Show Us Your Cards . . .

mxwphoto wrote in post #2439112
How reliable are your cards? I've used a dozen cards over the past 3 years and none have ever gone bad to this day (except one doa).

I have one Lexar card in particular that had a weird problem for about two days. About one out of every four or five shots was corrupted. I could see the thumbnail on the chimp screen, but there was no image I could view with Photoshop. They were black. Luckily none of the corrupted ones were all that important and the problem vanished on its own.

coreypolis wrote in post #2439123
cards are more likely to go bad faster via inserting them and removing them then to go bad in action.

FWIW - I am extremely careful about never inserting or removing the card while the camera is turned on. The 30D also says to never open the CF card slot "door" while the camera is turned on. I would like to know why that is.???

Jeff Solenberg wrote in post #2439138
FWIW - I am extremely careful about never inserting or removing the card while the camera is turned on. The 30D also says to never open the CF card slot "door" while the camera is turned on. I would like to know why that is.???

Just a guess, but maybe cuz there's electricity still running through the card while the camera's on and unplugging it from the pins can damage it.

mxwphoto wrote in post #2439203
Just a guess, but maybe cuz there's electricity still running through the card while the camera's on and unplugging it from the pins can damage it.

I think you mis-read it. I'm talking about the door, not popping the CF card out. I know that would be bad. In fairness, I slightly mis-quoted the manual. Here's what it says:
"While the access lamp is lit or blinking, Do not do any of the following. Doing so may damage the image data, CF card, or camera.
Shaking or banging the camera around
Open the CF card slot cover
Removing the battery"

The 30D is the only camera I've ever seen with the "slot cover" warning.

Here are my few, old and new. The one card won't hold a single RAW image from my 1D2N.

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I dunno about that then, but if you do ever get curious and try it out, let us know what happens.

mxwphoto wrote in post #2439318
I dunno about that then, but if you do ever get curious and try it out, let us know what happens.

Thanks. I'll get right on it.

Jeff Solenberg wrote in post #2439138
FWIW - I am extremely careful about never inserting or removing the card while the camera is turned on. The 30D also says to never open the CF card slot "door" while the camera is turned on. I would like to know why that is.???

Well, opening the door turns the camera off. If you open the door while the disk activity light's on you may lose data or corrupt the card. If you turn the camera off first, it'll finish the write before shutting off.

For the record, over probably tens of thousands of PCMCIA card and CF card insertions and deletions I've never had one fail that I could attribute to that. I've had one Kingston die due to stress of write speed in the camera, as best I can tell (it works fine in my PDA under much less stress) and one SanDisk Ultra II (replaced under waranty) that had a bad spot but those seem to have been "new electronics burn-in" type failures.

sorry for the lack of focus, this is my secondary camera (point and shoot) not my rebel....another 1 gig card in the camera

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Jon wrote in post #2440914
Well, opening the door turns the camera off. If you open the door while the disk activity light's on you may lose data or corrupt the card. If you turn the camera off first, it'll finish the write before shutting off...

Thanks! I didn't know opening the door turns off the camera. Is this just the 30D? I'm sure this wasn't the case with the DRebel.

It's true on all canon digital cameras

Savagebasher wrote in post #2441795
It's true on all canon digital cameras

It's a good thing I didn't have the chance to place a wager on this. I would have bet serious money that this wasn't true on the Digital Rebel I used to own.

Even my A620 P&S does it.

here's a little bit of mine...

TMR Design wrote in post #2441893
Even my A620 P&S does it.

I should have done my homework before showing my ignorance . I called my son who owns my Rebel now and asked him to test this. Sure enough, you guys are all right and I was... let's say... less than right . And I was so sure!