missing images

[mustafasoleiman]

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Information on the problem at this point seems not to have been yet nailed down to something consistent. Or perhaps there's more than one cause... one thing supporting that latter view is that member "mustafasoleiman" has seen multiple sequential files go missing on a nearly full card, whereas in my case it was several randomly placed files not in sequence.

 

It seems most mysterious to have actually seen files in Play review that turned up missing later. That would point to a problem on the card, whether the fault of the camera or the card. The files were initially recorded but later removed/damaged somehow.

 

In my case I had supposed that turning the camera's main switch to off while the file was still being written (red light blinking) had interrupted the process and made the file unreadable. I didn't *always* do that; just sometimes. I never saw the image before turning off the camera. (And didn't expect to, with instant review turned off).

 

Maybe there's no connection, and I have not run tests, but I'm not so hasty to turn off the camera any more... and I have not had any more missing files either.

 

just to clarify that the card was not full... maybe 20 images, of which the last five disappeared without a trace but for the gap in the numerical sequence.

i have 2.04, never happened before and, fingers crossed, since.

 

lastly as i already said, i previewed and reviewed some of them at time of shoot.

[Englander]

In my case, I lost a block of sequential files all taken within several hours in a really remote part of Romania. The equivalent of about 4 rolls of film. The images are probably lost and likely not recoverable. The "worst" part in the short run is having a lot of missing images; but the worst part in the long run is that checking the LCD to see if the images are on the card is apparently NOT a way to assure that you will have those files later nor that you will be able to transfer the files from the card!

 

Download frequently and consistently. Use cards with fewer GBs. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that these cards are a safe place to store images. According the the repair facility where I sent my card, these CF/SDHC failures are increasingly frequent and they are waiting with bated breath for SSD to become wide spread because then the failures will be so common that people will realize that solid-state does not mean there are no moving parts---there are millions of fragile gates opening and closing for every image you make. If they can revive the images, it will cost me between 300 and 500 USD. An expensive lesson so take heed. (Yes, the images are worth that much and the cost to me of NOT having them is even greater.)

 

From time to time in the past, I would lose a roll of film from poor take-up, x-ray, moisture even when double bagged, whatever, but I knew it wasn't the camera itself. I can only hope that is the case with M8. If these babies intermittently lose images, well....

 

Hoping that all these failures are so random that none of us ever see them again,

 

Joe

[Dougg]

lastly as i already said, i previewed and reviewed some of them at time of shoot.

Yes, this last seems so very odd, indicating the files were written and readable shortly after you shot them, but subsequently something happened to delete/damage them. May it never happen again...

[Dougg]

In my case, I lost a block of sequential files all taken within several hours in a really remote part of Romania. The equivalent of about 4 rolls of film.....

 

Hoping that all these failures are so random that none of us ever see them again, Joe

Amen, Joe... And that's a mind-boggling amount of missing files! I only lost a few random files here and there, annoying enough but not disastrous as yours. I use only 2Gb cards, but the loss of even a sizable fraction of the ~185 files would have me in a tantrum!

 

I hope the cause(s) may be determined so we can be assured of no additional losses.

[AndrejK]

I had this happen a lot. I started to use my M8 last September with only one Lexar Professional 4Gb SDHC card and had lost quite a few images initially. I suspected the problem was, that I used to switch the camera off too early after the shot, while the red light was still flashing, so I stopped to switch it off. But still sometimes the image just appeared after the shot as a preview, but never got to the card.

Then I bought a Sandisk 2Gb extreme III SD card and the loss had never happened with that card. I started to use the SDHC card as a backup only, to use when my other card is full, but lost more pictures the first time I used it again... Now I only use 2 Sandisk 2Gb cards and would not risk another SDHC card before I know it is safe to use.

 

Andrej

[Dougg]

Andrej, interesting connection to a possibly "bad" data card. Of course it's only in recent firmware versions that SDHC has been supported. I have not yet tried one.

 

I do recall having had a bad SD card earlier on that I finally discarded. It's possible that all my missing files were with that card. It was smaller than 2Gb, not a SanDisk, maybe a Lexar that my wife had used in her Nikon p&s.

 

In February 2008, the one time that I documented some missing files, I was also operating with a low battery. And finally some DNG files recorded only a magenta stripe along the top (jpegs were ok). After I turned off the camera and let the battery rest a while, it was able to record a few more good DNG/JPG pairs before giving up for the day.

[AndrejK]

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I had this happen a lot. I started to use my M8 last September with only one Lexar Professional 4Gb SDHC card and had lost quite a few images initially. I suspected the problem was, that I used to switch the camera off too early after the shot, while the red light was still flashing, so I stopped to switch it off. But still sometimes the image just appeared after the shot as a preview, but never got to the card.

Then I bought a Sandisk 2Gb extreme III SD card and the loss had never happened with that card. I started to use the SDHC card as a backup only, to use when my other card is full, but lost more pictures the first time I used it again... Now I only use 2 Sandisk 2Gb cards and would not risk another SDHC card before I know it is safe to use.

 

Andrej

 

...Looks like it was too early to think, that the problem was only with the Lexar card.

Yesterday I have lost about 5 successive images using the Sandisk (card almost empty, battery full). This time the last image written to the card was corrupt (the file was on the card, but it was not readable when I downloaded it later). I was shooting in a sequence and I could see all the images reviewed shortly on the display. But then I hit preview button and only the "corrupt" image was shown and the red light blinked several minutes until the camera froze finally. I then had to restart it by taking the battery out. Those images taken after the last "corrupt" one were not written to the card.

I think the problem could by connected with the one corrupt file, that prevented the camera to write any more files from buffer to the card.

(I shoot RAW+JPG and the corrupted one was only the RAW file, the JPG is fine.)

 

Andrej

[brianv]

I had this happen once with a 2GByte PNY card that I used fresh out of the box. I formatted it using the Camera, and it was fine after that.

[danyves]

I had this happen a lot. I started to use my M8 last September with only one Lexar Professional 4Gb SDHC card and had lost quite a few images initially. I suspected the problem was, that I used to switch the camera off too early after the shot, while the red light was still flashing, so I stopped to switch it off. But still sometimes the image just appeared after the shot as a preview, but never got to the card.

Then I bought a Sandisk 2Gb extreme III SD card and the loss had never happened with that card. I started to use the SDHC card as a backup only, to use when my other card is full, but lost more pictures the first time I used it again... Now I only use 2 Sandisk 2Gb cards and would not risk another SDHC card before I know it is safe to use.

 

Andrej

 

 

Same experience, same Lexar Professional 4Gb SDHC, I now use either Sandisk 2GB SD or Lexar Professional 133 2GB SD.

 

Had to Rescue 32 photos.

 

No more SDHC with 2.004

[ho_co]

Different but possibly related: I've repeatedly had bouts of the camera skipping file numbers. Has happened with numerous brands and sizes of SD and SDHC cards, and under various firmware versions. Happened as well both before and after the T2 replacement.

 

In many if not all cases, even though the camera skipped one or more file numbers, it showed an increase of one in the Unique Image ID field from one recorded image to the next.