happy with it. I haven’t had it all that long but it works well and I haven’t had any problems with it yet. Although SanDisk offers a more expensive Extreme III version of their flash card I just have the regular 4 gig card and it suits me fine. According to the SanDisk rep the major difference between the more expensive Extreme III cards and the regular cards is that the Extreme III cards are faster and can withstand a greater temperature range. As I never take my camera in extreme hot or extreme cold environments and as it is plenty fast for me as it is, I don’t really see the need for the more expensive Extreme III version.
I also took a look at their 8 gig card which looked pretty sweet as well. Of course with a price of $724.94, and out of stock at that, at B&H; I think I’ll wait a bit for the price to come down before considering one of these babies.
The SanDisk rep did say that they are also at present working a a 16 gig version as well which should be out at some point in the future. They still need to work out some of the storage issues with Fat32 and the ability to transfer content on and off a card this large but it’s nice to know that it’s in the works.