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Corrupted card / lost photos!!! Please repeat after me ....
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Please repeat after me: "I will never use a 32GB card for a wedding".
The day came, and my biggest worry became real! A few weeks ago I shot a gorgeous (and I mean GORGEOUS!) wedding with one of the nicest couples ever! It was a destination wedding, so I figured I'd travel light & smart .... I haven't invested in cards in a while, and since I've NEVER had ANY issues with any cards being corrupt I decided to go big and buy a 32GB Lexar card, after I read up on it and didn't find any bad reviews. I was just sick of changing cards and running out of memory in the worst moment.
Well .... I shot the wedding and all went well ... The couple decided to meet up bright an early the next morning and get some TTD shots done. I have to be honest, I was WAY to exhausted after the wedding and crashed on the bed a little after I got back to the hotel. I didn't download the cards (I bought two since I have a double card slot), and figured the safest place for them would be my camera anyway. Well ... 2 photos into my TTD shoot I got an error message and I couldn't record onto my card(s) anymore (the first card anyway). I like staying positive, and this HAS happened to me before, though this time ... this time I was NOT able to read my files once I got home / back to the hotel .... my computer didn't even want to read the card itself. I immediately downloaded some rescue programs .... no luck there either (as mentioned my computer didn't even want to read / connect with the card). A great friend of ours, who joined us on the trip was a computer geek so he ended up volunteering reading the card, but after a lot of tweaking all he saw were some scary ZEROS on it .... and I lost my hope.
HOW ON EARTH DO YOU TELL YOUR CLIENTS THIS HAS HAPPENED?? And .... I decided I would while still on the trip, since I really didn't want to go home without ANY photos + I was there for an other 4 days / so were they. I did end up telling them ... and I gotta say I must have been the luckiest photographer ever ... After they heard what I had to say (uhm, I broke out in tears - I just ruined somebody's wedding memories after all!!) .... they stayed calm and positive as can be and just told me that they believed everything would turn out ok. How .... how could that ever turn out ok? I was really desperate! I googled for rescue companies before I talked to them, but to be honest I didn't have much hope after I saw all the zeros on my card. Once we got home I talked to the Lexar people, and even if they told me the'd try, they told me they never heard of such an error and I somehow didn't get a good vibe from them, so I decided to get help from fellow smuguggers .... and one name came highly recommended:
Please - for your own sake (I know there are many companies out there ... but!) .... save this link:
http://tallyns.com
Scott gave me a call as soon as he received my card and ... even if there wasn't much hope for it, he said he'd do EVERYTHING he could to try to get the files - and so he did! A few weeks after our initial call he told me he replaced parts of the card that somehow got broken (don't ask me any details), and he was able to recover them! I am sure you guys all can imagine how relieved and happy I felt .... and how thankful!
There goes my lesson ... I never thought this would happen to me ... I never knew anybody this had happened to ..... but YOU GUYS you do now! Let this be a warning to all of you sweet people on here! Cards DO go bad! and in most cases files CAN be recovered (I had no idea that files can be recovered even after you reformatted the card ... which has not happened this time ... I'm just saying ...).
And now please, please, please ... mark your bookmarks:
http://tallyns.com
IN CASE YOU DO EVER LOSE DATA (let's hope you won't but IF), give Scott Tallyn a call, he's the best out there and will try absolutely everything to get your data back! You'll be in good hands with him!
AND ... please do yourself the favor and go buy some smaller cards!
Hope everybody is having a good wedding season! :lust
The day came, and my biggest worry became real! A few weeks ago I shot a gorgeous (and I mean GORGEOUS!) wedding with one of the nicest couples ever! It was a destination wedding, so I figured I'd travel light & smart .... I haven't invested in cards in a while, and since I've NEVER had ANY issues with any cards being corrupt I decided to go big and buy a 32GB Lexar card, after I read up on it and didn't find any bad reviews. I was just sick of changing cards and running out of memory in the worst moment.
Well .... I shot the wedding and all went well ... The couple decided to meet up bright an early the next morning and get some TTD shots done. I have to be honest, I was WAY to exhausted after the wedding and crashed on the bed a little after I got back to the hotel. I didn't download the cards (I bought two since I have a double card slot), and figured the safest place for them would be my camera anyway. Well ... 2 photos into my TTD shoot I got an error message and I couldn't record onto my card(s) anymore (the first card anyway). I like staying positive, and this HAS happened to me before, though this time ... this time I was NOT able to read my files once I got home / back to the hotel .... my computer didn't even want to read the card itself. I immediately downloaded some rescue programs .... no luck there either (as mentioned my computer didn't even want to read / connect with the card). A great friend of ours, who joined us on the trip was a computer geek so he ended up volunteering reading the card, but after a lot of tweaking all he saw were some scary ZEROS on it .... and I lost my hope.
HOW ON EARTH DO YOU TELL YOUR CLIENTS THIS HAS HAPPENED?? And .... I decided I would while still on the trip, since I really didn't want to go home without ANY photos + I was there for an other 4 days / so were they. I did end up telling them ... and I gotta say I must have been the luckiest photographer ever ... After they heard what I had to say (uhm, I broke out in tears - I just ruined somebody's wedding memories after all!!) .... they stayed calm and positive as can be and just told me that they believed everything would turn out ok. How .... how could that ever turn out ok? I was really desperate! I googled for rescue companies before I talked to them, but to be honest I didn't have much hope after I saw all the zeros on my card. Once we got home I talked to the Lexar people, and even if they told me the'd try, they told me they never heard of such an error and I somehow didn't get a good vibe from them, so I decided to get help from fellow smuguggers .... and one name came highly recommended:
Please - for your own sake (I know there are many companies out there ... but!) .... save this link:
http://tallyns.com
Scott gave me a call as soon as he received my card and ... even if there wasn't much hope for it, he said he'd do EVERYTHING he could to try to get the files - and so he did! A few weeks after our initial call he told me he replaced parts of the card that somehow got broken (don't ask me any details), and he was able to recover them! I am sure you guys all can imagine how relieved and happy I felt .... and how thankful!
There goes my lesson ... I never thought this would happen to me ... I never knew anybody this had happened to ..... but YOU GUYS you do now! Let this be a warning to all of you sweet people on here! Cards DO go bad! and in most cases files CAN be recovered (I had no idea that files can be recovered even after you reformatted the card ... which has not happened this time ... I'm just saying ...).
And now please, please, please ... mark your bookmarks:
http://tallyns.com
IN CASE YOU DO EVER LOSE DATA (let's hope you won't but IF), give Scott Tallyn a call, he's the best out there and will try absolutely everything to get your data back! You'll be in good hands with him!
AND ... please do yourself the favor and go buy some smaller cards!
Hope everybody is having a good wedding season! :lust
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Comments
There's some great information in your post, but I'm curious why you're so against 32GB cards specifically? I'd be more likely to chalk this up to using a new untested card, but nothing tells me it's due to the specific card size...
Well ... I had my ENTIRE wedding on that card. Since the card got corrupted I initially lost ALL of my photos. Wouldn't have happened if I would have used smaller cards along the way ...
Oh, and I DID use the card before ... I had smaller shoots before the wedding where I shot on that same card ... so it was definitely not because it was never tested ...
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I know they do + it was a pro card also, so it would have def been for free and I would have gotten a new card out of it. But in a case like this, would you hand your card to a big company with hundreds of employees - where you're just one of hundreds of daily clients .... and where they probably only give each card 3 tries or would you hand it to somebody that you talked to personally and who not only understands how *important* those files are but also promised you to do anything possible to rescue them?
Cuong
USE YOUR DUAL CARD SLOTS!!!
This is what our studio does, now that they all have 5D mk3's... We shoot on ~8 GB CF cards just like always, but then we also use a 64 GB SD card that stays in the camera all day long...
I also recently obtained a 32GB CF card, and one thing I did was I made sure to shoot it FULL before using it professionally. The problem with huge cards like that is, you could own it for months without ever shooting it all the way full, and the corruption issues may only show up until it's nearly full. (Although it sounds like this wasn't your issue, if the card had physically broken parts...)
BTW, the service I use is Drive Savers. They are also extremely reliable, miracle-workers. In fact they have a team with government clearance, for recovering data for the FBI / CIA. Crazy stuff!
Either way, the bottom line is BE SAFE, and then the second bottom line is DON'T GIVE UP HOPE! :-)
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
www.tednghiem.com
My story: I changed cards in the dark in a parking lot on a very cold night. I dropped what I thought was one card (in a case) and picked it up and must have dropped two and not realized it. It was long gone. I seriously thought I might have a nervous breakdown there for a while.... I ended up paying for tuxes... gowns... flowers...etc... and re staging the set that was on the card and did an extra after shoot for the bride and groom. Fortunately, it was just a few reproducible photos of very gracious family... Sure I paid through the nose to do that re staging, but it was worth every penny. Just like my MKIII, with its dual slots. (I love it for more reasons than that, but it is the major reason I upgraded the moment it came out.) ( I use 8 gig cards so they are in small batches.)
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Dannnng, Heather!
www.tednghiem.com
Yiiikes!!!!! I did something similar (though definitely not as costly - holy smokers!!). Since the entire family was still there we redid all the family photos and all the posed photos of the couple. I could just not leave without having AT LEAST those. Both families were SO understanding and I was just really glad the couple wasn't mad (well ... they were definitely sad & upset at the situation but not mad at me - THANK GOODNESS!!) and they were up for more photos (I even ended up taking photos of them getting ready again). Well, SO glad it all worked out, and now the couple has even more photos. PHEW!
Yup. writing on two cards simultaneously has been a must from then on.
Btw, go figure ... this was the first wedding in 6 (!) years where I didn't have a second shooter with me!
Dun dun Dunnnnnnnnnnnn!!!
www.tednghiem.com
I'm glad you were able to recover your images. Discovering the loss had to be a heart breaking moment for you.
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=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Yep, I now never leave a camera with memory cards in it alone. I learned that lesson the hard way when I lost my second shooters images.
A very valid point that leads to the topic of risk management, which I'll leave for another discussion.
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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.
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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.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
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=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
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.
so happy you were able to recover the files successfully!
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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=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
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.
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* 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=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
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