Shooting till the CF card is full?

Just wondered how many of you shoot till the "CF Card Full" flashes on the display?

I went to a seminar last night and the speaker, seth resnick said something I found interesting. The display shows the number of shots left. Of course this is just an estimation, since file sizes vary depending on shooting conditions. He said that he has seen lost data and also failed memory cards due to shooting to "fill" the card.

I had always filled the card and never had any problems, but I will think differently about it now. Has anyone ever had any cards fail?

I have shot till the card is full and have not encountered any problems either.
What I try and do is to change my card when I have a pause in what I am shooting even if the card is not full. That way I always have enough memory to get any shots I need and I don't have to scramble if something good comes along.

Wayne

no problems, i dont see why filling up the card would cause it to fail

I would say the only probably with shooting until the card is full would be that you perhaps could miss an opportunity when the card fills up and you are rushing to switch it out.

Or loosing the last image when the card fills and you cut the power to switch out the card before all the data has had a chance to write to the card.

Ever since missing a shot at Yellowstone's Old Faithful erupting and having a rainbow as well I have changed my cards well before they are full.

I tend to change the card before it fills up only because I don't want the chance of missing a shot. That said many times I have been shooting and it's filled up before I noticed and never a problem with the cards

If you need the shot THAT MUCH, get a camera with 2 cards in it.

I swap cards randomly during a wedding day, that way if I lose a card or something goes wrong I don't lose all the images from the day. I also shoot with two cameras so it's less of an issue. I'd always stop just before the card filled up, you never know what you want to take a long series of photos without time to swap cards.

zach wrote:
Just wondered how many of you shoot till the "CF Card Full" flashes on the display?

I went to a seminar last night and the speaker, seth resnick said something I found interesting. The display shows the number of shots left. Of course this is just an estimation, since file sizes vary depending on shooting conditions. He said that he has seen lost data and also failed memory cards due to shooting to "fill" the card.

I had always filled the card and never had any problems, but I will think differently about it now. Has anyone ever had any cards fail?

Nope. Sometimes I'll switch if there are only a few left and I'm in the middle of the action in a softball game, but usually I don't even notice til I shoot and get the CF Full message. I've never lost any data because of it.

KAC

It shouldn't, the software is designed to handle it. The guy is just being superstitious.

KAC

No problem here. I shoot til the cards are full in my 3 camera's and have no problems. Good luck.

I always leave a couple of shots unused...While shooting a family wedding (not as pro) I didn't notice that I was nearly on empty and took 2 or 3 shots in rapid succession ...I lost all of the rapid fire shots and 2 or 3 of the last ones on the card... and now that card will not allow me to take the last few pictures on it...I have formated the card a number of times but it still won't assess the last few segments (however that works!) and I'm always hesitant to install that card...I use it only as last resort backup......