Digital Camera Losing Photos - is it my mac or my camera? Help!

2575 Views 15 Replies 6 Participants Last post by Jason H, Aug 1, 2007

Jason H

Discussion Starter · Jul 31, 2007

Hi Folks, Here is my situation.

I've got an old sony dsc-p52 digital camera and an iBook g4 (see sig)

I took a few (about 50) pictures yesterday, and about 10 today, and a video. All of these were stored on a sandisk 1gig memory stick.

When i removed the card to put it into my card reader to download the photos and there were no photos to be had! What the hell?

This has happened about 4 times to me. All 4 times shareware photo recovery software has found the missing photos but I have not been able to download them since i cant afford the expensive software. Personally I'm not sure if this is a problem with my camera being ancient, or my computer being ancient, or both.

Anyone have any similar problems?

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

krs

· #2 · Jul 31, 2007

Have you tried using your Powermac G4 instead?

Or also via the USB cable to load from the camera directly not via the card reader?

I assume you can see the pictures when you play them back in your camera.

rgray

· #3 · Jul 31, 2007

Jason H said:
............ I'm not sure if this is a problem with my camera being ancient, or my computer being ancient, or both.............

Is the memory card also "ancient"? That is the first place I'd look - if it is original to the camera, I'd be trying a fresh stick.
Can you confirm that the card reader itself is good? A lot of card readers are really crappy cheap-ass construction....
Like krs commented - does cable connection work?

Jason H

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jul 31, 2007

rgray said:
Is the memory card also "ancient"? That is the first place I'd look - if it is original to the camera, I'd be trying a fresh stick.

Can you confirm that the card reader itself is good? A lot of card readers are really crappy cheap-ass construction....

Like krs commented - does cable connection work?

The card is a brand new, Well, its a year old this month. I don think they had 1 gig cards back when this camera was new, and if they did they probably cost way more than the camera itself.

The card reader detects the entire card fine, it just shows it as empty. If i put the card back in the camera it shows it as empty aswell.

9/10 times everything will work fine. I dont think I could cause this probelm to happen again. It only happens when I have important photos on my camera. I've run many many many test batches with stupid shots from around my apartment. If i go out with some friends though its guaranteed to happen

I'm going to blame the fact that the camera had low batteries and shut off mid shot, right before i went to download the pics. I think that is a good reason, I'm not sure if its true or not. But thats what I will tell myself. :lmao:

rgray

· #5 · Jul 31, 2007

Jason H said:
I'm going to blame the fact that the camera had low batteries and shut off mid shot, right before i went to download the pics. I think that is a good reason, I'm not sure if its true or not. But thats what I will tell myself. :lmao:

That could do it. Is that what happened on each failure? You could have given this (highly relevant) info in your first post!

krs

· #6 · Jul 31, 2007

rgray said:
That could do it. Is that what happened on each failure? You could have given this (highly relevant) info in your first post!

Why could that do it?

In that situation you would only loose the last picture, the rest should still be stored on the memory stick.

Since the camera can't read the memory stick either, I would suspect that the memory stick is flaky. Highly unlikely that there is an issue with the Mac.

rgray

· #7 · Jul 31, 2007

krs said:
Why could that do it?

In that situation you would only loose the last picture, the rest should still be stored on the memory stick.

Since the camera can't read the memory stick either, I would suspect that the memory stick is flaky. Highly unlikely that there is an issue with the Mac.

Sorry, tho't you were referring to the camera's battery.... my bad. However, it may be that running out of power during an offload has similar effect to not properly ejecting media before removing it - we all know the OS message about possible damage (even tho' it mostly doesn't happen)....

krs

· #8 · Jul 31, 2007

Reading through this thread again, everything points to a problem with the memory stick itself.
The fact that the recovery software can find the pictures but the camera or mac can't would suggest some corruption in the directory.
I have no clue how a memory stick works, but I assume it's basically just an EEPROM with a directory structure - nothing fancy.

I would also suggest to do an extensive search on ehMac. I recall someone else having problems reading these memory card and there was some piece of software that would recover the pictures at no or very little cost.

rgray

· #9 · Jul 31, 2007

Perhaps you should try reformatting the memory stick - do it in the camera. You may have already tried this. If not and since you intuit a directory issue it would be worth a try.

eggman

· #10 · Jul 31, 2007

I would suggest that what is likely happening is that when the camera dies in mid shot/save the FAT (or equivilent file allocation table on the card - I'm not sure of the terminology here) is corrupted. This is the "map" that tells the camera or the computer where each file is in that memory (or disk).
This explains why things which use that "map" can no longer find the pictures (the camera, the computer) but things which purposefully ignore that "map" and look at the raw data of the card (the expensive shareware) can see the pictures.
Don't forget that there is a bit of extra digital housekeeping when a memory stick or card gets a picture written to it - there's the picture file, and then there's the data of how to get to the picture file in the filesystem for that card.
There might be some other less expensive file recovery utility that would work - but it may have to deal with whatever kind of specialized file system is put on a particular kind of memory card.

Good luck!

krs

· #11 · Jul 31, 2007

How about this free software.
A couple of minutes with google would have brought it up:
PhotoRec - CGSecurity

guye

· #12 · Jul 31, 2007

I have heard of memory card deteriorating and "losing" memory over time I would try to insert any other card and shoot a couple of picts and then try to download to your mac if it works then you know your old card is dead.

Guy

eMacMan

· #13 · Aug 1, 2007

I will go along with reformatting the memory stick using the camera. I do this once I have have down loaded and backed up a batch of photos, usually at the end of the month. Just a little extra insurance.

Also some cameras are touchy about weak batteries, while others will go several days with no issue after the low battery warning starts to flash.

Jason H

Discussion Starter · #14 · Aug 1, 2007

krs said:
How about this free software.
A couple of minutes with google would have brought it up:
PhotoRec - CGSecurity

I've spent about 4 hours (seriously) looking for software like this. Normally I'm really good with finding things. How did you find this?

krs

· #15 · Aug 1, 2007

Jason H said:
I've spent about 4 hours (seriously) looking for software like this. Normally I'm really good with finding things. How did you find this?

I used a Mac.

Doesn't that explain it?

It was actually on the very first page google brought up - I guess it depends what you put in the search field (I don't remember).
Hope the software works for you, I have never tried it.

Jason H

Discussion Starter · #16 · Aug 1, 2007

krs said:
I used a Mac.
Doesn't that explain it?

It was actually on the very first page google brought up - I guess it depends what you put in the search field (I don't remember).
Hope the software works for you, I have never tried it.

The software works. I tried every combination of photo recovery free any about every synonym for those words i could find.

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