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SimpleTech STI-CF/512 512MB CompactFlash Card

SimpleTech STI-CF/512 512MB CompactFlash Card

List Price:
Your Price: $49.39
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A newer competitor, a better price....
Review: ...and very good read/write speeds! What more could you ask for? 512 megs is an incredible amt of space and for someone heading off on an extended trip. Initially, I stayed away from these much larger cards, as the newest & largest cards had tended to carry a premium in the all important dollar-per-meg calculation; however, this one does not and as a result it's not only convenient but economical, it is under fifty cents per meg, less than 1/4 of what it cost per meg only 18 months ago! The only thing to consider is whether you can really utilize this much memory effectively; it is more than my Canon can shoot on 3 full battery charges!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Wishful thinking &ignoring other user reviews was bad idea
Review: Hey...it's the cheapest one out there for the cost. I purchased mine here on amazon for $95 after rebates. I'm a young celebrity photographer and my shots of Charlize Theron & Marla Maples were taken however later they were unviewable. Downloaded into computer and it scrambled the images. The head was at the bottom of the photo and colors were highly distorted. As a regular consumer, it's ok but the shots I take need to be recorded correctly. Out of 300 shots in 2 hours about 50 were shot. If you want to talk, email me at mrandrewlee3@yahoo.com. I have to buy a more dependable one now. Maybe I'll go back to Sandisk or Lexar.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Trouble in 2nd week
Review: I bought this card for my Canon S400, as it was listed as one of the accessaries for that camera (got lazy that day). We've taken no more than 200 shots when we started getting image slots marked as "incompatible jpeg format" all over.

I went on the SimpleTech webpage. One can't just send an email to them--one has to fill out a form and give out home phone# etc, and the FAQ (which one has to dig for) doesn't seem to have an answer.

I've thrown out the package, so I guess I can't return it. How annoying.

I will never buy another SimpleTech product again.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: completely disappointed
Review: I bought this CF card for my canon powershot S400 after reading some reviews of people that recommend it for canon digital cameras and because of the price, I was really disappointed from the beginning about its speed comparing it to my other CF card (lexar 12X 256), when u take a picture (u don't get the picture u took when the flash lights but the one after about two second, so people should not move for a few second after u took the picture), despite that I kept it because I didn't wanna bother returning it back, then came what really piss me off, after less than 3 weeks the card brook down completely (I only used it twice) and I'm getting error message reading the card in my camera, even I can't get the pictures that I took, simpletech will replace it but I had to pay for shipping ($7.50 for FedEx), I could have returned it to amazon.com for full refund (because it's been less than 30 days since I bought it) but I didn't have the UPC code (which amazon.com requires for returning an item)for my package which I had to send it for the $15 mail-in-rebate (which simpletech requires within 2 week from purchase date to qualify for the mail-in-rebate) I don't know may be they do that to prevent u from returning it.

I'm really disappointed with this card and I advice people not to be cheap and purchase the cheapest 512MB card they can get, lexar 512 12X cost probably $15 dollars more but u'll not hear anybody complaining about its speed or breaking down, that difference u'll pay it in shipping costs if the card breaks down twice, not counting the lost pictures which are priceless.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No problems, good price
Review: I bought this CompactFlash card to go with my Canon S50 digital camera. It was a good price and there was a rebate on it too.

This is a Type I card, which means it is SMALLER and thinner than a Type II card, and Type I is the most popular. The card is plenty fast in my Canon and I even heard that the Canon brand card that comes with the camera is made by SimpleTech. I have had zero problems with this card.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Five stars or one?
Review: I bought this one to have sufficient memory for my new Minolta Dimage 7Hi. Stuck it in, took pictures, no sweat. The next day, the camera tells me it is "unable to read card". I've got other cards from Lexar, Viking and SanDisk, all work. Then again, I put the SimpleTech in my old Canon A40, and behold, it works like a charm. Re-formatted it on the Canon, to no avail. So, is it the card's or the camera's fault? On the SimpleTech site they boast their cards are designed to have "unlimited compatibility"...

I have to say I'm more than slightly miffed that this so-called industry standard is a frigging maze with us customers caught up in it shelling out the bucks and having all the hassle of first spending hours on the net trying to figure out compatibility and then sending the products back...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent
Review: I have used this card for about 6 months and never had any problems. I used it in a Canon G5 camera.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works great with the Canon A70.
Review: I needed a larger card so I could take pictures at maximum resolution while on vacation. This card gave me the capability with over 300 pictures in my Canon A70. That's at 2048 resolution and Superfine compression. I already had the 256 meg card but wasn't sure 150 pictures would be enough. Both cards are Simpletech and work flawlessly. Simpletech is also the only brand Canon sells on its own site. Amazon's price is the best I could find anywhere and delivery was quick and easy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works great with the Canon A70.
Review: I needed a larger card so I could take pictures at maximum resolution while on vacation. This card gave me the capability with over 300 pictures in my Canon A70. That's at 2048 resolution and Superfine compression. I already had the 256 meg card but wasn't sure 150 pictures would be enough. Both cards are Simpletech and work flawlessly. Simpletech is also the only brand Canon sells on its own site. Amazon's price is the best I could find anywhere and delivery was quick and easy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Please check out compatibility before buying ANY CF card
Review: I noticed several folks that had a bad experience with CF card compatiblity, especially in terms of expected vs actual performance. You should check out the digital storage review section on dpreview.com, where they test the raw read/write speed (using a firewire card interface), the speed in high-end digital SLR type cameras, and representative point-and-shoot digicams.

It turns out that some high-speed CF cards are a poor match for digicams, and will actually perform worse than ones that are appropriately speed-matched to the device. For instance, I've had very good performance with Lexar 12x 128 MB CF cards with my Nikon Coolpix 4500. It comes packed with an 8x Lexar 'starter' card, and test results on dpreview.com with the Coolpix 995, which is very similar bear this out. Faster cards for that camera would be a waste of money, and might not even perform as well.

On the other hand, I've ordered Simpletech 512 MB cards to go with my new Canon EOS Digital Rebel SLR, because if you go to Canon's site and look at their recommended storage media, they sell Simpletech cards. There is a definite reason for this. If you check out dpreview.com, you will see that Simpletech, among others, scored very well when married to such 'pro-sumer' or pro digital SLR's. The Lexar and Sandisk CFs (two very well-known brands) fared poorly, by comparison.

So, if your camera came with a 'starter' card, find out the speed and manufacturer of that card, and buy some more just like it, or maybe a bit faster and more than likely more storage. If your camera didn't include a card, check out the camera maker's web site to see what they sell, or pester them to tell you what they tested the camera with.

Unless you have a camera that shoots RAW photos (if you don't know what that means, you don't have one, and probably don't care), then you should always shoot in JPEG Fine at the highest (or possibly 3:2) resolution. Digital storage is cheap, and life's too short to shoot in 640x480, and wish you hadn't, the one time you want to make an 8x10 enlargement. Once you figure out the average size of JPEG file produced for typical shots, then get a couple of like-manufactured CF cards sized for about two rolls of film (about 64 shots). For the 4 MP Nikon Coolpix 4500, that comes to about a 128 MB card (a far cry from the 16 MB 'starter' card they include). With one card in the camera, and a spare card in your pocket, you are set for a day's worth of shooting (unless you are a button-happy picture-shootin' maniac -- in that case, get a battery-operated USB drive with media slots, like the Xs-Drive-II to store your shots on, instead of buying a ton of CF cards).

I'm now back for another 512 MB card. I've had no problems or complaints with the first one in my Digital Rebel. I'm currently using it with a Lexar USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, RW018 Rev. B on an ASUS P4B533-E motherboard-based system (has six USB 2.0 ports, and two firewire). Works like a charm, after I found out that you don't need to load the Win2K drivers supplied with the reader, if you have a recent service pack on the system. Otherwise, the two sets of drivers clobber each other.


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