An old photo that shows up on a reformatted card

[glacierparkmagazine]

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Maybe this has been touched on before... My M262 will show an "old" photo, one that's been taken previously, even after I format the card. No big deal, but wondering if this happens to anyone else...

[pico]

Do you see the picture on the card while it is in the camera, or after the card is in the computer's reader?

 

I ask in order to find if there might be a bug in your computer software is causing previously moved images from earlier to show up; they might only appear to be on the card. It's happened.

Edited June 25, 2018 by pico

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[adan]

Just so we know, regular fast-formatting simply deletes a single file. More or less a "table of contents" listing all the image files/folders on the card and where they are physically in the memory addresses. And builds a new table of contents, which shows all the addresses as available for writing new pictures, but does not actually erase the 1s and 0s of the previous pictures.

 

That is why "recovery" software can work - it bypasses the "table of contents" and simply searches the entire card for signs of picture data (metadata, file names ending in .NEF, .jpg, .dng, etc.) - since the pictures themselves are still there, unless/until overwritten by new pictures.

 

That's a simplification, but basically, pictures still exist on the card until overwritten by new pictures, or by a "secure format operation" that writes 0s into every single memory address (16 billion of them in a 16Gig card - takes a while), thus really erasing the existing picture data.

 

However, that doesn't explain why your 262 found an old picture - maybe the formatting "burped" and failed to completely delete the table of contents, leaving that one picture as "visible" to the camera. What goes on in an SD card (silicon memory) is quantum physics, to some degree - maybe you found "Schrödinger's Cat."

Edited June 25, 2018 by adan

[new2leica]

Does the camera have any built-in buffer memory, allowing a few pictures to be stored if no SD card is present?

[mikeamosau]

Is it a good photo?

[pico]

Does the camera have any built-in buffer memory, allowing a few pictures to be stored if no SD card is present?

 

There is buffer memory, and at one time (2011 I think) the M9 allowed as many as seven exposures written to the buffer with no card, but they would be written if a card were inserted right away, but it appears that firmware updates have fixed that.

[jaapv]

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Does the camera have any built-in buffer memory, allowing a few pictures to be stored if no SD card is present?

No The buffer is for writing images only. As Pico says, there used to be, but was flushed after switching off the camera.

[UliWer]

Is it a good photo?

 

Obviously a keeper.

[tritentrue]

This happens once in a while after I import photos from an M240 into Lightroom.  I sometimes get a few thumbnails of older files.  A couple of seconds after I click to enlarge one of the files, it displays the correct (current) file.  I've wondered whether it's a card glitch or a Lightroom glitch, but never got bothered enough to investigate.

[Exodies]

What you describe is a bug in the camera’s unique id for the file. LR thinks it has this image cached and displays the old one until the DNG needs to be redisplayed. I believe it is provoked by using an sd card in more than one camera but others on the forum think I’m full of shit.

[jaapv]

It is a known Lightroom bug

[sml_photo]

I've had the problem intermittently.  I did notice that it's only happened with my newer 32GB card (as opposed to 64GB).  But, I called Adobe and they think it is a LR issue that can be corrected by manually removing the LR preference.  He did it remotely on my desktop, but provided me with the link to do on my laptop (see below).  As it so happens, we were away this weekend and the issue occurred on my laptop before I had a chance to "fix" it.  Darn.  Should've done it before the trip.

I'm then going to go back to my 64 GB card if it still occurs and see what happens.

(Is there a more complete way to format a card besides using the format option in the camera menu?)

Check out this Adobe link for deleting the LR preference:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

[glacierparkmagazine]

It happens in Photoshop CC as well. That's what I'm using... Problem solved, if there ever was one... I'm not a fan of Lightroom.