Camera question

[poison ivy]

Sorry this may be a little off topic, but it happened hiking, so hopefully it's ok.

While I was hiking this weekend, I dropped my digital camera (Olympus) on a couple of rocks. It bounced around a bit and hit the side of the camera where the memory card sits. It initially seemed okay. However, the next time I turned my camera on, it kept asking me to format the memory card. I didn't hoping that the pictures I had already taken would still be on it.

I got home and tried taking the pictures off the card with a portable hard drive but it said there was nothing on it.

I eventually gave up and reformatted the card and it is working perfectly fine as is the camera. I can't figure out why dropping the camera would result in all of the pictures getting erased.

Can anyone explain why this would happen? It's driving me crazy because it doesn't make sense to me!

- Ivy

 

[David Metsky]

It probably resulted in some stray info getting written to the card, which made it look like bad data that needed reformatting. Most likely the pictures were still on the card and could have been recovered with recovery software fairly easily. Was the camera on when you dropped it?

-dave-

 

[poison ivy]

Thanks Dave... that makes sense to me! I can't remember if I had already turned it on when I dropped it, but I used it right afterwards to take a picture. It seemed to work fine for that picture (or else I didn't notice otherwise.) It was the next time I turned it on that it started acting funny.

I guess I should have asked the question before reformatting the card! It kills me not to have pictures from the trip.

- Ivy

 

[Jay H]

If you didn't that you reformated and put it back in the camera and it worked, I was wondering if something on the camera got misaligned or broken. Having a spare to try out is always nice. I have my small 16MB CF card that my camera came with sitting around cause I use a 512MB card now.

Slight chance of dropping stuff that could mess up the media itself, but I would think that anything that hard would of broken the camera too. Standard alkaline batteries if dropped far enough can lose their charge.

Jay

 

[MichaelJ]

Odds are that the drop loosened the card. When trying to write the next picture, the loose card jiggled and the data was corrupted. After that, the camera could not recover.

Appropriate software on the computer could have helped, but with flashcards it's not always as easy as the old days with floppies.

I assume by now you've removed and fully reseated the card. Make sure it still goes in securely.

 

[poison ivy]

In fact, the door on the memory card slot opened when the camera fell... so that is probably exactly what happened. For kicks I tried using a recovery program, but it was too late. Ah well.

The camera is still working fine and the card seems to be working fine now too (didn't try transferring the pictures to my computer but it was taking them okay this morning.) I was kind of hoping the camera wouldn't work, so I could upgrade.

Thanks for explaining to me! It didn't make sense to me that dropping the camera would erase the card!

- Ivy

 

[arghman]

Don't blame the memory card; blame Microsoft.

The standard for memory cards seems to be to make them look like PC hard drives, so it's "easy" for the Windows OS to read data. (Admittedly, if you did it any other way there would be a whole bunch of crazy incompatible schemes.) The flash cards themselves (like hard drives) just store 0's and 1's, but there's information about which files are on the memory card, where they are located, etc. which, if corrupted, means that you lose access to the data, even if the data itself is intact.

You'd think they would have added some robustness to the scheme, so that at least the corruption would be confined to whatever file was being written to. Your hard drive sits in a nicely protected computer, but flash cards can be inserted/removed at random. I lost data once from a flash card from prematurely removing it from a cardreader; I thought I hadn't done anything, but Windows must have been scanning it or something.

As far as the ruggedness of flash cards themselves, I'm very impressed -- recently I left one in my pants pocket, and it went through the washer & dryer. My photos were fine. I have to write SanDisk and thank them.

 

[Tom Rankin]

In fact, the door on the memory card slot opened when the camera fell... so that is probably exactly what happened. For kicks I tried using a recovery program, but it was too late. Ah well.

The camera is still working fine and the card seems to be working fine now too (didn't try transferring the pictures to my computer but it was taking them okay this morning.) I was kind of hoping the camera wouldn't work, so I could upgrade.

Thanks for explaining to me! It didn't make sense to me that dropping the camera would erase the card!

- Ivy

FWIW, I dropped a memory card once, (not in the camera), and it was flakey from then on. Got it replaced.

 

[David Metsky]

Heck, I've seen cards run over by a car and work just fine. Unless you are using a microdrive, it's probably the least likely point of failure in a digital camera.

-dave-

 

[Tom Rankin]

Heck, I've seen cards run over by a car and work just fine. Unless you are using a microdrive, it's probably the least likely point of failure in a digital camera.

-dave-

I have a 1-Gig Microdrive but it is not the aforementioned memory card.

I've had to reformat it a couple of times, but so far, I haven't trashed it! They're not very fast compared to the newer cards, but they sure hold a lot of pictures!

Speaking of pics, I'll have to post some Alaska pics on the "Here's my best picture" thread soon!

 

[David Metsky]

1-gig CF cards (non-microdrive) are easily available now for anywhere from $70 to $100. They won't fail, they are faster, and use less power. Time for an upgrade?

-dave-

 

[ALGonquin Bob]

"lost" images

Ivy:
Those pictures may still be able to be saved. Even though you formatted the card, the images are still there until you take more pictures and write over the top of the "lost" photos. Rescue software can get back those images. My camera store offers that service, and I imagine that many decent camera shops can help recover those pics.

 

[Tom Rankin]

1-gig CF cards (non-microdrive) are easily available now for anywhere from $70 to $100. They won't fail, they are faster, and use less power. Time for an upgrade?

-dave-

Nah, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

[tonycc]

I've had to reformat it a couple of times, but so far, I haven't trashed it!

Reformatting your cards on a regular basis is a good idea anyways, it is kinda like rebooting your PC regularly. Funny thing is, it is much quicker for me to reformat than to delete a card full of images, so I reformat everytime I finish uploading my pictures.

Tony

 

[Grumpy]

Memory Card Durability . . .

I have to agree with Dave Metsky and tonycc about the memory cards and their durability. The daily newspaper photo department I shoot for uses SanDisk cards that are reformatted after each download into the computer system -- sometimes several times a day as assignments are completed.

The cards get rough treatment. They often are carried “loose” and uncased in a shirt, pants or jacket pocket or camera bag pocket, or purse. One card I use regularly has a very noticeable dent in its outer skin.

My experience with digital camera equipment since the paper converted to this kind of system 3-4 years ago is not entirely (or especially) satisfactory in many ways. But the experience also tells me that memory cards are not the weak cog in the machinery, by any means. My guess is that some cards in the department camera kits (128 MB cards) now have been used to capture 100,000 or more images, yet they still function reliably. We have had a very few cards that seemed to die of old age, but failures more commonly have resulted from cards getting wiped out (card would not record data and could not be formatted or reformatted) by camera malfunctions.

G.