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  • Give it Your Best Shot • Re: Fog January 29, 2024
    Beautiful B&W images. Thank you.Statistics: Posted by Fotogeorge — Mon Jan 29, 2024 7:07 pm
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    Thanks everyone!Here's another one from the Cahokia Mounds state park. Low fog during an autumn sunset.Statistics: Posted by smulnik — Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:18 pm
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    Thanks guys!A frozen Horseshoe lake. The lake is only about 6 feet deep and freezes quickly. It's just 10 minutes from my house, so it's one of my quick go-to places if it looks there is going to be a nice sunrise or sunset.SigSunrise SunsetStatistics: Posted by smulnik — Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:51 pm
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    Like them all Sig, but I prefer the vertical one. SuryStatistics: Posted by sury — Fri Dec 22, 2023 6:11 am
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Amazon – possible SanDisk UHS-1 card bargain

Yesterday we received two SanDisk 30MB/s 16GB SDHC cards from Amazon UK – £15.99 each, a couple of pounds more than regular Class 10 cards like the Transcends we normally use on all current Alpha and NEX models. You must have faster than 15MB/s for cameras such as the A55, A580 or NEX-5n not because of video issues, or even because you want to shoot raw bursts – you need it to be sure that shooting sweep panoramas or 3D panoramas will not a) fail b) corrupt your card and lock you out of shooting in the process.

This is what happened to us when using a SanDisk Ultra 15MB/s card which had been fine for all other work. Fortunately we had a spare card, the corrupted card was removed and its file contents recovered using SanDisk’s free program.

The SanDisk 30MB/s card labelled for ‘HD video’ is of course not limited to video and is ideal for any similar use which includes sweep pans, multishot noise reduction, HDR and 12fps bursts (etc). It is labelled slightly differently:

At £15.99 in the offer linked to here (click the image of card or this link) it’s a very good value fast reliable card from a premium maker. Admittedly, we are now seeing the Transcend brand falling to £12-13 for Class 10 which despite their info saying Class 6 or faster (etc) is the minimum you should aim for with Alpha and NEX current generation models. SEE COMMENTS – Amazon changed this offer a couple of days later to the less desirable 20MB/s but there was still a good price on 32GB 30MB/s.

We ordered two of the 16GBs and what actually arrived the next day was a pair of these:

These cards – 300X, 45MB/s, UHS-1 Class 10 – are not listed for sale under the Extreme branding but can be found as the last generation of Extreme Pro, priced at £43.50. Clearly SanDisk is repositioning the prices and labelling of the card range. So, we were apparently sent the latest version of something they’ve still got on sale for £43.50 but we paid £15.99.

March 24th update: can’t vouch for the vendor, the above were from Amazon themselves, but there’s one seller with the 45MB/s cards genuinely offered at under £20.

It gets more interesting as the real speed demon – the 95MB/s 16GB Extreme Pro which was selling for £80 or so recently – has dropped in price to be BELOW the price of the 45MB/s version which is now marked as having a ‘newer’ version. You can buy the 95MB/s card for only £38.10. We’ve ordered and received one of these, no errors or substitutions.

There is no guarantee that if you order the bargain HD Video 30MB/s card you will get the same switched product as we did with a March 18th order, delivered March 20th, UK. Even if you don’t it is a great price for a card which should guarantee the correct operation of NEX-7, Alpha 77, Alpha 65. The 95MB/s version is one of the fastest SD cards yet made, and will go beyond correct operation to ensure the fastest clearing of the camera’s buffer, fastest image playback or review, and the highest number of consecutive shots when shooting continuous sequences.

Disclaimer: Amazon prices can change on a daily basis, and Amazon USA or other regions may differ.

– DK

4 comments to Amazon – possible SanDisk UHS-1 card bargain

  • Ralpheyesight

    I sent for two straight after reading this and got two 45mb 16gb cards so it still worked for the 16 gb size.

  • Howard

    Thanks for the tip: I ordered from Amazon and although the picture is of the wrong disk, what was delivered matches the written spec. Excellent!

  • Looks as if Amazon found the error. I bought one more card only – a 16GB 95 MB/s as listed above – and that has arrived OK. Clearly we got the 45 MB/s cards for a bargain price. Amazon’s listing is muddled, the photo now shows a Class 6 20 MB/s card but the technical spec lists a Class 10 card.

    I guess the best advice here is to keep a constant eye on Amazon SanDisk card prices and apparent specs. Since the photo on our page is actually a URL linked image, it’s still hosted on Amazon’s site, and I guess somewhere there will be an offer with this card shown.

  • alphaomega

    When clicking through on the Amazon.co.uk link the card clearly states 20Mb/s rather than 30 as per the article.