Lucky To Lose My Best Images Today

[RPCrowe]

I was shooting some actors and models at the Digital Days Photo Seminar, sponsored by Sony and by Popular & American Photography magazines today at Rancho Bernardo, CA and I was "LUCKY" enough to lose my best images....

I was using a new Kingston 8 Gig Elite Pro 133X which I had purchased at Fry's Electronics about two weeks ago. I had tested the CF card by shooting multiple exposures and was able to both view the images on the camera CF Card and to download the images to my computer. I also have a couple of 4 Gig Kingston cards which I have had no problem with in the months and years I have owned them so I figured that all is well...

Today, I was able to view the images on the camera monitor and showed them to the moderators and several other attendees. However when I got home, I tried to view the images on the camera LCD and the message I received was "no image". I placed the card in a card reader and attempted to open the Raw images using Adobe Bridge. I was able to find the file but, when I attempted to open it, the information read #,□

I will attempt to retrieve the images tomorrow using some image recovery software I have. That in itself will be an educational procedure.

The reason I consider myself "LUCKY" to have lost these images is that I am leaving next week to shoot the wildfowl at the Bosque del Apache, National Wildlife refuge south of Albuquerque, NM and I will be traveling to China at the end of March for a 15 day tour.

Although it is kind of a bummer to lose any images, I am far-far happier to lose the images I shot today than I would be to have lost images from either the Bosque del Apache or China. I would have been heart broken to lose images I shot at either location and that could easily have happened.

The only bummer is that after the CF card seemed to check out O.K., I threw away the packaging and the receipt - so there will be no return or exchange.

This is the very first time that a CF card has ever failed me in thousands and thousands of exposures. I wonder if I had shot RAW + JPEG Large whether the recording of the images as two different file types might have allowed the JPEG images to be saved.

[ed rader]

I was shooting some actors and models at the Digital Days Photo Seminar, sponsored by Sony and by Popular & American Photography magazines today at Rancho Bernardo, CA and I was "LUCKY" enough to lose my best images....

I was using a new Kingston 8 Gig Elite Pro 133X which I had purchased at Fry's Electronics about two weeks ago. I had tested the CF card by shooting multiple exposures and was able to both view the images on the camera CF Card and to download the images to my computer. I also have a couple of 4 Gig Kingston cards which I have had no problem with in the months and years I have owned them so I figured that all is well...

Today, I was able to view the images on the camera monitor and showed them to the moderators and several other attendees. However when I got home, I tried to view the images on the camera LCD and the message I received was "no image". I placed the card in a card reader and attempted to open the Raw images using Adobe Bridge. I was able to find the file but, when I attempted to open it, the information read #,□

I will attempt to retrieve the images tomorrow using some image recovery software I have. That in itself will be an educational procedure.

The reason I consider myself "LUCKY" to have lost these images is that I am leaving next week to shoot the wildfowl at the Bosque del Apache, National Wildlife refuge south of Albuquerque, NM and I will be traveling to China at the end of March for a 15 day tour.

Although it is kind of a bummer to lose any images, I am far-far happier to lose the images I shot today than I would be to have lost images from either the Bosque del Apache or China. I would have been heart broken to lose images I shot at either location and that could easily have happened.

The only bummer is that after the CF card seemed to check out O.K., I threw away the packaging and the receipt - so there will be no return or exchange.

This is the very first time that a CF card has ever failed me in thousands and thousands of exposures. I wonder if I had shot RAW + JPEG Large whether the recording of the images as two different file types might have allowed the JPEG images to be saved.





images lost are always the best ;). have fun on your trips. i envy you :D.

ed rader

[zelseman]

I have had this happen once on the same card. I had not formatted in camera prior to shooting though. So I take full responsibility for the error. Luckily it was in my backup 20d and I didnt have many on it.

Always format in camera before shooting. Especially with Kingston.

[Nick_kun]

Yeah I bought two of those cards at the Fry's near Sports Arena. One of them was dead and one worked for a few weeks and crapped out.

[JWright]

Yeah I bought two of those cards at the Fry's near Sports Arena. One of them was dead and one worked for a few weeks and crapped out.

Excuse me? The San Diego I live in has only one Fry's and it's nowhere near the Sports Arena... ;)

Seriously, I shop at Fry's only when I can't find the product anywhere else and that includes shopping online. The sales people aren't very knowledgeable and the shelves are understocked a good portion of the time. I think what killed it for me with them was when I saw a returned Wacom on the shelf that was missing the pen. It was marked at the same price as a complete new one...

[Tdragone]

Excuse me? The San Diego I live in has only one Fry's and it's nowhere near the Sports Arena... ;)
He meant Qualcomm Stadium, not the Sports Arena

Interestingly enough.. The reason I read this post was because I had a corrupt Ultra ii 2 gig card go corrupt on my Mkiii @ an airshow and this saturday had an Extreme iv 8 gig card go corrupt on Saturday. Reviewing pictures was fine; plugged them in @ home and I got nothing.

The sandisk recovery program that came with my extreme iv cards worked on my 2 gig.. I have an extra copy if you want it.

[CalPiker]

That sucks, but luckily it happened before your trip. There's one thing I learned while working with computers the last 15+ years - never buy electronics from Fry's Electronics. Ever! :lol:

Seriously, half their stuff has been returned, repackaged, and put back on the shelf without anything having been done to it. The other half is broken. Everybody I know that has purchased something from there has had problems most of the time. This is how bad I consider that place - I bought a book there once and it DIDN'T work! :lol:

[TheHoff]

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Curious, when you tested the card, did you fill it up? Or just put a few exposures on it? I'm assuming that if you had copied a full load of data to it and then off again that you might have found the error before putting any real images on it.

[fungry]

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Curious, when you tested the card, did you fill it up? Or just put a few exposures on it? I'm assuming that if you had copied a full load of data to it and then off again that you might have found the error before putting any real images on it.
+1, these cards use flash memory which are like cells. It appears your test didn't load any data into the faulty cell(s).

[alduin]

Totally understand how you feel. If you'd prefer not to take the chance on re-living this experience in Bosque, I'd be happy to go down in your place and shoot for you. =P

[RPCrowe]

I used the Stellar Phoenix Image Recovery Program to recover my "lost" images.

The recovery program worked quite easily and I have decided to include this program on my notebook computer for any future trips such as my forays to Bosque del Apache and China. That will provide some peace of mind.

Regarding the question from "TheHoff": No I did not fill up the card. I shot about twenty images and since they were O.K., I decided that the card was O.K.

It did reinforce one decision which I had made previously but had not adhered to; shoot with smaller CF cards so that any malfunctioning card would contain fewer images. I usually shoot with 2 GIG and maximum 4 GIG cards but, this 8 GIG card was on sale for $20 from Fry's Electronics and I snapped it up. I guess you get what you pay for but, like I said, I have several Kingston cards with which I have had no problems.

[TheHoff]

Regarding the question from "TheHoff": No I did not fill up the card. I shot about twenty images and since they were O.K., I decided that the card was O.K.

It did reinforce one decision which I had made previously but had not adhered to; shoot with smaller CF cards so that any malfunctioning card would contain fewer images.

I'm of the opposite school of thought. I'd rather have a few large cards that I trust rather than many smaller cards. The more cards you have the more chance there is of some sort of physical failure or loss.

Thanks for answering my question; it reinforces my idea that testing the cards with a fill-up and dump (and verification of the files) before use would prevent a lot of lost images. I wrote a post on 5 steps to stopping image loss (http://www.shotinvancouver.com/vancouver/tech-talk-for-photographers/five-steps-to-stopping-image-loss/) and that was one of them.

[tvphotog]

That's why I stick to Sandisk and Lexar cards, especially when I find a good sale. Sorry about the malfunction, but have a great time on those outstanding trips.

[javanutsy]

I'm of the opposite school of thought. I'd rather have a few large cards that I trust rather than many smaller cards. The more cards you have the more chance there is of some sort of physical failure or loss.

That's an interesting thought TheHoff! But what if the card does fail, wouldn't you suffer a bigger loss, even if the chance was slimmer? What about looking at it from the clients perspective. How do you explain to the bride that the entire wedding day's photos are lost because the card was corrupted? She would think what an amateur mistake you've made to "put all the eggs in one basket"...

[TheHoff]

That's an interesting thought TheHoff! But what if the card does fail, wouldn't you suffer a bigger loss, even if the chance was slimmer? What about looking at it from the clients perspective. How do you explain to the bride that the entire wedding day's photos are lost because the card was corrupted? She would think what an amateur mistake you've made to "put all the eggs in one basket"...

Dual card slots, FTW :)

Statistically speaking, without dual card slots ----- you are either going to be explaining more often why SOME shots are lost... rather than less often explaining why all shots were lost. And if you consider the number of cards some people use, like eight 8GB cards instead of one 64GB card, they are multiplying the risk of some loss eight-fold. Even more so if you consider the amount of loss that happens because of card swapping or physical damage due to handling. (It isn't much but it is some).

Following best practices, you would backup the card when you have a break -- and if you noticed it was corrupt at that time you would also have a better chance of re-shooting without consequence.

All things considered, I think you're better off thoroughly testing a few large cards and trusting those rather than spreading the risk around between many smaller ones.

Do you have your backup files on the largest hard drives you can find? Or many smaller hard drives because drives can fail? If you have many smaller backup drives, aren't you risking more loss because you have so much more risk of a failure?

[javanutsy]

^ It's a bit counter-intuitive, but you certainly make great points. Thanks for your explanations.