What Happened Here?

<p>I am working with a brand new D700, a replacement for my old D700 that died in a tragic accident. The attached image is from my fourth, maybe fifth shoot with the new camera. Trying to shoot birds, I got fairly good result, but this one ... well, I'm not sure what it is. I'm also not sure if I should simply disregard it as an anomaly, or if I should be concerned about it. This image was the second in a burst on continuous high. I was using the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6. The camera has performed flawlessly with this one exception. Any ideas, help, or comments will be greatly appreciated. </p><div></div>

<p>Does it show up this way on the camera's LCD screen or just on your computer after you downloaded the images?</p>

<p>It's a corrupt file, obviously. Do you format your CF cards in-camera? When you're dumping data off of them, how do you go about it, and are you properly dismounting the cards from your reader before physically removing them? Once you're sure you've got your data from the card, and have at least one redundant backup, try formatting the card in the camera.</p>

<p>Matt - Thanks. I Always format the card in the camera, never any other way. I download using Nikon Transfer and a SanDisk card reader directly into my MacBook Pro. The card is a Lexar Professional 4GB, 133x Speed. The card is a couple of years old, but I assume still good. And, I dismount the reader from the MacBook, then remove the card - unless I am downloading multiple cards with is rarely the case, and not the case here. But, I could be that I became careless this once, can't really say. But I do appreciate the thoughts and I'll take care to follow protocol in the future.</p>

<p>Rob - good thought. As far as I can tell, looking at the image in the camera, I see nothing wrong. So I'm guessing something went wrong during the transfer process - and I would not rule out user error.</p>

<p>Were you shooting RAW, JPG, or both? And, it would be interesting to see if re-transferring the same file on a second pass shows the same artifacts.</p>

<p>If the shot is still on the card, and it looks OK on the camera LCD (as Bob asked), I'd try re-transferring (as Matt suggests). I'd just drag the image file from the card to your Mac rather than using Nikon Transfer (which has been known to corrupt files on occasion, especially when using obsolete versions with newer files - Nikon Transfer doesn't just do a passive copy, it actually writes metadata). If the file on the card has been deleted, it might even be worth undeleting it just to try this, e.g. with this tool:</p>

<p>http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec</p>

<p>Simple guide:</p>

<p>http://pim.famnit.upr.si/blog/index.php?/archives/56-Rescue-photos-from--memory-card-with-PhotoRec.html</p>

<p>don't feel bad. two weekends ago i went into town to do some street shooting, bringing my D3100 and a few MF prime lenses (i guess i'm a masochist). when i got home and started looking through my photos, this one -- for obvious reasons -- jumped out at me.<br>

in my several years of shooting with nikon DSLRs, this is the very first time i've ever had something like this occur. i can't put it on any particular cause; i can only guess.<br>

my preferred theory is that some anomaly occurred during the write operation to the SD card. all my images are shot as RAW, and are copied to the PC using a card reader. while the .jpg preview embedded in the RAW is clean, there appears to be no way to fix the RAW itself.<br>

IF this were to happen again in the near future with any frequency, i would begin to be concerned. i would first off suspect a problem with the memory card, and only after eliminating that as a cause would i escalate to the D3100. so far, however, it's an isolated event, and so i'm taking no measures at all.</p><div></div>

<p>I did try re-transferring the image using Nikon Transfer (did not think of the drop and drag process) and the software did not recognize the image. No could do. So, somewhere, the corruption process reached back to the card. And, Matt, yes it was a RAW image. I only shoot RAW and have never had this issue again, but I'm beginning to think that somehow I must have screwed up. I have re-formatted the card and plan to shoot some test shots into it before using it for a real shoot. Moral, I guess, is to slow down and pay attention. Thanks to everyone for your help.</p>

<p>If you still have the card with the "bad" images on it, download Nikon View NX2 to your laptop or pc from Nikonusa.com. It is free.Then put your card into your card reader and have View NX2 read the image files on the card to see what is there. If the "corrupted" file is not corrupted, then you have a clue that the corruption took place during the download process. I shoot Nikon and use Downloader Pro to download my NEF images from my D 300s and D 700. Never have had a problem. Nikon Transfer was not around when I first got my D 200. Joe Smith</p>

<p>If you *really* want to find out what happened, you could also try some photorescue software, and see what it comes up with.</p>

<p>I've had good results once on a friend's sd card (she only shot jpg, so no idea how it performs with RAW) with <a href="http://www.cardrescue.com/">cardrescue</a>. Like most of its kind you can try and see if it finds anything before forking over the money to actually rescue the pictures, so in this case you might be able to see if it *could* still rescue the RAW.<br>

There are other programs out there as well btw, and they might be just as good/better/cheaper, but I only tried out this one.</p>

<p>I would put this occurrence down to a one time problem with the transfer, though would seriously consider trying copying using Finder (you use OSX, right?) before using Nikon Transfer again if it really writes data during transfer. I've only ever used Finder, and so far have not had any problems (but then again, neither had you up until now ;) ).</p>

<p>Good luck,<br>

Joris</p>

<p>Something very strange is going on with these images. What kind of CF card are you using? I have used Sandisk cards throughout and never had problems with them, but have heard of problems with other types of cards. Try switching to another brand of card and see if the problem persists. If it does, then the camera may be the culprit rather than the card.</p>

<p>Also, try removing the card from the camera and plug it directly into the computer either via an external card reader or if your computer has built in card readers like my Dell does. This will eliminate potential corrupting of the image through transfer. Your batteries will also last longer if you do it this way as well!</p>

<p>As long as we're talking about whacky camera behavior. Take a look at this sequence taken with a D700 and 80-200/2.8D-AF and CL mode at the Rodeo a couple weeks ago:<br /> <img src="http://www.dlaab.com/photo/Rodeo-1.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><br /> <img src="http://www.dlaab.com/photo/Rodeo-2.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p><img src="http://www.dlaab.com/photo/Rodeo-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>mmm Are al these examples from a "Continuous Shooting" series ? , If so then it looks like the buffer of the cam's does not always get shifted / emtied fast enough to support the continuous mode.. or the memory card is not fast enough for this mode..<br>

It looks a bit similar to high speed shooting on film with an old fashioned winder that needs servicing... :-)</p>

<p>In a JPG file, all it takes is an omission or insertion error of *one* single bit to produce the type of error seen in the first two images in this thread, i.e., everything after that one minuscule error is rendered incorrectly. This is because of the way the data is stored in the (compressed) JPG file. In contrast, if a bit gets omitted or switched in a TIFF, BMP, and most other uncompressed file formats, only that pixel becomes corrupted, not the remainder of the file. </p>

<p>The 1st two images in this thread are prime examples of why archiving images in JPG format is not generally recommended. "Bit rot" is uncommon, but if you have enough bits (...and you do when you have lots of pix...), and copy the files enough times, eventually some bit will be copied incorrectly, and the result will be what you see, not one single bad pixel.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>Hi Dan,<br>

the middle image of the three appears to have almost no movement blur (hooves, tails etc.) so a faster shutter speed than the other two images' would seem to have been selected by your camera.<br>

Good luck.</p>

 

<p>David, good catch. At first, I though the aperture didn't close, but the camera was on aperture priority at f2.8. I wonder if I caught the instant that the house photographer fired the arena strobes? That would explain the stop action and the over-exposure.</p>