Weshoot.com

The Official We Shoot Blog

  • Home
  • About
  • To Comment

Posts Tagged ‘drive’

We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 1/21/2020

Tuesday, January 21st, 2020

Click on image to enlarge.  Click again to enlarge to full size. 

Click on back button to return to post.

Click the “Home” tab above to see earlier posts.

Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

 

Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

Macro image of the connector for a solid-state hard-drive. Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot. The original high-resolution image is available from us on Alamy, ID # 2AH4P7T.   Check out our Alamy portfolio at https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/652516.html .

Tags: close up, connecting, connector, contact, contacts, copper, drive, electronic, electronics, hard drive, harddrive, macro, solid, ssd, state
Posted in Information, Lighting, Marketing, Photographs, Images | Comments Off on We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 1/21/2020

We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 2/4/2019

Monday, February 4th, 2019

Click on image to enlarge.  Click again to enlarge to full size. 

Click on back button to return to post.

Click the “Home” tab above to see earlier posts.

Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

 

Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

E-SATA two-port expansion card for hooking up to two external e-SATA hard drives to a computer. Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot.  This image is available from us on Alamy, ID# is R9W6B6.  See our stock portfolio on Alamy at https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/652516.html

Tags: board, card, circuit, computer, controller, drive, drives, e-SATA, eSATA, expand, expanding, expansion, hard, install, installation, PCI, peripheral, red
Posted in Information, Lighting, Marketing, Photographs, Images | Comments Off on We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 2/4/2019

We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 11/1/2016

Tuesday, November 1st, 2016

Click on image to enlarge.  Click again to enlarge to full size. 

Click on back button to return to post.

Click the “Home” tab above to see earlier posts.

Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

 

Seattle Industrial Photography

Adjustable Speed Magnetic Drive. Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot.

Tags: adjustable, black and white, commercial, drive, fabricating, glow, gold, industrial, industry, magnetic, manufacture, manufacturing, Marketing, product, tint, tinted
Posted in Information, Marketing, Photographs, Images | Comments Off on We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 11/1/2016

The Memory Card Reader From Hell!

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

Professional photographers and amateurs alike have many things in common in this digital age:  our cameras put the images we take on digital media, such as Compact Flash cards, SD cards, or similar devices.  Some of the different methods for extracting the information from these cards are to run a cable (usually USB) to the camera from the computer and we instruct the computer to copy, transfer, or import the images to the computer’s hard drive(s), or we take the digital media card out of the camera and place it in a reader that serves the same function.  Some of us have built-in slots in our desktop computers that will accommodate various kinds of cards.  My last two computers have had the slots built in.

I’m a professional photographer and videographer.  For many shoots, I go on location and have several Compact Flash cards that fit in my still cameras, and the images I shoot are stored on the CF cards awaiting transfer to my computer’s multiple hard drives.  Since I usually can’t reshoot the images, and there is much more security in the redundancy of having the files on different drives, I store my images on several external drives simultaneously.  Hard drives do fail.  There is no excuse for losing a client’s images.

The critical point, however, is that much can happen to the information on the cards during the transfer process.  Pulling a card out of a camera that is turned on can corrupt the card, as can pulling a card out of a reader during a copy phase.  So, I breathe easier once the images have been copied or imported to my first hard drive without a hitch.  Until I have the images on more than one hard drive, however, I keep the images on the card, as well, for backup in case something bad happens.

I recently got a wakeup call, and it was just by chance.  I had been using the CF card slot in my PC to copy files from the card to the computer.  I didn’t have a job for a little while and I had left the images from the last shoot on the card in the camera after first copying them to several drives on my computer.  I put the card back in my camera after copying it.  I usually copy to my main drive first, add keywords, my copyright, etc. to the meta data, and then copy all that to a couple more external drives for security.

About a week after I had copied the images on the card I had put back into the camera, I went to reset the camera’s settings for the most likely settings for my next shoot.  It showed I still had images on the card, so I hit the view button to see which images were on the card before deleting them, AND, HORRORS,  THEY LOOKED BADLY PIXELATED!  I looked at several of the images in the camera and most had this problem.  I hit the magnify button, and they looked sharp again, but when going back to the “fit on screen” image they again looked pixelated.  All I had done was to copy them to the hard drive on my computer.  The images that had been copied to the hard drive were in no way affected, but the card seemed to be corrupted.  That never happened before.

Luckily, I had already uploaded the finished job to the client the day before, so I knew that the images in the computer were not corrupted.

As a pro, I can’t leave anything to chance, so I had to find out whether the card was bad, the camera had a problem, or what had screwed up the images while the card was in the computer.

My first test was to shoot test images to see what was happening.  Once shot, I looked at each at the back of the camera.  They looked normal.  I turned off the camera, popped the card, and put it in the built-in PC reader.  I copied the files to a folder on my desktop, and made sure it was finished copying.  I removed the card from the PC.  I made a second folder on my desktop.  I then used Photoshop to view the images in the first folder on my desktop.  They looked OK.  I put the card back in the camera and turned the viewer on, and they were corrupted!  I took the card out of the camera again, and put it back in the PC and copied the same files to the second folder on my desktop.  I clicked on the first image in Photoshop and a dialog box popped up saying that Photoshop could not read the image format.  The card was corrupted.  Period.

I had an old external USB 2.0 card reader I used to use before having built-in slots, so I dusted it off and plugged it into an open USB slot on my computer.  I put the card in the camera again and formatted the card.  Again I took some test images.  I took the card out of the camera and put it in the external reader.  It took longer than the built-in reader, but there weren’t that many images.  They copied perfectly.  I took the card from the reader and put it back in the camera.  I turned on the viewer, and the pictures looked normal, not corrupted.  I shut off the camera and again removed the card.  I again copied the files to another folder on my desktop – they could be opened in Photoshop and looked normal.

I determined that the built-in reader in the PC was corrupting the images while copying.  I don’t know why: was it software, or hardware?  I determined that the best way around the problem was to not use the built-in slots again on this computer, but to bypass them.  I had lost faith in them.  However, the USB 2.0 external reader is incredibly slow.  I also use my readers for HD video on SDHC cards, and it takes forever to import video files.  So, I decided to buy a new USB 3.0 external reader.  I found one on B&H’s website for $14.95 (with no shipping) at http://bhpho.to/SVr845 .  I ordered it and tried it out with all my different media from different cameras.  It seems to work well, and it is blazing fast compared with USB 2.0.

The moral of the story is:  Don’t be complacent about your digital photography equipment.  Don’t assume all is well without checking it out occasionally.  I could have gotten a bad surprise if I hadn’t looked at my camera, and taken action.  Being a pro, you’ve got to be on your toes!

– Gary Silverstein

Tags: 2.0, 3.0, camera, card, CF, CF card, commercial photography, Compact Flash, corrupt, corrupting, corruption, drive, file, files, hard drive, image, memory card, PC, pixel, pixelated, professional, reader, SD, SDHC, still, stills, USB, video
Posted in Information, Tips | Comments Off on The Memory Card Reader From Hell!

  • Categories

    • How To (20)
    • Information (546)
    • Learning (30)
    • Lighting (179)
    • Marketing (290)
    • Photographs, Images (543)
    • Tips (38)
    • Uncategorized (2)
    • video (13)
  • Archives

    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • May 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • September 2013
    • June 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • October 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • December 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • March 2011
    • December 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
  • Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries RSS
    • Comments RSS
    • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2025 - weshoot.com | Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)

WordPress theme designed by web design