Photographer! Learn from this!

[pinkporridge]

I shot a wedding at the weekend, as I have been trained to do I use three CF cards and alternate them through out th normally atleast once at every stage of the day just incase a card corrupts. It very very rarely happens... But it did.
Fuck! Lucky I'm only 1/3 up shit creek but I am really hopin I can retrieve the images! It would make my life a shit load easier!
Please learn from this. Switch ur memory as often as possible if it is important. You will be grateful you did.

 

[Francis]

I represent a name brand CF maker amongst the companies we deal with. Of course CF Cards corrupt but by the sounds of it, what happened to your was the "Controller" on the CF Card died.. The cheaper and no name brands are the worse for this type of failure.

Canon's new 5D Mark III has a dual slot with CF ( Compact Flash ) card holder and a SD ( Secure Digital ) card holder as well that you can go between both during each photo shoot you take. The problem is CF is much faster than SD and much better reliability as well. So you put much more on the line in SD Cards than CF although in your case, you got a lemon of a card in CF..

 

[pinkporridge]

I used a sandisk extreme III. Never had issue with it before. Formatted it before the shoot. Worked fine when I viewed it back on cam and even after I switched the cards around. When I went to put them on the computer and and it said I had to format the card before I used it. Then it no longer worked in my camera. We ran recovery software and luckily managed to recover everything! Phew!

 

[Francis]

I used a sandisk extreme III. Never had issue with it before. Formatted it before the shoot. Worked fine when I viewed it back on cam and even after I switched the cards around. When I went to put them on the computer and and it said I had to format the card before I used it. Then it no longer worked in my camera. We ran recovery software and luckily managed to recover everything! Phew!

Wait... It said you HAD to reformat the card on the computer ?

As soon as you formatted the Card on the Computer you did yourself in, and the Flash Card did not fail you. More than likely what happened is the computer failed to recognize the Compact Flash Card when you inserted it in. Did you try putting it back into the Camera ? If so and you could see the pictures, the card had not failed and you should have retrieved the pictures from another computer that should have been able to read the card..

You should always format your CF Cards inside the Camera, not on the Computer. This guarantees it is formatted to the Camera Manufacturers specs and they usually work with most Computer OS systems.

 

[Francis]

If the CF Card is formatted and can still be used, something went wrong from the Computer side.. CF Card go bad all in one shot, not use sporadically in the reading aspect of the card. Hence you can have bad sectors on the card ( yes ) but reading the whole card is controlled by the "controller" that can only be good or bad and I have never heard of one being flaky..

I also use Sandisk Extreme III CF Cards but also have others that are industrial grade used in medical applications.

 

[pinkporridge]

I never at any point after shooting formatted the card. When I plugged it into the card readerthY is the message that came up I didn't format it. I waited till I got home, tried it in the camera again and came up the same message even though it had previously let me view the images. It was that card that failed. It didn't work in any computer or camera.

 

[Francis]

We ran recovery software and luckily managed to recover everything! Phew!

But you say you finally ran recovery right ?

So you did manage to get the picture ?

What recovery Software did you use ?

I never at any point after shooting formatted the card. When I plugged it into the card readerthY is the message that came up I didn't format it. I waited till I got home, tried it in the camera again and came up the same message even though it had previously let me view the images. It was that card that failed. It didn't work in any computer or camera.

Sorry the post sounded like you had formatted the CF Card. My mistake..

How long have you had the card ? Is it possible it has been used past it's life expectancy ?

Have you formatted the CF Card since and does it work ?

Have you updated any OS either firmware in your Camera or Computer since you Formatted the card ?

Is it possible you had not used that card in a while ?

 

[pinkporridge]

Yea sorry it's because I'm typing on my phone. The card belonged to my work as I told the photographer I was going to order some more cards so I had spares. She told me to use two of theirs for now. It's entirely possible that it hadn't been used in a while and I think they we're both a couple of years old. I shall be purchasing new ones now though! As for the recovery software I'm not sure what one was used. I got my boyfriend to do it. We managed to get all of them back though which is better than expected.

 

[pinkporridge]

The card still hasn't been formatted. I'm just going to hand it back and let her decide why to do with it. I think she will probably get rid of it because she won't trust it.

 

[Francis]

Sandisk, used to have a recovery program for Compact Flash Cards to protect your pictures. They have since sold the tool off to a 3rd party company know as LC Tech ( link below ) that has recovery tools for Cameras and all types of devices. You can use it on any computer system and they advise you use the trial period to test out the Camera to see if it is compatible with the wipe feature as some professional cameras now to deep inside the CF ( Compact Flash ) and SD ( Secure Digital ) Cards to completely destroy any traces of photos on these cards for "Copy Right" reasons when you format from the Camera itself.

http://www.lc-tech.com/

Glad it turned out fine and that you got all your photo's back.

Cheers..

 

[pinkporridge]

Me too! It was a shit your pants moment. But in the end this was the exact reason that photographers should spread their shoot out over different cards. If one cocks up you havnt lost everything. It's a good life lesson I think. Even better now it has been resolved. I wanted to make this thread so that people think about it. It's easy to do the "it won't happen to me" thing. But it does happen and when it does, you know it will be on the most important shoot ever! That's soda law.