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.
"It's only an island if you look at it from the water."
0
Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
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.
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.
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?srtclk=sort&ci=3369&Ns=p_OVER_ALL_RATE|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
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?srtclk=sort&ci=3369&Ns=p_OVER_ALL_RATE|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
My first thought when reading your post was for the security of the gear. While your system is operationally sound, my concern would be that there are some people who would view this as a free tech gear buffet.
One of my primary's I shoot for had gear stolen right off the church pew!
My first thought when reading your post was for the security of the gear. While your system is operationally sound, my concern would be that there are some people who would view this as a free tech gear buffet.
One of my primary's I shoot for had gear stolen right off the church pew!
Sam
Yep, in my opinion the "best practice" is to keep your precious memory cards on your person AT ALL TIMES. Mine are tethered to my CF wallet, in my pocket, NOT in my camera bag that gets put down from time to time. (I also use a Spyder Holster, so "putting down" my camera isn't really an issue either. The camera is LOCKED to my body...)
I would also have great reservations about leaving a backup un-attended, but I'm sure that nobody is encouraging that. I'd absolutely rather go home safe with a single copy of my images, than leave a memory card out of my sight during the reception just so I can go home with two copies. Of course again I'm sure nobody is recommending leaving gear un-attended, just the good practice of backing up your data on-site.
So glad to hear you were able to get the images recovered, Angie. Losing a whole shoot due to a technical malfunction, or worse, operator error, is every photographer's worst nightmare.
The "eggs in one basket" issue isn't just one for the pros, either. I have harped on it with everyone I know, particularly all of the friends and acquaintances I advise on their Disney World vacations, for years. There are too many horror stories out there where folks have rather foolishly shot their entire week-long, once-in-a-lifetime vacation on a single 64gb SD card, only to find all their pics gone when the card fails, or the camera is lost, stolen, or takes a bath on Pirates of the Caribbean.
With a pro shooting a wedding, however, the issue is far more serious. Even those who split their pics onto multiple cards can find that they've lost some irreplaceable, unreproducible shots like the bouquet/garter throw or some spontaneous action if just one card fails. Not every pro uses a body with dual card slots, either.
Stories like this frighten me, however. They make me mighty glad that I'm just an amateur and don't earn my living as a photographer.
What I said when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time: "The wide ain't wide enough and the zoom don't zoom enough!"
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?srtclk=sort&ci=3369&Ns=p_OVER_ALL_RATE|1&N=4138043893
For the prices of some of those portables, you can get a 10"-14" netbook/notebook...
The one think really nice about the portable hard drives though is how you can slip them into an over-sized pocket and keep it with you at all times. Can't do that with a netbook. And I agree with the dual slots, if you are a serious wedding photographer and not using a dual-slot equipped camera and not making in-camera duplicates of your files, well....
About a year ago I attended a photo course at Unique Photo in NJ that was sponsored by Lexar and the rep told us that the company has an unadvertised policy that they will always restore or retrieve lost files from any of their memory cards at no charge.
Lexar and Sandisk will do their very best to recover files on PRO products. They charge for consumer cards.
That 1 in a million
To comment on this topic, you could only either be the person that fears that this might happen to you one day, or (the worst) this has happened to you already. Unfortunately my story doesnt have a happy ending, but to be continued.
My girlfriend and I just started out doing wedding photography on the weekends. On our second wedding, it happened, the nightmare. At the time we kept our cool, and we carried on (worst mistake ever! due to lack of exp). Luckily we didnt loose all our photos as i was 2nd shooting, but still we lost very good photos, and family photos. This broke my gf's heart. Ive tried all the open source recovery programmes under the sun, still no results. I went to a data recovery company, nothing.
I took a step back and thought of how to deal with this situation in a professional manner (wedding photography is our part time job). Today my gf will tell the bride what happened as we are out of options. Lets see what happens.
Ive taken lots of tips reading through this thread. Thank you all. I would never wish this upon anyone, as everyone mentioned, its a nightmare, its demoralising. We really love what we do and I hope this doesnt make us regret in taking up wedding photography.
To comment on this topic, you could only either be the person that fears that this might happen to you one day, or (the worst) this has happened to you already. Unfortunately my story doesnt have a happy ending, but to be continued.
My girlfriend and I just started out doing wedding photography on the weekends. On our second wedding, it happened, the nightmare. At the time we kept our cool, and we carried on (worst mistake ever! due to lack of exp). Luckily we didnt loose all our photos as i was 2nd shooting, but still we lost very good photos, and family photos. ... Today my gf will tell the bride what happened as we are out of options. Lets see what happens. ...
Regarding your "That 1 in a million" title, it really should be "When this happens to you", because eventually equipment failure happens to everyone.
Your story is a reminder of the value of cameras which record simultaneously and redundantly to a second card, and the need for backup camera bodies and lots of extra memory cards.
(I had 2 - consecutive card failures on one camera body once, but I had an extra body/lens/flash on me at the time and was able to carry on until I could sort it out. I also had 2 - Mamiya C330 film bodies fail on me at another event, a long time ago. Fortunately, I had extra bodies with me at the time.)
Hopefully, your girlfriend has enough critical images to carry the story of the day and to appease the client. Hopefully too, you had a comprehensive contract with a clause to inform the client of the risk of loss, and to limit your liability in the event of loss.
At very least, your girlfriend and yourself need to offer a partial refund due to the loss.
Wow...everyones worst nightmare.
So glad everything worked out in the end. I can only imagine the kick in the gut you got when the you realized the photos were gone.
I lost a card once...left it laying the the park overnight in the sprinklers. I realized it was gone at the parking lot and went back and looked for it in the dark for 3 hours, no luck.
Went back at dawn and found it in 5 minutes, it had been in the sprinklers for hours.
Took it home, loaded it, all good.
Next day I went out and bought a D3 with dual card slots and some 16g cards. Always use the second card as backup. I never have to change batteries or memory cards during a wedding.
For me I have a much better chance of losing a card than I do of having 2 cards corrupt at the same time....ahhhhh yes peace of mind .
I carry both cameras on my person at all times, with everything I need. No gear bag to worry about.
To comment on this topic, you could only either be the person that fears that this might happen to you one day, or (the worst) this has happened to you already. Unfortunately my story doesnt have a happy ending, but to be continued.
My girlfriend and I just started out doing wedding photography on the weekends. On our second wedding, it happened, the nightmare. At the time we kept our cool, and we carried on (worst mistake ever! due to lack of exp). Luckily we didnt loose all our photos as i was 2nd shooting, but still we lost very good photos, and family photos. This broke my gf's heart. Ive tried all the open source recovery programmes under the sun, still no results. I went to a data recovery company, nothing.
I took a step back and thought of how to deal with this situation in a professional manner (wedding photography is our part time job). Today my gf will tell the bride what happened as we are out of options. Lets see what happens.
Ive taken lots of tips reading through this thread. Thank you all. I would never wish this upon anyone, as everyone mentioned, its a nightmare, its demoralising. We really love what we do and I hope this doesnt make us regret in taking up wedding photography.
Did you try getting in touch with http://tallyns.com? Give them a try before you give up on trying to get the files back! Good luck! It's a problem nobody would ever want to deal with.
Wow...everyones worst nightmare.
So glad everything worked out in the end. I can only imagine the kick in the gut you got when the you realized the photos were gone.
I lost a card once...left it laying the the park overnight in the sprinklers. I realized it was gone at the parking lot and went back and looked for it in the dark for 3 hours, no luck.
Went back at dawn and found it in 5 minutes, it had been in the sprinklers for hours.
Took it home, loaded it, all good.
Next day I went out and bought a D3 with dual card slots and some 16g cards. Always use the second card as backup. I never have to change batteries or memory cards during a wedding.
For me I have a much better chance of losing a card than I do of having 2 cards corrupt at the same time....ahhhhh yes peace of mind .
I carry both cameras on my person at all times, with everything I need. No gear bag to worry about.
Ah, the usual quandary or appearance of safety. There is always a loophole, though. Zoomer, your images are not safe until they are in two separate locations. What happens if your camera goes mising, mid-reception? 100% of your images are gone forever.
This happens, unfortunately. Just like equipment failure, we always say it will never happen to us, but sometimes it can. Maybe you try very hard to keep your camera on your person at all times, but all it takes is putting it down for a couple seconds for someone to walk off with it. Hate to say it but I have no faith in society in this respect.
Therefore, I recommend changing up your D3 memory card tactics, just a little bit. Personally, here is what I do when I use a camera with dual card slots. (I don't always, but when I do...)
One card slot gets a 32-64 GB memory card, or whatever is more than enough to contain an entire day's shooting.
The other card slot, however, gets changed out every few hours. For me on a 12 megapixel camera with my RAW bit rate turned down to 12 and RAW compression turned on, this means I only need 4 GB or 8 GB memory cards. Maybe for someone who has a D800, you might need a 16 GB card. (My friend who shoots weddings on a D800 uses a 128GB SD card in one slot, and 16 GB CF cards get rotated in the other slot)
This way, you at least have the majority of the wedding in your pocket, not ONLY in your camera.
So, just remember that there are multiple aspects to redundancy and backup safety. You can only protect against ONE issue, if you simply load up two high-capacity cards and just let them ride for the whole day. In fact I bet that statistically speaking, dropping your camera in a lake or getting it stolen is far more common than actual, un-recoverable failure. Because even in the event of failure there is a 9--99% chance that you can recover your data....
Matt is spot-on that Zoomer's approach, while better than a single-card camera, is not worry free. You might add a portable hard disk card reader to the mix. When the small card comes out of the camera it goes into the reader before making it to your pocket. And then never reformat a card until not only on your computer, but the computer is backed up as well.
And let's not get started on proper computer back-up strategies either
100% of the time on my person.
I don't trust anybody, like you said it only takes a split second to disappear.
More equipment more to get lost more to go wrong. I will stick with my simple approach. For me it is the perfect mix....I have shot over 100 weddings using it with no problems.....I have my rabbits foot in my hand as I type this haha.
Remember no matter how much you plan and fuss...shit still happens.
It really is amazing what they can do to recover photos today from bad cards...but losing cards is death.
100% of the time on my person.
I don't trust anybody, like you said it only takes a split second to disappear.
More equipment more to get lost more to go wrong. I will stick with my simple approach. For me it is the perfect mix....I have shot over 100 weddings using it with no problems.....I have my rabbits foot in my hand as I type this haha.
Remember no matter how much you plan and fuss...shit still happens.
It really is amazing what they can do to recover photos today from bad cards...but losing cards is death.
Here's an outdated tool I use to back things up while shooting a wedding. These are discontinued, and there's a 7000 version which is larger. All that means is that you may be able to find them cheap on online sales. I use the Epson 5000 to autobackup all my files as I shoot. Larger cards take a bit longer to transfer, and you may (if you're like me) need more than one unit, but these things are found for cheap now that they're no longer made.
Here's an outdated tool I use to back things up while shooting a wedding. These are discontinued, and there's a 7000 version which is larger. All that means is that you may be able to find them cheap on online sales. I use the Epson 5000 to autobackup all my files as I shoot. Larger cards take a bit longer to transfer, and you may (if you're like me) need more than one unit, but these things are found for cheap now that they're no longer made.
Having personally tested pretty much all of these devices, my best recommendation along these lines is the Hyperdrive ColorSpace. I started with the Epsons, but switched to Hyperdrives over the past few years and could not be happier.
I shoot 32GB cards because I don't just shoot (well, technically second shoot ocassionally these days) weddings, but sports and some things like football & soccer I can easily almost fill 2, 32GB cards in a game.
That being said, I recently lost my first card EVER. A 32GB Lexar 1000x card. Put it into my reader and it showed up as 32MB. Called support, tried recovery. Honestly, don't really care about the files, I got my photos off the card that I needed to submit to the paper, yes, I lost a lot of shots, but, they weren't important. Almost makes me want to shoot in camera backups next week when I help a friend out.. and write to both cards at once with the same file. We'll see when the time comes...
I shoot 32GB cards because I don't just shoot (well, technically second shoot ocassionally these days) weddings, but sports and some things like football & soccer I can easily almost fill 2, 32GB cards in a game.
That being said, I recently lost my first card EVER. A 32GB Lexar 1000x card. Put it into my reader and it showed up as 32MB. Called support, tried recovery. Honestly, don't really care about the files, I got my photos off the card that I needed to submit to the paper, yes, I lost a lot of shots, but, they weren't important. Almost makes me want to shoot in camera backups next week when I help a friend out.. and write to both cards at once with the same file. We'll see when the time comes...
Out of curiosity, Jim, what brand / speed card was it and where did you purchase it, and when?
It was a Lexar 1000x, 32GB. Not sure when I bought it. It's one of these 2 dates: 8/12/12 and approximately April 2013. Unfortunately B&H order history is down at the moment, but pretty sure it was Softball/Baseball season for high-school sports. I bought a 2 pack because it came with the image recovery software (v4) from Lexar which did absolutely no good. I'm betting some part of the controller fried and he memory is fine... But as I said, I don't really care, although I did get asked by a parent if the photos were going to be online and I told them yes. Go figure. That game all around was a horrible day for me. I lost my dad's cross that I've worn for the past several years (chain snapped) and my card failed on me when I got home. All around voodoo day!
I think a good post like this makes me think it's time to finally upgrade to the 5DMk3's... I'm still sporting Mk2 bodies. I've had a very scary run in where I accidentally formatted a card (user error) but was thankfully able to get the photos back from my computer as they'd already been imported there and were hiding in aperture backups.
Comments
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.
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=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I'm just glad things worked out.
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
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
My first thought when reading your post was for the security of the gear. While your system is operationally sound, my concern would be that there are some people who would view this as a free tech gear buffet.
One of my primary's I shoot for had gear stolen right off the church pew!
Sam
Yep, in my opinion the "best practice" is to keep your precious memory cards on your person AT ALL TIMES. Mine are tethered to my CF wallet, in my pocket, NOT in my camera bag that gets put down from time to time. (I also use a Spyder Holster, so "putting down" my camera isn't really an issue either. The camera is LOCKED to my body...)
I would also have great reservations about leaving a backup un-attended, but I'm sure that nobody is encouraging that. I'd absolutely rather go home safe with a single copy of my images, than leave a memory card out of my sight during the reception just so I can go home with two copies. Of course again I'm sure nobody is recommending leaving gear un-attended, just the good practice of backing up your data on-site.
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
The "eggs in one basket" issue isn't just one for the pros, either. I have harped on it with everyone I know, particularly all of the friends and acquaintances I advise on their Disney World vacations, for years. There are too many horror stories out there where folks have rather foolishly shot their entire week-long, once-in-a-lifetime vacation on a single 64gb SD card, only to find all their pics gone when the card fails, or the camera is lost, stolen, or takes a bath on Pirates of the Caribbean.
With a pro shooting a wedding, however, the issue is far more serious. Even those who split their pics onto multiple cards can find that they've lost some irreplaceable, unreproducible shots like the bouquet/garter throw or some spontaneous action if just one card fails. Not every pro uses a body with dual card slots, either.
Stories like this frighten me, however. They make me mighty glad that I'm just an amateur and don't earn my living as a photographer.
The one think really nice about the portable hard drives though is how you can slip them into an over-sized pocket and keep it with you at all times. Can't do that with a netbook. And I agree with the dual slots, if you are a serious wedding photographer and not using a dual-slot equipped camera and not making in-camera duplicates of your files, well....
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
Lexar and Sandisk will do their very best to recover files on PRO products. They charge for consumer cards.
To comment on this topic, you could only either be the person that fears that this might happen to you one day, or (the worst) this has happened to you already. Unfortunately my story doesnt have a happy ending, but to be continued.
My girlfriend and I just started out doing wedding photography on the weekends. On our second wedding, it happened, the nightmare. At the time we kept our cool, and we carried on (worst mistake ever! due to lack of exp). Luckily we didnt loose all our photos as i was 2nd shooting, but still we lost very good photos, and family photos. This broke my gf's heart. Ive tried all the open source recovery programmes under the sun, still no results. I went to a data recovery company, nothing.
I took a step back and thought of how to deal with this situation in a professional manner (wedding photography is our part time job). Today my gf will tell the bride what happened as we are out of options. Lets see what happens.
Ive taken lots of tips reading through this thread. Thank you all. I would never wish this upon anyone, as everyone mentioned, its a nightmare, its demoralising. We really love what we do and I hope this doesnt make us regret in taking up wedding photography.
Regarding your "That 1 in a million" title, it really should be "When this happens to you", because eventually equipment failure happens to everyone.
Your story is a reminder of the value of cameras which record simultaneously and redundantly to a second card, and the need for backup camera bodies and lots of extra memory cards.
(I had 2 - consecutive card failures on one camera body once, but I had an extra body/lens/flash on me at the time and was able to carry on until I could sort it out. I also had 2 - Mamiya C330 film bodies fail on me at another event, a long time ago. Fortunately, I had extra bodies with me at the time.)
Hopefully, your girlfriend has enough critical images to carry the story of the day and to appease the client. Hopefully too, you had a comprehensive contract with a clause to inform the client of the risk of loss, and to limit your liability in the event of loss.
At very least, your girlfriend and yourself need to offer a partial refund due to the loss.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
So glad everything worked out in the end. I can only imagine the kick in the gut you got when the you realized the photos were gone.
I lost a card once...left it laying the the park overnight in the sprinklers. I realized it was gone at the parking lot and went back and looked for it in the dark for 3 hours, no luck.
Went back at dawn and found it in 5 minutes, it had been in the sprinklers for hours.
Took it home, loaded it, all good.
Next day I went out and bought a D3 with dual card slots and some 16g cards. Always use the second card as backup. I never have to change batteries or memory cards during a wedding.
For me I have a much better chance of losing a card than I do of having 2 cards corrupt at the same time....ahhhhh yes peace of mind
I carry both cameras on my person at all times, with everything I need. No gear bag to worry about.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21695902@N06/
http://500px.com/Shockey
alloutdoor.smugmug.com
http://aoboudoirboise.smugmug.com/
Did you try getting in touch with http://tallyns.com? Give them a try before you give up on trying to get the files back! Good luck! It's a problem nobody would ever want to deal with.
Ah, the usual quandary or appearance of safety. There is always a loophole, though. Zoomer, your images are not safe until they are in two separate locations. What happens if your camera goes mising, mid-reception? 100% of your images are gone forever.
This happens, unfortunately. Just like equipment failure, we always say it will never happen to us, but sometimes it can. Maybe you try very hard to keep your camera on your person at all times, but all it takes is putting it down for a couple seconds for someone to walk off with it. Hate to say it but I have no faith in society in this respect.
Therefore, I recommend changing up your D3 memory card tactics, just a little bit. Personally, here is what I do when I use a camera with dual card slots. (I don't always, but when I do...)
One card slot gets a 32-64 GB memory card, or whatever is more than enough to contain an entire day's shooting.
The other card slot, however, gets changed out every few hours. For me on a 12 megapixel camera with my RAW bit rate turned down to 12 and RAW compression turned on, this means I only need 4 GB or 8 GB memory cards. Maybe for someone who has a D800, you might need a 16 GB card. (My friend who shoots weddings on a D800 uses a 128GB SD card in one slot, and 16 GB CF cards get rotated in the other slot)
This way, you at least have the majority of the wedding in your pocket, not ONLY in your camera.
So, just remember that there are multiple aspects to redundancy and backup safety. You can only protect against ONE issue, if you simply load up two high-capacity cards and just let them ride for the whole day. In fact I bet that statistically speaking, dropping your camera in a lake or getting it stolen is far more common than actual, un-recoverable failure. Because even in the event of failure there is a 9--99% chance that you can recover your data....
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
And let's not get started on proper computer back-up strategies either
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
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I don't trust anybody, like you said it only takes a split second to disappear.
More equipment more to get lost more to go wrong. I will stick with my simple approach. For me it is the perfect mix....I have shot over 100 weddings using it with no problems.....I have my rabbits foot in my hand as I type this haha.
Remember no matter how much you plan and fuss...shit still happens.
It really is amazing what they can do to recover photos today from bad cards...but losing cards is death.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21695902@N06/
http://500px.com/Shockey
alloutdoor.smugmug.com
http://aoboudoirboise.smugmug.com/
Doesn't your insurance provider cover that? I've coverage for reshooting a wedding, I hope I never have to use it!
Do you keep it with you in the bathroom too? :-P
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
http://www.moose135photography.com
Epson 5000
Having personally tested pretty much all of these devices, my best recommendation along these lines is the Hyperdrive ColorSpace. I started with the Epsons, but switched to Hyperdrives over the past few years and could not be happier.
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
As a matter of fact I do...both of them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21695902@N06/
http://500px.com/Shockey
alloutdoor.smugmug.com
http://aoboudoirboise.smugmug.com/
Worked like magic for me !
http://www.studio-liorit.co.il
מתנה מקורית
That being said, I recently lost my first card EVER. A 32GB Lexar 1000x card. Put it into my reader and it showed up as 32MB. Called support, tried recovery. Honestly, don't really care about the files, I got my photos off the card that I needed to submit to the paper, yes, I lost a lot of shots, but, they weren't important. Almost makes me want to shoot in camera backups next week when I help a friend out.. and write to both cards at once with the same file. We'll see when the time comes...
Out of curiosity, Jim, what brand / speed card was it and where did you purchase it, and when?
I ask because I'm always gathering info on the subject, for the purpose of articles such as this: http://www.slrlounge.com/replace-memory-card-qa
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
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