1) Don’t expect the 300x to make a big difference while you are out shooting, especially if you are using a modern digital SLR. Cameras seldom take full advantage of flash card speed, largely because they don’t have to thanks to their big, fast internal buffers. 99.9% of the time I could get by with a glacially slow card because my DSLR can buffer 40 RAW frames before it even needs to write to the card.

2) The 300x will make a big difference when transferring files from the card to your computer, but only if paired with a UDMA card reader. On paper this card boasts 300x speed, or 45 MB/s. That seems stellar, but when I plugged it into my trusty USB 2.0 CF card readers, I found the actual transfer speed to be 4 MB/s for both reads and writes! (Yes, 4 MB/s — that’s not a typo. And yes, I’m sure it’s a USB 2.0 reader using a USB 2.0 port. I even repeated the exercise with another reader from a different vendor to verify my results.) I tested by moving several GB of 15MB RAW files, as well as some 1GB video clips to measure sustained performance. Obviously the problem was that my reader could not take advantage of the full UDMA speed of this card. Fortunately I had a third UDMA USB 2.0 reader, and keeping all other variables constant, using that reader my write speed jumped to 14 MB/s and reads went to 33 MB/s, or about 220x, which is quite respectable and hugely better than the 27x speeds I was enduring before.

Make sure your reader supports UDMA and you’ll be very happy with this card.

Mated to a UDMA card reader, the card transfers about 72 files a minute or a bit better than one per second. My old SanDisk Extreme III card in a non-UDMA-enabled reader takes about 3-4 times longer. And of course if you have a camera that writes large files, 8GB gives you some headroom when you’re out taking large number of photos — it can take about 240 RAW images on my camera.

There’s also an advantage to a high speed card like this if you shoot continuously with this type of camera, since files will be written more quickly with a fast card. If you have a UDMA-enabled camera and shoot often in continuous mode, this may be a worthwhile purchase for you. If you have a need for lots of capacity with any camera and you have or buy a UDMA-enabled card reader, this card will speed up file transfer very significantly. In my experience Lexar makes very reliable cards that do not have compatibility issues with major brands of digital SLRs.

The card is perfect, never a hint of bogging down or image corruption no matter how fast I shoot. This is partly due to the camera, of course, but the fast write speed of the Lexar keeps up when shooting those massive 21 megapixel images or high def video. I also appreciate that Lexar lets you download “Image Rescue 3″ for free when you buy the card.

Don’t waste your money if you are using an older or “prosumer” camera; they probably will perform the same with a card costing half the price. Lexar designed this pricey bad boy for high-end pro cameras.

Lexar makes top of the line memory in reliability and speed. I use Lexar for MS Duo Pro, CF, and SDHC. Never had any problems and the speed of transfer makes my digital cameras recover faster between pictures.

To be fair, SanDisk and Sony also are reliable. But Lexar consistently has been the performance leader.

You can purchase this card without worry or regret. Even if the price drops a little, two weeks later. We obsess about price when I believe we should obsess about quality and performance. At least, that’s my approach to technology.

Amazon.com Product Description

Lexar Media’s high-speed digital film helps your camera capture images faster, so you spend more time taking pictures and less time waiting on your camera. Lexar’s CompactFlash cards are individually speed rated so you know the minimum capability of the card. Lexar uses the same rating system used by the CD-ROM industry, where a data transfer rate of 1x equals 150 kilobytes per second (KBps). The higher the speed rating, the faster your camera will be able to write images to the memory card.

For professional shooters who need immediate confirmation they’ve captured the shot or who want to identify accurate exposure levels or bracketing range, Lexar’s patented 12X speed (1.8 MBps) transfer rate makes the card ideal for fast-paced applications such as photojournalism, sports, and fashion. And Lexar’s solid-state design provides reliability in harsh shooting environments, mandated by professionals throughout the world.

The Digital Film Compliance seal assures you that your Lexar Media digital film is 100 percent compatible with your CompactFlash digital camera. It can also be used in all other digital devices that support the CompactFlash format, such as PDAs, video recorders, and MP3 players. All Lexar Media CompactFlash cards meet the CompactFlash Association’s specifications and are marked with the CF+ symbol.