Originally Posted by Matthew Saville This still puts you at risk, however, if you EVER put your camera down throughout the entire wedding day. If your camera is around your neck or in a holster 100% of the time, then I suppose you're okay, but I've heard too many stories about cameras disappearing from reception tables, especially at one of the local venues that gets a lot of beach-goer public traffic through it. So even if I use a 64 GB SDXC card as an in-camera backup, I still swap 4 GB cards out and keep them in a Pixel Pocket Rocket that is attached to my belt loop. =Matt=

A very valid point that leads to the topic of risk management, which I'll leave for another discussion.

I shoot wearing a black domke vest with a dual rapid strap setup under it. This allows me to carry an additional lens or two for specialty shots, quantum turbo 2x2's to power T5DR's and Canon speedlites, calibration targets, bottle water, rocket blower, pixel pocket rocket, etc.

So far all the venues I've worked at have been very private and security hasn't been an issue. I'm hoping it stays that way.

I could utilize smaller CF cards, as I have a number of 8GB cards and a bunch of 4GB cards, but I'd prefer to only change cards between major events such as getting ready shots, ceremony shots, formals and the reception.

I must be missing something here ... wouldn't chimping (or, in the professional lingo, "checking for balanced exposure") have revealed the buggered card?

Originally Posted by Moving Pictures I must be missing something here ... wouldn't chimping (or, in the professional lingo, "checking for balanced exposure") have revealed the buggered card?

Not necessarily. The card may have have been damaged after it was removed from the camera, for instance.

Edit: Never mind. I see that Angie did not remove the card and that she discovered the failure 2 images into the next shoot. I have no idea what could have caused that failure.

Originally Posted by ziggy53 Not necessarily. The card may have have been damaged after it was removed from the camera, for instance. Edit: Never mind. I see that Angie did not remove the card and that she discovered the failure 2 images into the next shoot. I have no idea what could have caused that failure.

Since it sounds like the failure was mechanical, I suppose it could have been caused by anything, even the slightest physical or even electronic "jolt" or bump may have "busted" the physical part that failed.

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Since it sounds like the failure was mechanical, I suppose it could have been caused by anything, even the slightest physical or even electronic "jolt" or bump may have "busted" the physical part that failed. =Matt=

Yup. Scott didn't go into the details, but it sounded like there was a mechanical issue with the card - caused by who knows what! (there were no bumps .... But maybe the humidity that day might have caused something? I don't know).

Stolen cameras, ey? Wow. I always have my big camera with me. I leave my suitcase unattended at times, but I've never had any issues. Up to now I've just always been scared to either miss a wedding (free weekends used to drive me crazy, and I triple checked all contracts - though, I'm in such close email-touch with my brides that it'd be hard to miss an event) + losing files (sounds like I wasn't scared enough of that)

Well, hope everybody got a little scare reading my story and you'll make sure it won't happen to you. *i* was just lucky it all worked out - but I'm sure there is not always a happy end around that corner.

my palms got sweaty while reading this...seriously. this is my worst nightmare.

so happy you were able to recover the files successfully!

I have read of spreading the event over multiple cards but to me this is more risk than just using one. For me it's more chance of something going wrong and more chance still of loosing a card that wasn't in the camera.

I use one card and download it after every set of pics. When I am driving from the grooms home to the brides, the thing is downloading onto the laptop. when I leave the brides home and am on my way to the church its downloading again , after the church, park and after the cake cutting.
So far I have never had a problem with a card on a wedding or the backup.

I won't go to bed no matter how late, ( or more precisely, early) I get home till the shots are again downloaded onto my work station, I have burnt and verified 2 lots of DVD"s and I have the shots on a 3rd HDD in another machine. It might seem overkill but If I were in the op's position of having to tell someone that I lost their pics, nothing is too much effort to avoid that nor the sleep I'd loose and beating myself up over it. Not that this would have helped her in this case though.

An hour or 90min is a nothing price to pay for preventing any regrets of not having done it in the first place.

Originally Posted by Glort I have read of spreading the event over multiple cards but to me this is more risk than just using one. For me it's more chance of something going wrong and more chance still of loosing a card that wasn't in the camera. I use one card and download it after every set of pics. When I am driving from the grooms home to the brides, the thing is downloading onto the laptop. when I leave the brides home and am on my way to the church its downloading again , after the church, park and after the cake cutting. So far I have never had a problem with a card on a wedding or the backup. I won't go to bed no matter how late, ( or more precisely, early) I get home till the shots are again downloaded onto my work station, I have burnt and verified 2 lots of DVD"s and I have the shots on a 3rd HDD in another machine. It might seem overkill but If I were in the op's position of having to tell someone that I lost their pics, nothing is too much effort to avoid that nor the sleep I'd loose and beating myself up over it. Not that this would have helped her in this case though. An hour or 90min is a nothing price to pay for preventing any regrets of not having done it in the first place.

Please tell me you don't take your one card out of the camera and put it back in that many times! That's just as risky, and possibly even more likely to corrupt a file, than if you simply swapped cards out at those intervals...

Bottom line though- use reliable cards, have a backup plan ready, (including recovery software, backup memory cards, etc.) ...and get your stuff downloaded and VERIFIED by the end of the night!

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Please tell me you don't take your one card out of the camera and put it back in that many times! That's just as risky, and possibly even more likely to corrupt a file, than if you simply swapped cards out at those intervals... Bottom line though- use reliable cards, have a backup plan ready, (including recovery software, backup memory cards, etc.) ...and get your stuff downloaded and VERIFIED by the end of the night! =Matt=

Never had a problem and don't understand why it would be a risk.

I have loads of cards I have swapped literally 20 times a day between 3-4 camera's doing event work and have never had a problem with that or heard of anyone else having an undue amount of problems.

If the card did corrupt, I have the files on the laptop...which is the reason I back them up.

Wow, I can only imagine what a kick in the gut that felt like when you saw the card had failed. So glad you were able to save everything.
This is the reason I dropped a chunk of change on the D3 years ago and run the second 16g card as a backup. Also never use new cards...only use cards that have been used and proven good for you weddings. Peace of mind is worth every penny.
So happy for you that everything came out ok. I bet the couple was over the top when you told them :).

Most of all I commend you for going right to the couple and being honest and forthright with them. I hear so many stories about shady individuals who just disappear or don't produce or make excuses. Good for you.

Originally Posted by Glort Never had a problem and don't understand why it would be a risk. I have loads of cards I have swapped literally 20 times a day between 3-4 camera's doing event work and have never had a problem with that or heard of anyone else having an undue amount of problems. If the card did corrupt, I have the files on the laptop...which is the reason I back them up.

* I've heard that it is simply optimal to format a card each time it goes into a camera, to "clear the connection". Leaving images on a card just requires the camera to sort and keep track of data a teeny tiny bit more. I'm sure the risk of corruption is very slight, of course, but I feel like it is still there. I prefer to just shoot a card nearly full, swap it out, and leave it alone until I download.

* Even if the corruption risk turns out to be insignificant, the physical damage / human error risk is also there. I guess it's just as simple as: when driving from ceremony to reception for example, I feel much safer with my swapped out 4/8GB cards safely in my pocket in a card wallet, compared to having my one single card sitting on the seat next to me dangling out of a card reader while I try to focus on the road.

* So in my opinion, there are not different LEVELS of risk involved in the single card VS multiple card depate, just different TYPES of risk. Pick whichever risk you feel the most comfortable managing. And always have a backup plan in case your system fails! A single memory card may be an easy risk to manage for some, but if that single card does fail, have a backup card (or two) ready to go at a moment's notice!

=Matt=

Let me also add that one great and easy form of backup is just to shoot with two cameras throughout the day. Pop a different lens on each and make use of it obviously (or whatever works best for you), but just in case one memory card used during one art of the day is toast, you still have another.

Glad to hear everything worked out in the end - thanks for sharing your experience!!

-rich56k

Wow, glad that worked out! I only buy 8 gig for that reason, I just dont want all my eggs in one basket.

I lost a card last year down on the cape after a guest dumped a beer on my camera at the beginning of the reception. I ripped the battery and card out and held my camera under a faucet to rinse the beer out from all the buttons and dials. I opened it up and and put it in front of a hair dryer and it worked after about 30 or 40 mins.

long story short during this the card got lost. We drove home (4hrs) the next morning because a hurricane was coming through and we needed to make it across the bridge (haha the same bridge we did our little off roading to skip some trafic )

I downloaded all the cards and thats when I realized I was missing the most important photos. After a thousand calls and no sleep, during the hurricane we reached someone that thought they remember finding something and they stuck it in a drawer. The best man lived close by and was able to find it. I felt sick to my stomach the whole time, what a relief.

2 weddings had happend at the venue in between when it was found.

DANG, Cory! SO glad it worked out for you also! WHAT A SCARE!

I gotta say .... I switched to shooting 8GB cards (shooting double - I still have a 32GB in my card slot also). But GOD do I hate shooting on small cards! UGH!

I just had this happen to me a couple of weeks ago. I know that feeling and I was gutted. I was so sure all had been lost! Thankfully I was able to find a simple recovery software and MOST of the pictures were recoverable. Only about a dozen shots (that I distinctly remember shooting and are not found now) were unrecoverable... but I was sick for days with worry while I waited to see if it was fixable.

Originally Posted by Agnieszka DANG, Cory! SO glad it worked out for you also! WHAT A SCARE! I gotta say .... I switched to shooting 8GB cards (shooting double - I still have a 32GB in my card slot also). But GOD do I hate shooting on small cards! UGH!

Depending on how you shoot, maybe 8 GB cards are too small for you? Personally, I like to keep my card swaps to just pre-ceremony, and pre-reception. So that's three cards for the whole day, maybe four if the reception is long.

I shoot 12-bit compressed RAW 12 megaixel images, so I get 400 images on a single 4 GB memory card. When I'm 2nd shooting instead of lead shooting, that's just perfect for the above scenario. When I'm lead shooting I have to swap cards during the formals, but that's about it.

If for example someone were shooting full 21 megapixel 14-bit RAW images, then they might fit even less than 400 images on an 8 GB card. I'd recommend shooting on 16 GB cards then, and even if it's a bit much, just get in the habit of switching before the ceremony and before the reception.

=Matt=

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I thought since I hadn't seen it mentioned, I would recommend formatting your cards regularly. Shoot, backup, reformat. Reformat before every shoot. Perhaps you already do this, but if not, it helps clear out the random debris left behind when images are read, copied, and deleted that leads to corruption. Not that it appears to have been the issue here.

I'm just glad things worked out.

Really, dual slots or not, the best practice is to always dump a copy of your card somewhere. To your PC, or a netbook you take with you and you can do it even while shooting. I take my small notebook to shoots and dump on site to its HDD. Or if you need something smaller, you can back up while in your pocket: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search...1&N=4138043893


For the prices of some of those portables, you can get a 10"-14" netbook/notebook with great battery life, USB3, a USB3 reader, 2-4TB HDD storage, and it will last for much more total data copied. And you can use photoshop and whatever else on them if you wanted. And encrypt the entire HDD in case it gets stolen. This is how geeks think, lol. Anyway, my notebook's battery lasts 8 hours doing general light computing so it can pretty much fill any entire drives' capacity in 1 charge. It probably can do 2,3,4 terabytes of transferring before drained but I don't even have 4tb between all of my computers combined so I can't test it :)


And thanks for the reference to that guy for physical card problems in the future! That's a valuable resource and I'm happy you lost no photos :)

Thanks for bringing your story to light Angie! And very glad to hear it turned out well.

In case anyone may need it This thread I posted back in January has a link for a software for CORRUPT video files. These were broken .mov files from the 5DMK2