What's happening to my photos?

Okay, I've downloaded LR2 and CS4 for trials. Currently I'm weeding through a whole bunch of photos taken on the last family trip and something funny is happening. As I sort through them in LR2 an odd phenomena is happening about every 50th picture or so. The picture will very briefly show as normal and then this happens,

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Thought I might add that photos were shot in Raw on a Canon 50D if that makes any difference.

Well! Something has clearly gone wrong!

First: If you haven't erased the card that the images were taken on yet, try downloading it again to a different folder, and see if the same images are corrupt,. (to rule out it happening during or after download)

If yes, (the images are corrupted on the card) then I'd get shooting with some different memory cards and try to see where the corruption occurs. Hopefully it's a bad card,. (as opposed to bad camera)

As CDS says, this is often a card malfunctioning, and if you try a different card hopefully it will go away.

You specified it was happening in LR -- did you try opening the CR@ files in CS4/Adobe Camera Raw? They both read the Raw file (in fact they use the same processing engine) so a problem that shows up in one will show up in the other.

Your seeing a "normal" picture pop up and then canging to the corrupt picture simply means that when you first load a picture in Lightroom (or any browser) you are seeing the small jpeg "preview" that you see when you look at a shot in the camera LCD, and then Lightroom quickly begins to render it into a fuller Raw-based preview.

It's possible for the Raw data to be corrupted when, say, writing onto a card, but have the jpeg preview intact, leading to this kind of misperception.

Lastly, if you really suspect the software is misbehaving, install the Canon software that came with the camera. It has a Raw processor/converter, DPP, which should verify whether the Raw file is corrupt or not.

Most likely is the card, second most likely is the card reader, third most likely the USB connection/drivers, fourth most likely the camera, least likely Lightroom, as far as I can tell from your symptoms.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #8371513
Well! Something has clearly gone wrong!

First: If you haven't erased the card that the images were taken on yet, try downloading it again to a different folder, and see if the same images are corrupt,. (to rule out it happening during or after download)

If yes, (the images are corrupted on the card) then I'd get shooting with some different memory cards and try to see where the corruption occurs. Hopefully it's a bad card,. (as opposed to bad camera)

Thanks! You got me thinking...I actually have that same picture file in two different other locations (laptop and external hard drive). All the photos on my new PC were added via the external hard drive. This drive crashed on me a few weeks ago and I had the actual drive put into a new case...thinking that all was okay, evidently not!

Long story short, the picture files on the laptop were okay. The files on my new PC contain a few corrupt files (I'll assume from the crash)...problem solved!

tonylong wrote in post #8371619
As CDS says, this is often a card malfunctioning, and if you try a different card hopefully it will go away.

You specified it was happening in LR -- did you try opening the CR@ files in CS4/Adobe Camera Raw? They both read the Raw file (in fact they use the same processing engine) so a problem that shows up in one will show up in the other.

Your seeing a "normal" picture pop up and then canging to the corrupt picture simply means that when you first load a picture in Lightroom (or any browser) you are seeing the small jpeg "preview" that you see when you look at a shot in the camera LCD, and then Lightroom quickly begins to render it into a fuller Raw-based preview.

It's possible for the Raw data to be corrupted when, say, writing onto a card, but have the jpeg preview intact, leading to this kind of misperception.

Lastly, if you really suspect the software is misbehaving, install the Canon software that came with the camera. It has a Raw processor/converter, DPP, which should verify whether the Raw file is corrupt or not.

Most likely is the card, second most likely is the card reader, third most likely the USB connection/drivers, fourth most likely the camera, least likely Lightroom, as far as I can tell from your symptoms.

Tony, thanks so much for the detailed explanation. You are right, it was a misconception on my end not knowing how LR loads picture files. Thanks for taking the time helping me to understand. Thankfully, it isn't an error with my CF cards, camera, etc. Just a problem with an external hard drive. I just hope that I don't have many other corrupt files that may not be on other drives.

Thanks again to both of you...problem officially solved!

That has happened to me as well.
It's another reason why a single back up can be a bad idea... as you may never know when you are over writing a "god" file with a corrupt one during your back up.

Glad you got it worked out!

glbtrekker wrote in post #8371786
Thanks! You got me thinking...I actually have that same picture file in two different other locations (laptop and external hard drive). All the photos on my new PC were added via the external hard drive. This drive crashed on me a few weeks ago and I had the actual drive put into a new case...thinking that all was okay, evidently not!

Long story short, the picture files on the laptop were okay. The files on my new PC contain a few corrupt files (I'll assume from the crash)...problem solved!

Heh! This reminds me of a thread from, I don't know, maybe 1-2 years ago. A guy was having terrible times with bad files and was trying everything on earth to solve the problems -- cards, readers, reinstalling software, etc, etc -- until one day, and this went on over some days, he piped up with exactly what you said, like, "oh, well, I recently had a hard drive with these pictures on it crash, maybe that's the problem!".

So, be thankful that you found the likely problem sooner rather than a long drawn-out later!

glbtrekker wrote in post #8371194

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO

Any ideas?

CRAP Lightroom killed your family!!!!


Seriously though the same thing happened to me... got rid of the drive and files...
problems solved

Yeah, I'm just glad I found the problem before looking at Cards, readers, etc. I was getting a little worried for a moment!

And no lightroom didn't kill my family , although they might kill me if I don't get off the computer!