Can Somebody Get a Hold Of Bob Bernardo?

<p>Hello Everyone,</p>

<p>This is the second time in a 4 months period that I make a mistake an loose images from my CF card.<br>

Last year my assistant hands me the camera with the access door to he card open for me to pop out the card which I retrieved without realizing that the camera was on and lost the images.<br>

Bob tried to help me but the couple agreed to re-shoot the engagement session and my troubles were over.<br>

<br /> This time I'm not so lucky since I lost a getting ready session for shooting beyond the capacity of the card, this one is completely my fault, no assistant to blame.<br>

I know that Bob has saved more than a couple of people around here and I really need his services. I wrote to the address on his profile but no luck. Can somebody locate him for me?<br>

My next step is to invest in a double card slot camera, this is a nightmare I never want to experience again.</p>

<p>Thank you for the help</p>

<p>Pachy</p>

<p>There are several listings for a "Bob Bernardo" on Google; Here is an e-mail address I found <a href="mailto:bob@bobbernardo.com">bob@bobbernardo.com</a></p>

<p>Bob posts in the forum all the time, you should be able to easily contact him through P-net.</p>

<p>I didn't know you could lose all the images from taking the cf card out while the camera was on?????</p>

<p>yeah, you don't want to do that Kay, not a good thing</p>

<p>FYI - It's best not to put another's email address in a forum posting. Among other things, it invites spam.</p>

<p>Try messaging him using the photo.net messaging. he always replies so if you don't hear from him for couple of days try again. he could be doing destination wedding for all we know...</p>

<p>To Kay:<br>

Yes, you could fry your cf card if you do that. make sure your camera is off when you take out or put in your cf card. so far i think you've been lucky if you;ve been doing this. it never happened to me yet since i always make sure my camera is off.</p>

<p>Thank you all for your comments, and yes!!! you get the card fried if you pull it out while the camera is off, also never go one shot over the capacity of the card or you wll be fried like I'm right now.<br>

Once again, thank you all for your support.<br>

Pachy</p>

<p>How can you go one shot over the capacity of the card? I thought the card signals that it is full. Not that I do this, but I'm curious.</p>

<p>Seriously, you guys cameras don't automatically turn off when you open the card door? not trying to troll here, I just have limited experience with non-Pentax DSLRs. Is there any difference between how easy it is to fry SD cards (what my camera uses) and CF cards...I might have to be more careful with my card readers. Does this work in the same way with card readers and computers?</p>

<p>John-Paul, with Canon cameras, the camera does not automatically turn off when the card door is opened. Besides, writing to a card takes as long as it takes--you cannot instantly shut down that process, so even if the camera turned off, the writing of the files on the card is definitely scrambled.</p>

<p>Even with card readers and computers, it is never a good idea to pull a card out when the device is still writing.</p>

<p>Thanks Nadine, I tend to reload when it's quiet and before the card is full so it doesn't get me that often - I'll certainly watch out for it though.</p>

<p>Just sent you an email Pachy! If anyone is interested my email address is <a href="mailto:bwflasher@aol.com">bwflasher@aol.com</a></p>

<p>I just got it Bob, thank you. I will be calling you now.<br>

Thanks everybody, I will post the final result and will be praying until then.</p>

<p>Any good software recovery program can help.</p>

<p>Nikon does not automatically turn off either when the door opens.</p>

<p>I've shot thousands of photos with everything from a D40 - D300 and never once lost a card or images due to removal or insertion while the camera was "On".</p>

<p>It is however a real good idea to wait until you are 100% certain that the write cycle has finished before card removal. If the green (nikon) light is flashing - No Touchy Card!</p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>www.lc-technology.com<br>

They make a recovery program that you can download and it's great. It was well worth the money we spent on it. And their customer assistance people actually answered the phone and even called back to check up on us. <br>

Does your computer see the card when you put in in your reader? If you haven't formatted the card, then recovery might be possible. If you formatted with a Fuji camera, you're probably out of luck. </p>

<p>Here's a brief explanation of how media cards work. I'm an embedded systems software engineer, and I do plenty of work with Compact Flash and SD controllers.</p>

<p>A CF card and an SD card are effectively the same from the user's point of view. There are differences in how the camera talks to them, but they both act just like the hard drive in your computer. It's just a big chunk of memory. Just like with hard drives, you put a file system on the media card which tells the camera what order to store files in. All cameras (that I know of) use the FAT file system, which is the same as Windows 95+ and is readable by Macs.</p>

<p>The FAT file system is quite old, and is therefore very fragile. When you write a new file (i.e. you take a picture), the process goes like this (simplified):<br>

1) Write picture data to empty spot on CF card<br>

2) Create a new table that points to the new file<br>

3) Delete the old table that didn't know about the new file<br>

4) Move the new table to where the old table was<br>

If you yank a CF card out while it's writing, there's a serious risk that you will interrupt it between steps 3 and 4. At that point, your old table that tells the camera where all your files are is deleted, but it hasn't been replaced yet. If this happens, when you stick the card in your PC or camera it will appear empty. Your pictures are all still on the card, but you can't access them. The card itself is still fully functional.</p>

<p>All the pictures can be recovered with recovery software at that point. If you take any new photos, though, since the camera thinks the card is empty it will write over your old ones. If you find yourself in this situation, take the card out and don't touch it until you've found recovery instructions or someone who can help.</p>

<p>Nadine: There is no way to go over capacity on a card, and there is no danger if you try. The camera simply sees there isn't enough space and gives up.</p>

<p>Automatically shutting off when you open the CF card is nice, but probably pretty worthless. It can take many seconds to finish writing to the CF card even when the camera is shutting down, and if you remove it during that time it could still be damaged. *ALWAYS* wait for the activity light to stop before removing your media. It doesn't matter if the camera is on or off, as long as it isn't writing.</p>

<p>Thanks, Trevor--just as I thought.</p>

<p>Thank you Trevor for the detailed explanation.<br>

I have good news, Bob called me to tell me that he recovered the images!!!!!<br>

I can't thank the man enough, and I'm not going to mention what he charged, but I garantee that it is the most reasonable price for this kind of service.<br>

I have to say that I'm glad I joined this community, first because I have become a better photographer by reading all the valuable information shared in the forums and most of all because the people here really care and support each other, cudos to you all.<br>

Bob, you are the man.<br /><br />Pachy </p>

<p>I meant Kudos.</p>

<p>I have recovered images using photorescue/data rescue software I downloaded off the internet for $30. The company is called Photorescue I believe. It works great and will restore the file structure on the card so you can retrieve most, if not all, your images. I paid $200 eight years ago to a professional disk savers company but you can do it yourself for a whole lot less and keep the program on your hard-drive in case you should ever need it in the future.</p>

<p>This has been discussed many times already, but I have to state that most, if not all, software recovery programs can fail and can actually make your chances of recovering your images slim.</p>

<p>I understand that people are just trying to help by promoting recovery software that worked for them, but bottom line is if it fails it is hard to explain to the bride that you tried recovering images using a software program, but it didn't work. All of her images on that card are gone. If you are in the professional wedding business, be professional and send your cards to professional recovery places.</p>

<p>I highly recommend people to <strong><em>avoid</em></strong> buying and using recovery software. It may work depending on the actual problem, but again it can also wreck any chances of getting your images back.</p>

<p>Bob is right about that. Several months ago I bought a software called CARD RECOVERY for $40.00 and I got the images, but they were not usable and badly corrupted.<br>

I ran the software 3 times thinking that maybe I was doing someting wrong but it made it worst and every time I ran it I got different images from different shoots that I did a long time ago and really was not what I was looking for.<br>

Good recovery softwares are supposed to keep the integrity of the data being recovered and I don't think there are too many out there well written to do the job right, specially not the ones thar cost $40.00, that of course is my opinion based on my experience.<br>

I rather pay a professional $200.00 to make sure he is going to get the job done than try to do it myself to save money and end up having to tell a couple that I lost the images and reimburse most of the money.</p>