A small 32MB Compact Flash card saved me!

A few days ago I was out shooting when my camera suddenly started to behave strangely. After messing with it for a while I finally realised it was the compact flash card that was the problem. For some reason that I still haven't figured out, the camera refused to read or write to the card. After the initial panic caused by the possible loss of the photographs already in there (it's a 4GB card), I got pretty annoyed since I had a great photo opportunity in front of me. All I needed was a couple of shots.

I went through my camera bag searching for another card not expecting to find any. I had left them all at my desk that day because I was downloading another shoot.

Luckily, I found the above card in one of the long forgotten pockets. It's a very old 32 megabyte card that came with an old Canon point & shoot I had (I think it was a G5). For whatever reason I decided to put it in my bag, and I'm happy I did. I chucked it into the camera (a Nikon D70s), formatted it, and took 3 photographs. That little card saved the day.

When I got home I put both cards into the card reader and Aperture was able to read them fine and pull all photographs, so nothing was lost. Not sure what happened to the 4GB card, but after formatting in camera it seems to be working fine.

Lesson learned. Always keep additional cards around. No matter how old or mall they may be. They take little space and could save the day.

By the way, I shot the above photo with my iPhone while holding a bunch of gear in one hand and the iPhone in the other one, so it's a bit blurry. But I just wanted to get a quick shot if it to remember the day. It was processed with the Holga setting in CameraBag for those interested.

Comments

[Nikon D70]

It maximizes white balance, color, saturation, sharpening, and contrast automatically according to the scene. If you are really looking for a perfect camera, try Nikon D70 one. It is very useful for creative photography.