1DMII and Sandisk Extreme III CF

[natalka]

I have a relatively new 1D Mark II, and so I bought new CF cards for the camera. I waited until the Sandisk Extreme III cards were available and bought 2 2GB cards. For te past few weeks, I have been using the new camera just during prep and reception at weddings until I get more used to it. This past weekend I had two weddings, and twice the camera/CF card combination pooped out on me. Saturday, after having shot about 50 images during the reception, the camera said the CF card needs formatting, should it do it now? Then Sunday, after having hot 400 some images, and again during the reception, the camera had an "error 02". The error was triggered by my wanting to scroll and look at the last few images I shot. This was the reception, dancing, one shot every minute or so. *remember that part*

I get home and download the images. Everything seems fine, except when I'm auto-rotating in Breezebrowser, I get to one image that just doesn't want to rotate. So I double-click on the image to look at it closer, and it has a huge green stripe along the side. I freak out and look at the rest of the reception images. There are three more that look similar. When I open in PS, the error message says something about "truncated data segment".

Monday morning I call Canon to basically confirm this isn't a camera problem. Then I called Sandisk. After I explain the problem, which the guy has never heard of before, he puts me on hold to talk to his technical guy. When he comes back he says the cards are made for higher end professional cameras and finally asks me what camera was I using. I tell him, and he gets quiet for a second, then stumbles and seems to be thinking quickly what to say. He says the cards write at such a fast speed that non high-end cameras sometimes can't maintain the write speed to the card. *remember I was shooting the reception? not Nascar or sports. A wedding!!* I told him I was shooting the reception at a wedding, and he said sometimes when you shoot too fast the camera has to stop writing one piece of info to move onto the next. I asked him what kind of cameras are there that the Extreme III cards would work in. He said high-end 12 and 18 megapixel cameras. So the little cards are choking on my 8 megapixel camera but were made to work with larger file format cameras?

Now I don't know what to do. Go back to my old brand that has NEVER given me a problem, or try to work through this Sandisk issue?

So, has anyone else ever had this problem with any card, and how was it resolved? What cards are you using with your 1D Mark II's?

Nata

[grego]

That sounds like BS. If you shoot in Raw format, those files are certaintly big enough to fill the card, even high end jpg. I think the card is maybe faulty. Damn, and I was just going to buy one of these extreme III. Maybe I'll just stick with Lexar and buy another 80x 1 or 2 gig.

[natalka]

Just to clarify, I was shooting jpeg large during the reception. The Sandisk guy said I wasn't using a high-end CAMERA.

Natalka

[grego]

Just to clarify, I was shooting jpeg large during the reception. The Sandisk guy said I wasn't using a high-end CAMERA.

Natalka

That's total bs. The 1DMII is one of the higher end cameras. All the photo journalists who use canon use that. All of Sports Illustrated using the MII. That guy doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.

[natalka]

I pretty much knew when he was talking to me that he was trying to blow me off. I still have the problem of what to do. And how to prevent this from happening again? If I knew what caused the corrupted files, which the sandisk guy obviously doesn't, then I would try to prevent this from happening again.

Natalka

[scottbergerphoto]

I could understand if he said that the camera was trying to write faster then the card would allow, but the idea that the camera has to keep up with the recording device is BS.
In addition the crap about moving on to the next piece of data is also BS. The camera has a buffer. When the buffer is full, you can't shoot. You have to wait till data is transferred to the card. Send the card back to Sandisk with copies of the bad files and a letter requesting that they replace the card.

[DocFrankenstein]

This is what happens when you approach the memory response time.

I'm gonna go test my 1gb ultra II now. :confused:

[BrianEE93]

That is BS. I use a 1GB Extreme III on my 20D and it hasn't given me any problems for the 4 months I have owned it. The 1D is certainly a higher end camera than the 20D.

[natalka]

I managed to repeat the error with one of the cards, not the other. I shot on Hi mode until it seems I ent through half the card, then I got error 02 again. Turned off camera, took out battery, put battery back in, turned on camera, took a bunch more shots, and got error 02. After the first error 02, no more data was written to the card, even though the camera allowed me to take some more shots before shutting down.

I can understand cards being corrupted, etc, but to actually have Sandisk say that the CF cards were created to shoot with larger file cameras is scary and that camera manufacturers need to make the cameras compatible with the faster write speed CF cards. Why make a product that isn't more universal? And how many of us have those 18 megapixel cameras?

Natalka

[Pekka]

I can understand cards being corrupted, etc, but to actually have Sandisk say that the CF cards were created to shoot with larger file cameras is scary and that camera manufacturers need to make the cameras compatible with the faster write speed CF cards. Why make a product that isn't more universal? And how many of us have those 18 megapixel cameras?
Natalka

I don't think you should think about this further. What the support guy said was totally wrong. You have a faulty card and that's it. It should be replaced by warranty.

[Pekka]

This is what happens when you approach the memory response time.

No it does not have anything to do with memory speed. 1D Mark II has an excellent buffering system which does not fail to save even if you turn the camera off. If the buffer is full the camera will tell you and you have to wait for it to get room again. The camera gave a clear error so the fault is in the card.

Please do not make this an urban legend.

[IanD]

I've been using aExtreme III for a couple of months now and have never encountered a problem. Return the card and ask for a new one.

*EDIT* MKII 1D

[ssim]

I have had one disk failure and it was with my MKII and an Extreme card. It was about a year old and my retailer took it back and gave me a new one for no charge. My heart went into arrest when I first saw the Err02 on the camera and not having my manual with me (I was out shooting owls) I didn't know what it was. When I got home and downloaded my card I saw exactly what you saw except the strip along the bottom was yellow.

If it is only happening with one of the two cards that you bought, return it. If it was happening with both it might have required some further investigation.

[tim]

If you know the name of the tech support guy, write a letter to Sandisk and tell them what he told you. I record the names of everyone I speak with in case I need to know in the future.

[mbze430]

And here I was about to get an Extreme III card. Guess I'll stick with Lexar 80x

[I Simonius]

snips
I get home and download the images. Everything seems fine, except when I'm auto-rotating in Breezebrowser, I get to one image that just doesn't want to rotate.
snip
I tell him, and he gets quiet for a second, then stumbles and seems to be thinking quickly what to say. He says the cards write at such a fast speed
snip
So, has anyone else ever had this problem with any card, and how was it resolved? What cards are you using with your 1D Mark II's?

Nata
I have had a similar thing happen - twice
But my stripes were PINK, other than that the same place and size
The first time the shop replaced the Card no questions
Second time I contacted Canon who said it WAS the camera and told me to take it back to the shop who replaced it no questions

Not had a problem since - (yet)
Whether it is the card or camera in your case yours what the Sandisk guy told you sounds like utter BS to me. Doesn't make any sense at all

I always suspect that when a company sin't EAGER to replace faulty equipment and starts making odd excuses that they are in trouble and are fighting to keep their headfs above water. Makes you wonder..

[Joytek]

I would stay away from sandisk...their products seem to suck....my friend lost around 200 pics on his sandisk card (from his birthday party), and had a few issues with uploads before.

I have been using Transcend cards for a few years now and NEVER had any issues (s30,G3,10D,1DmkII)

w.

[primoz]

I don't know about all this anymore. I have at least one friend with 1dmk2 who has bunch of weird problems with Lexar 80x 2gb cards. Photos were disapearing, photos were corupt and I don't know what else. He got new camera... same thing happened again. He got new cards... same thing happend again. Most of time it was when shooting in raw+jpeg. Now he got Sandisk 2gb cards and he just told me yesterday it's fine for now.
I'm using Lexar 80x 1gb card on my 1dmk2 and never had any problems (hopefully it will stay like this in future too), but hearing all this ramble about Lexar cards makes me go and buy Sandisk. :)
So no idea what is really there but based on bunch of posts around forums I would say both 1dmk2 and 1dsmk2 have some issues with cards, especially bigger ones (2 or 4gb). But I have no idea if it's camera or card. Probably it's a bit of something since easiest thing is to say - oh it's not our problem it's problem from other one (card producer for Canon or Canon for card producer).

[robertwgross]

Let me ask the question that has not been asked:

How did you prepare the CF card for use when you got it?
For example:
(1) pop it in the camera and quick format it there
(2) pop it in the card reader and complete format it there with FAT 32
(3) something else

---Bob Gross---

[I Simonius]

Let me ask the question that has not been asked:

How did you prepare the CF card for use when you got it?
For example:
(1) pop it in the camera and quick format it there
(2) pop it in the card reader and complete format it there with FAT 32
(3) something else

---Bob Gross---
popped it in camera and did format there - didn't know there were other ways!

[pcasciola]

Natalka, what firmware are you running on the 1DMk II? Canon released an updated firmware which specifically addressed problems with the higher end cards like the Sandisk Extremes and Lexar 80xs.

From Rob Galbraith's CF database:
"Important: v1.1.0 of the firmware for the EOS-1D Mark II enables the camera to write to better-performing CompactFlash cards much quicker than earlier firmware versions."

So, they obviously changed something with how they write to the faster cards. Could it be 1.1.0 is less reliable on these cards now that they are writing about 40% faster than they were before, and more cards will appear "bad" now?