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
