Problems with Lexar CF Card and 1D Mark II

Dear all
If you are shooting with Canon 1D Mark II or 20D you may want to know about this.

Recently I visited Alaska were I shot almost ten thousand photos in fourteen days. It was part pleasure and part business trip were I shot photos for a fishing gear company and used some days to hike around. With so many photos and long working hours by the end of the day I had not much energy energy left but go back to the hotel, download all the cards in my laptop and burn DVD for backup.
My very last day I was shooting a series of airplane and I checked some of the shots in my camera and everything was looking fine. We changed the location and I shooting a group of friends fly-fishing when I decide to show some of the airplane shots to a friend of mine and surprise, no airplane photos. Later that day, back to the hotel I checked my lap top and I realized that I was loosing photos as I was shooting. Some cards I had lost 3 to 10 photos to extreme of 60 photos lost from one series...

The software to recover files won't work since the new shots are fired on top the old ones. They are gone forever. Back home with part of my work lost I contacted Lexar and a poor customer service advised me to check the four digits in my cards and bingo. All Lexar 80X 2GB and 1GB professional series that I have are bad. After a long conversation they finally decided to take my card back to be checked. They give you a case number (RMA#) to check but I'm still waiting to hear back from them. One thing for sure, there is nothing that they are going to do to cover the cost of my lost work.

If you are shooting with 1D Mark II or 20D and Lexar 80X Professional series CF cards with the following last four digits A4B6 or 9171 I recommend you to contact Lexar.

I would expect a better customer service from Lexar letting us know about this bad cards or just do a recall. Instead I had to go to Alaska loose a bunch of work to know that there is problem with my cards.
Now they can tell me that the issue is with my Mark II or my 20D but I never heard any problem with SanDisk cards and Canon cameras before.

I'm sure I am not going to buy Lexar cards anymore...

There has been a product recall on the Lexar Pro 80X cards for a few months now http://www.dpreview.co​m …5061001lexar_80​xcards.asp
I sent my cards back to them and had them replaced in about 1 week, sorry to hear of your miss fortune though, I know from experience how bad it can be when you loose images, I had a Microdrive fail on me while doing a paid job .

Andy

Hi Andy,

I usually don't surf dpreview.com site other than search for information about new cameras or lesn that I like to buy... I think I should look this site a little closer. However, I do not think that warning was a direct action from Lexar but from dpreview.com. The worst is that review is out since early June/05 (?) and I bought few Lexar cards before my trip to Alaska last August. I went back to the store were I bought the cards and everery one was surprised to know about the problem and they did not know anything about it......

I think Lexar should let the sales people know first. I still think Lexar made a huge mistake trying to "close their eyes" for this problem and hope for the best. They are not going to have any more business from me. I just order four 2GB SandDisk Extreme from B&H.

I have a feeling the guys at the camera store knew full well about the recall - This was a major issue that received discussion in lots of forums. Maybe they didnt know the cards they had in stock were "bad" - or maybe they wanted to offload some inventory. Lexar and Canon both were very slow to acknowledge the issue, but Lexar did a fairly good job of quick turn arounds for affected cards.

Did you actually tell them what camera you were using when you bought the cards? If you did, I wouldnt buy anything else from that store again - they are either incompetent or unethical or both. This recall was WIDELY discussed...

Sorry to hear about your lost images though - I know how painful that can be.

....I reaaally don't wanna ever have to sort through 10,000 pictures. sheesh. what a nightmare.

I have a feeling the guys at the camera store knew full well about the recall - This was a major issue that received discussion in lots of forums. Maybe they didnt know the cards they had in stock were "bad" - or maybe they wanted to offload some inventory. Lexar and Canon both were very slow to acknowledge the issue, but Lexar did a fairly good job of quick turn arounds for affected cards.

Did you actually tell them what camera you were using when you bought the cards? If you did, I wouldnt buy anything else from that store again - they are either incompetent or unethical or both. This recall was WIDELY discussed...

Sorry to hear about your lost images though - I know how painful that can be.

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Thanks for your comments. Yes, the sales team knew that I have a 1D Mark II. Actually I bought my card at Canon pro dealer here in South Florida... and the manager of the store is a good friend of mine...... Well, I'm not going to cry for the loss anymore or try to find who did or didn't do the job. I order new cards, new brand, things should work without more problems. Thanks again and best regards.

....I reaaally don't wanna ever have to sort through 10,000 pictures. sheesh. what a nightmare.

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Actually it is not that bad. The only down side is convert RAW files to TIFF or JPEG but again not a big deal. I "developed" most of my "keepers" in one weekend.

With the Sandisk cards, make sure you use the latest firmware (1.2.3), otherwise it's possible to lose images as well... DpReview will tell you all about it

Thanks Rene, I'm running firmware1.2.3.