20D-Caught by "shoot w/o card"

[donlavange]

Out early this morning in the fog at sunrise, I took what I thought were some good shots. I even reviewed them on the LCD and was pleased.

When I got home and tried to transfer to my computer, The card had none of the shots I had just taken!! I finally determined that I had inadvertantly turned on the option "shoot w/o card"!!

Be careful of this trap! Especially since you can review the shots you think you are taking on the LCD!

[evilenglishman]

i think you have misunderstood that function. It makes it impossible to shoot without a card.
It sounds like you have a problem with your card. If I take a shot without a card in it says "no CF card" on the preview. If I press play there is no preview - only the one that appears as soon as the shot is taken

[donlavange]

The card was in place. And, I was not reviewing the series of shots, just the last one taken. Indeed, I may be misunderstanding the function.

The card seems to be funtioning properly at this time.

[davidwegs]

I always format the card as it goes in the camera (never on the computer) and shoot a couple to be sure.

I do use the CF that prevents you shooting without a card. It would have been nice to have had a film cam with that option.

[cecilc]

It makes it impossible to shoot without a card.
Yep ... that's exactly right. If you've got "Shoot W/O CF Card" set to "Off", then the camera won't even take a shot if you don't have a CF card in the camera. When you press the shutter button, you'll get a message "No CF card" displayed and NO shutter action ...
If you actually did take a shot, that means you've either got "Shoot w/o CF Card" set to ON (in which case, it will take a shot and display it in the LCD panel - although even that image will have "No CF Card" superimposed on it) or .....

It sounds like you have a problem with your card.
Yea ... that'd be my guess, too.

[OviV]

Like it's been said, if you have a card in the camera, it will write to it. There is no function that I know of that allows you to turn off writing to the card. The shoot without card option allows you to turn on/off the ability for the camera to take pictures when no card is in the camera. Did you remove the card from the camera before it was done writing? I have done that before. Simply opening the card door before it is done writing dumps the image.

Ovi

[Scottes]

Just as a note, my 10D would still take pictures in the "auto" modes regardless of that setting.

[donlavange]

Thank you all. I will watch closely when using that card and I will try to "replay" the events. I did not do anything like removing or opening the door. It was raining hard, but, I ususally protect the camera and it did not get more than a few drops on it.

I am still not sure what was occuring. There were 6 shots on the card from last night. But none of those that I took this morning which should have numbered between 15 & 20 were there!

At any rate I have turned "shoot w/o card" to the off position until such time as I am ready to try to duplicate the problem.

Of course, now I am sure that those lost shots were the best I have ever taken!

[Jon]

The one card I've seen shots not get recorded to was one that seems to have a bad sector or two on it. I've used file recovery software to go in and look at it and been able to recover most, if not all, of the shots that had "vanished". You might try this. Also, mark the card in some way so the next time it happens you'll know if it was the same card.

[donlavange]

Good thought, but I already re-formatted the card in the camera. There is always tomorrow!

[trakmeister]

Hi
I have used a free program called PC Inspector File Recovery to find photos on a re-formatted card. The first time I had pictures from a trip to Prague, they wouldn't show up in the computer but could be seen in the camera, tried this program and it recovered them all. As an experiment, I tried a couple of re-formatted (in camera), cards and was surprised to see it found nearly full cards worth of pics.
Worth a try.
Mike

[donlavange]

Looks like those that suggested a bad card were correct. Lost more shots this evening and when I tried to format the card (Sandisc Extreme 1GB), the message on the LCD showed "busy" for a long, long time suggesting a lockup of sorts.

Rats!

[Jon]

Try formatting it in your computer as well. You'll have more disk-testing tools available for it there.