I need help with poor image download!!

[Chris Attanasio]

I cant imagine that I am the first to experience this problem but I havea Canon A620 and am having problems downloading images to my desktop through the Canon Utilities. Some of the images (not the same ones everytime) become distroted during the download process-as seen in the attached image. All images look fine on the camera screen. Ive tried different software to copy images off, and Ive even used different usb cables with no luck...

Any Ideas,

Distorted

[BBoi]

I've seen this kind of distortion many times, not always the same root cause mind you, but I guess, probably the main culprit is damaged memory (thebit planes shift around and fail to alight correctly before writing to storage), either the chip or the storage. You might want to format your SD card first. If that doesn't work, take the batteries out of the camera for about 5 minutes and put them back in, any improvement ?

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=bit+plane&i=38689,00.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-plane

If not whatever is causing it is probably a permanent thing, and it's either going to be the sensor, or the buffer memory where images go before being written to the storage card, like in burst mode. Typically this issue (on computers anyway, not cameras) is down to a corrupted file, fragments of the file getting lost from A to B, or fragmented (non-contiguous) memory. Has it been near a strong magnet of any kind ? non-shielded speaker etc ?

A factory reset (if there is such a thing on a 620) might be an option too.

Best of luck, let us know how you get on.

[Jon]

Are you downloading direct from the camera or via a card reader? Whichever one it is, try the other method. Also try a different USB port on your computer.

[boomer3297]

Chris,

I like the two ideas, I think it takes a little detective work to weed out the problem. Maybe taking away one of your pieces of hardware or software and replacing it with something else might help isolate the problem... Keep looking here because someone will be able to help if these 2 posts don't.;)

[boomer3297]

Chris,
Check this (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=509136) thread, sounds like a similar problem.

Mike