Look after those SD cards

SD cards have become ubiquitous with digital cameras and microSD cards with smart phones. They are relatively cheap and generally robust. However they can be damaged and can very occasionally fail. My experience up till last week was that failure does happen but was very unlikely. I had one bad experience several years ago where a card came apart in my camera and jammed the card socket. With patients, a magnifying glass, a torch and the tweezers from a swiss army knife I did get all the pieces of plastic and gold foil contacts out of the card slot and no damaged was done. Luckily!

Another card last year just gave errors on two test photos when I loaded them. Picasa loaded in the photos ok but Lightroom reported corrupt RAW files. Surprising the paired jpegs were fine. At first I suspected the camera but I took some more photos using an older SD card and no problems. This was a cheaper brand card and I could see no obvious damage. I just  reformatted the card in my camera, and it worked fine. But I did buy a replacement card the next day. It is serving out its retirement in a relative’s photo frame and apparently enjoying life and behaving.

Two days in a row this week I had two cards develop problems with the little plastic slider on the side that provides write protection. I don’t normally touch this slider. The first problem was I managed to push the slider up inside the card and on top the contacts. I felt the card being blocked when I inserted into into the card reader. I could read the photos the card stuck again as I tried to removed it from the reader. I carefully applied more pressure and the card came out. Close inspection showed the slider had moved and was jammed (see picture above). The SD was immediately thrown out. Unfortunately the next day, same camera another same brand SD card, read the photos ok but when I put it back in the camera it reported the write protection lock was on and when I checked the card the write protect tab was missing. I carefully checked both the camera slot and card reader but that little bit of plastic was totally missing. Another card for the bin. Three new cards from a different manufacturer purchased.

By this stage I was worried either the camera or the card reader was damaging the cards. So an intensive investigation of cards and cameras and card readers followed, including testing the write protection sliders. No problems found and I breathed a long sigh of relief.

So What might have causes the failures?

Then I realised I had changed how I was using the cards on my recent trips. I was using a new card each day and not clearing it off. After being loaded I would put it back in an elasticized pocket in the camera bag. There were only three such pockets and six cards so there was doubling up and I remember a few cards slipped out and floated around in a mesh compartment which also house a few other accessories. I now suspect that is where the little plastic slide switches got damaged.

So I have gone back to my old practice of re-using the same card in the same camera and clearing off the photos after they are loaded. Only a singe SD card is stored in each pocket, as spares in the field. Any other spare cards are kept in those older little slide boxes, that SD cards used to come in before that where just bubble packed. They are robust but kept back at base with my backup USB drive, not floating around in my camera bag.

Before I try the rotating card process again I’m need to find a suitable protective wallet for the cards and take better care of them.

Recuva to the rescue yet again

I’ve had a few SD card trouble of late and have upgrade to a new set of SD cards (named brands 8GB and 10mps ie decent cards), No problems in the Canon but the cards with Pentax files have played up, on two occasions the files where not deleted by Picasa as I uploaded. No real problem I could clear the the photos in the camera. Then I uploaded a few photos and was looking at them in picasa on my laptop and picasa refreshed the screen, but the new folder had disappeared! Really disappeared! No amount of search the recycle bin or scanning for the photo file names of just recent files could locate them.

So I decided to run a disk recovery utility but it had been a long time since I had had to used such a utility and it was nowhere to be found on my computer or useful photo tools USB key. Also I had forgotten the name (which is recuva, remember that name) so I had to do a little search back into my blog and then check on-line, recuva still has a free downloadable version. Just 4mb, so I had it downloaded and recovered the files in just a few minutes. The two things that are important to note are. Firstly recover the files to a different disk (not the SD card). Second Recuva will not see the RAW files if you just ask to recover photos (it will however recover the .jpeg files). So it is important to recover all files. So I will make sure I keep an up to date copy of recuva on my useful photo utility toolkit

I’m a bit puzzled by the loss of files within picasa, this has never happened to me before. As a precaution I’ve also reformatted the SD cards in the camera I will be using the cards in and not swapping them between cameras.

Another SD cards bits the dust

I've had 3 SD memory cards give problems in the past two weeks. One has been giving a random memory card error in my Pentax (not in the Canon), it was as simple as removing and re-inserting the card to get it working. However I figured it was time to retire this cards. The next card lost the little plastic slider to lock the card so it now appears permanently locked (and thus unusable). Yesterday my last decent "brand name" card (picture on right) just split open!

They are all around the 2 years old mark, and I have heard many times this is the right time to replace SD cards (even though their theoretical memory life should be much longer) their physical robustness may not be as lasting. When replacing an SD card remember speed can be as important as size.

Size matters, but so does speed

 SD cards come in a large variety of capacities, in general the bigger the capacity the more expensive, but there is a second consideration speed. The SD Association have a speed class system that can help you understand the performance. the symbol is a number (the number of Mega Bytes per sec) inside a C, a bit like the @ symbol (see example on right hand side). Whilst most cameras will work the original the original standard SD cards (mainly still available in 2Giga Bytes) many older cameras cannot use the newer SD HC (High capacity) which general come in between 2 GB and 32 GB capacities, These newer card can have speed from 2 MB/s up to 10 MB/s. Understanding the performance is pretty simple if your DSLR camera writes a jpeg or RAW file that is 10MB in size it will take 1 second to write (with a tiny overhead for the cameras software). If you are still using a speed class 2 card that same file will take 5 seconds. A little more in cost of the card may make a big difference, particularly in bust mode.

This was all fine for still cameras but video is even more demanding, so there is now another class the SD XC or UHS (Ultra High Speed), which an come in capacities up to 1 TB (terra byte(more commonly 32GB).  Their speed class is shown in a U, The class U 3 is equivalent to 30MB/s (as shown on the left). Some newer cameras and particularly video cameras like the GO Pro actually require these higher speed cards.

So here is a guide of what size/speed card might suit you best

Type of Photography	Capacity	Speed Class
If you just shoot jpeg (or old camera)	2-4GB	C2-4
If you mainly shoot RAW	4-8GB	C6
If you shoot jpeg + RAW	4-16GB	C10
If you shoot video & RAW	8-32GB	U1-U3

Being Hard on Card Readers

Whilst my Toshiba laptops do have build card readers I have always preferred to use external USB readers, because they are easier and not a fiddly to use. However when I prepare my earlier post I realized I had managed to break two card readers since the photo flow photo was taken last year. So I have been on the hunt for a simpler SD card reader with no rotate out connectors or short cables. Those two conditions rule our a large percentage of the USB card reader market. I’m now trying out a small USB key sized reader, no moving parts just a cap to remove. Fits in my SD card wallet. Fingers crossed what its life span might be?

When to clear your SD card

I have been using SD cards for a long while and have had little trouble (except for one card where the connectors peeled off the card in the camera, damaging the reader, I don’t use the cheap brands anymore), I have misplaced a few cards and deliberately dissected an old one. They have all given me good service and I have migrated to using the fastest ones I mainly still use 4Gb & 8Gb (giga bytes) in size (that's plenty of shots). I generally use Picasa to unload the cards on a computer and  I have always been happy to let Picasa delete the photos off the card (it does seem to do some form of verification after loading the files before it deletes anything from the card.) I have used lightroom (way too slow for me) and photo mechanic a few times with similar settings, and no problemsOne of my fastest cards has started to “forget” to deleted the previous uploaded photos. Which is not a real problems in picasa I just make sure I have the exclude duplicates button checked. Anything I have already loaded show up with a red cross on a white circle. So I have my little 1-2-3 checklist for any picasa import. 1. Excluded Duplicated, 2 – Delete only copied photos 3 – Import all. Works fine and it is now just a habit.

The majority of on-line sites and experts seem to recommend that you never clear your card till after you are sure the files are uploaded and safely backed up to a second place. Seemed overkill to me because as long as you have not taken new photographs you can usually recover deleted files from your card with suitable recovery tools. You should always review what you have just uploaded, and that will highlight if anything is missing. I know some people have months worth of photos on large capacity cards, which could make it hard to spot missing images. I prefer to off-load my cards as soon a practical (ie each day, or session).

The pesky little undelete was easily solved by deleting the files on my card on the camera before any new sessions. On my Pentax I just need to press the delete button twice, and then Ok to confirm when looking at any image, to delete all the photos on the card. On the Canon its a bit more complex because you have to delete the pictures individually, so there I have chosen to reformat the card. All easy enough. Then I discover on two occasions that the card was locked, the little plastic tab has moved down. That was the cause of the “forgotten” to delete issues the card was being pushed down a little as I inserted it in the card reader. So I have retired that card from active service.

This weeks digital story podcast, has an interesting segment on how digital memory cards work and it reminded me of this. Derrick’s suggestion is to reformat the card to suit the camera and I had actually noticed that I felt my Canon was getting a little sluggish in burst mode but after I had reformatted the card it did appear faster, So I think his advice is good. If you swap cameras it may pay you to reformat the card so the directory structure suits it.

So my suggestion here is not to slavishly follow my workflow or anyone else’s, but figure out what is safe and works for you, and make it a habit to follow those steps, not a chore.

Prodigal SD card returns

A while ago I lost an older spare SD card, it seemed to just disappeared “out of” my camera bag. Then miraculously it “reappeared” on the back lawn under the clothes line (luckily I spotted it while watering and before mowing the lawn). I can only assume it was most probably in the pocket of my clothes, went through the wash and fell out of the pocket whilst drying and sat on the lawn through 40°C plus heat and a couple of storms, I dried it off and was able to read it with no problems. Not a bad harsh environment test of the card and the case it was in.

I hasn’t been smooth sailing always for me with SD cards I have had a couple where the plastic tabs and separators around the connectors has broken off or fallen apart (and jammed in my camera!) so I’m very careful and throw out any cards that misbehave (mainly cheap noname brand ones).

Whilst on SD Cards I have found that the speed of the card makes a massive different in practice when you are using a higher end DSLR. Particularly if you are saving both RAW and jpeg version of your photos. I have been using and can recommend both the Scan disk Ultra and  Lexar Platinum II series (SDHC 60x) it’s the difference in being able to get 8 images per second or waiting more than a second between images. Only capturing in jpeg does makes things quicker (they require processing but are smaller files and therefore save quicker).

Travelling Stuff

To say I travel a lot, is an understatement! I am well over the implied romance of flying and I particularly zone out through the airport ordeal. With security now beefed up it is time to slim down the stuff inside my camera bag, which I always hand carry on flights. I haven’t got enough trust established to let anything breakable go into checked in baggage. I also always hand carry my laptop computer. None of this seems to come under special scrutiny from the Security X-ray team.

So what to I like to carry?  As little as possible. Extra memory cards, SD cards are getting cheaper and are the best way to give yourself extra capacity. Don’t be afraid to buy extra cards along the way (but they will be overpriced in those duty free shops). Next I have a simple USB memory card reader. I have an SD card reader built into my laptop, but not many cyber cafes do. I can also easily transfer stuff to clients computers via this card reader. This has saved my bacon many times. Next I have my phone and a cable to connect it to my computer, and still use it occasionally as a GPRS modem (this is painfully slow but works reliably). I also have a Next-G modem (not shown, because it lives with my laptop) with which I have a love/hate relationship (its broadband and fast but annoyingly flaky).
The gem in this collection is the USB key. It is loaded with camera friendly Portable Apps, an open source open platform that allows programs to be run from a USB key, without requiring anything in the registry or to be installed on the host computer. Here are a collection of utilities I like to travel with and have used a lot.

• Autostitch (*), my favorite panorama stitching program.
• Cornice Portable, is an image viewer has thumbnail previews, full screen modes, rotation, slideshow modes and EXIF support.
• Exif Reader (*), is a small freeware utility that extracts image information from EXIF/JPG files.
• JpegView Portable, is still an unsupported test version, is a small and fast on the fly viewer/editor.
• GIMP Portable, is the popular open source image editor packaged. Has lots of features but comes with a longer learning curve. It has a massive fan base and good on-line Tutorials & Forums.
• Mosaic Creator (*), this is a wonderful collection of photo mosaic tools. I use this for my photo impressions.
• Noiseware (*), is a really good digital/heat noise remover.
• Photormin, a really simple image editor for fast resizing, basic retouching, and cropping. Probably I will replace this with JpegView before long, but still like its speed.
• Picturenaut (*), if you don't have version 3.0 download it now, this a very easy to use HDRi tool and does a beautiful job without lots of tweaking. 
• XnViewPortable, to be honest I’d rather used picasa, but in a pinch this is a very competent photo simple editor/ photo  manager/ viewer/ converter that can even be used in a cyber cafes. There is a decent community of  XnView fans out there and the on-line forum is a great place to get assistance.

(*) These are not a specific Portable Apps versions just the freeware/ shareware /demo versions that runs perfectly from the USB key. To install them on the USB Key simple copy the installed software directory into the PortableApps directory on the USB key.

A new acquisition to the kit bag is a Sony Walkman Series B USB MP3 player. It is the size of a normal USB key but it is primarily an MP3 audio player, but unlike my IPod nano it receives FM radio and it is a one button to press Voice recorder. My Olympus software bundled with my older CX4000 incorporated support for sound commentary on each photo and at the time I though what a waste of space. Now I’m changing my mind, I have found having an easy to use dictaphone that can hang around your neck is very useful when your hands are full of camera. Music & Podcasts sound pretty good on it as well. I also now have all my camera manuals stored on it.  Something indespensiable when you are out the back of nowhere. It is labbelled 2GB but I have found there is only about 1.7GB of usable space left for other things. Still that is plenty of space for all sorts of stuff not only music, and I prefer to keep it only half full incase I have a lot to say. One downside is that Photo Kiosks don’t seem to be able to read it. So I don’t recomend it as your only transfer key or for the PortableApps.

Backup Photos while you Travel

Modern digital cameras with their large megapixel size can be a hassle for travellers. Unlike a film camera, where you just buy more film as you go, and get them processed when you get home.With a digital camera what do you do when your memory card fills up?

Before I begin remember Backup, ensuring you have a second copy of image incase the original is deleted, is different to Archiving, achieving dependable long term storage of an image.

Buy more memory cards? Well they are getting almost as cheap as film, once you pay for its processing. For example a cheapest 4GB SD card I can find at the moment (in Australia) cost around $20. Many older camera can only take 1GB SD cards, which cost around $12. The table below will give you a rough guide to how many photos in jpeg format, fit on various card sizes given the camera's megapixel size.

Megapixel	128MB	256MB	512MB	1GB	2GB	4GB
2	134	268	552	1119	2245	4494
3	120	240	490	996	2000	4000
4	60	119	245	497	999	1998
5	48	95	195	395	800	1595
6	44	88	180	366	735	1471
7	39	78	161	327	657	1314
8	35	69	143	290	582	1164
10	26	53	109	221	444	887
12	20	40	83	169	339	678

Write CDs at the local photo booth. Most modern photo kiosks, especially in areas frequented by backpackers, offer a service to write a CD from files on your memory card. Often this is very cheap if you get a few photos printed. Rather than carry the CD around, why not post it to yourself (using a protective cardboard CD pouch).
Backpack drive, these are external disk drives, normally just temporarily connected to you computer(swapping between your home PC, laptop or notebook) via a USB connector. If you make sure this is relatively empty when you start you will have plenty of capacity for your trip.Today very large capacity 300 to 500GB are quiet affordable. It may be wise to invest a little more in a shock resistant model with its own travel case, as it will also be travelling with you.
USB Card Reader, even if you don't carry your own computer, having a suitable card reader will mean you could use the computers at a cyber cafe (but be warned not all of then will let you connect USB devices, sometimes they may charge you!) or those free library internet computers to transfer photos to your packback drive or even Skydrive.
A new type of Multi-media storage device for photographer is appearing, a kind of hybrid photo frame, card reader & backpack storage. At around $600 plus for 40GB at the moment, they are not cheap, eg. ten 4GB will SD cards be less than half the cost. Epsom seem to be leading this market in Australia.
Finally use Jpeg Format (rather than RAW) and consider shooting at a lower pixel size (if your camera allows this).

Recovering lost photos from memory cards

I have been told on a number of occasions, generally by IT experts, that you can not reliably recover files from camera memory cards. Well I beg to differ, because I have done it a few times now and here are a few of my observations 

1. Photos can be very precious, once lost they can be impossible to replace. So make it a habit to upload them and back them up.
2. If the content is important get it done by the professionals, if you are trying to recover kylie's only wedding photos, go and find one of the many services that specialise in recovering files (and perhaps get some one local, ie use the yellow pages not the net), some camera shops now also offer this service.
3. Beware of "Blackmail"ware, When you type file recovery in google these days you get a multitude of programs that offer free download but when you have downloaded the 20plusMB and installed it and go to actually use them. they say yes there are recoverable files on the media but you now have to sent BIG Dollars to unlock the recover feature. I don't like programs like this and suggest you keep and eye out and don't even download them if you suspect it is likely to be "blackmail".
4. Use freeware by all means, but remember it will probably contain a "NO LIABILITY" clause. 
5. Never install anything on the media you want to recover files from. It will most probably overwrite on the files you are trying to recover
6. Always recover the files to a different media, like a removable USB memory stick, or a suitable temporary location on your hard disk.

I had a 4GB SD card that had been accidentally wiped, which contained a couple of videos and about 50 photos. The last time I did this was a long time ago, so I pointed google to "SD card recovery freeware" and choose two that looked promising.
The first program I tried was SoftPerfect's File Recovery. It doesn't required conventional installing so it is ideal to have on a USB toolkit of useful stuff and doesn't hog resources on your computer with unnecessary stuff at start up. Running it is really straight forward you just specify where the recovery is to take place and optionally a filename wildcard to example recover a particular type of file (eg. *.jpg). the software they starts looking for any file it might be able to recover. When this is finished select (highlight) all the files you would like to recover. The Restore icon then becomes active and press it. In the next dialogue it is strong recommended that you recover the files to a different destination. Everything was quick and easy but two of the files. both .jpegs were truncated (ie could not be fully recovered. The two movies were fine. I would give this a 4 out of five start recommendation.
The second program was Zero Assumption Recovery, and it was upfront that it was a trial version. It does need to be installed and is also very easy to use. Just indicate the media to be scanned and a semi-graphic of the media surface is displayed showing the status of what the median contains (as colour coded file types and what may be recovered), because it scans the entire disk it take longer. At this point it did warm me that the demo version had limitations (which didn't apply in this case), But still I don't like programs like this so I have now removed it from my computer (after letting it recover the files of course). This recovered exactly the same files as the first program and exactly the same fragments of the two .jpeg files not recovered first time. So basically there was no difference in the results.
Most importantly my work has not modified anything on the memory card, so I would still be able to take it to a professional for file recovery if I needed to. If you have been recovering files of a damaged (flaky) card, it is probably a good idea to reformat that card before you use it again (which will mark bad areas not to be used)

Uploading photos made easy

One of the first task to become urgent when you get a new digital cameras, is what to do when the memory card, or camera memory fills up. You might even have to start reading instructions, or loading software, or connecting cables, or ... the list of anxieties goes on for way too long. Well don't panic if you know how to remove the memory card or where to attach the usb cable to your camera, you don't have to learn much else.

I'm not sure about apple's mac computers, but I have gotten the distinct impression you need the iLife program iPhoto. So I suppose mac user mistakenly expect that you have to have adobe photoshop to load photos onto a PC.

Well it is really easy on a PC running microsoft XP, and I expect as easy using Vista. Just plug your memory card into a card reader or plug in the USB connector and you will see an autoplay dialog box spring into view.

The first option will take you through XP's built in Scanner & Camera Wizard, which is really simple to use, but only give you the oppotunity to copy the images you select to your computer.

I like to scroll down a bit and use the open in explorer option, its the little open folder icon. This the opens the access to you card as if it where a folder on your hard drive. Normally you will see a DCIM Folder (which stands for Digital Camera IMages), I also label my cards with a "read.me" file. When you click on this folder it will open to show a second folder with an abbreviated name of your camera name model. Clicking on this will take you down into a folder view of your images.



As soon as you select one of more of the images you will see the File and Folder Task menu on left hand panel. From here you can do a lot, but I prefer to move the images to a special "new camera downloads" folder I have made under the standard My Pictures folde XP creates. I have even change the icon on the folder to a camera. I like to stored my images by date so each new day I create a new folder as I do the upload. WARNING: some folk recommend you only copy images from your card, because cards can occasionally malfunction, and then only when you have them safely backed up, or printed, should you delete them from the card. Myself I think moving them is fine and its cleans the card in one step

A final world, you don't have to upload your photos to a computer at all, you can take them down to local camera shop, or photo processor, some chemists and a lot of places in shopping malls and tourist resorts; and use the wonderful little kiosk units. They generally have a screen and a number of memory cards readers and often a CD unit. You'll find most of them come with built in software to crop, rotate and even enhance your images.

why not label your memory cards?

As you will see in my next post, there is probably a good reason to "electronically" label your digital gear, such as cameras, ipods and mobile phones. The easiest way with most devices will be to label the memory card they use. I'm most cases this card can be read (and written too) by placing it in an appropriate card reader. In a few case you may just have to transfer the READ.ME file over a USB connection (or infrared, or bluetooth, or whatever!)

Just use any text editor to create a very simple (and small file) like this one, with your details. Then copy it to the top level directory on the card(s) so that anyone reading that card will see it. I think READ.ME is a good name but OWNER.TXT or anything similar will do. Its all about increasing the chance of your gear being returned if it is lost, or stolen (or given away)