High capacity CF cards for Canon Digital IXUS 400 (=S400)?

Dear reader,

I am the owner of a European model IXUS 400, which is called S400 elsewhere. I am in the

market for a large CF card for the camera, and I was wondering if the collective experience

of the photo.net membership could assist me.

I own a Sandisk 512 MB CF card and I routinely have problems with it. If I fill it up to about

80% capacity and I delete and add images on the card, it stops accepting new pictures. My

camera starts warning me about corrupt data. All of those pictures are unrecoverable,

although the initial 80% transfers to my computer fine. I remember reading somewhere

sometime long ago that Sandisk might be a bad choice for my Canon, but I don't really

know much more.

Anyway, does anybody have any insight and experience into my first question (as well as

maybe some insight into why my Canon and my Sandisk CF are not getting along)?

Have you tried reformatting your card instead of simply deleting images? Deleting images (or deleting files from any kind of digital storage device) leaves all sorts of junk data taking up space and the card will fall increasingly short of its theoretical maximum storage capacity. Reformatting cleans out all of that junk data and sets the entire capacity ready for new images.

Regarding formatting: yes, I religiously format the card after each transfer of pictures to my

computer. I always use the camera to format the card, and I normally format it twice, just to

make sure.

I rarely format and have no trouble and get the same number of shots as I ever did. Storage is cheap these days and I rarely delete in camera and have no troubles with Sandisk when I have. But my suggestion is to get a second card and not delete in camera if that is what you are doing. I use Windows Explorer in XPHE to download files to the computer by USB cable. W2K will do it just as well, NT OS etc.

I've recently encountered problems with my IXUS 400 as well.

 

My 512 MB scandisk card was corrupted. Thinking the card had failed, I replaced it with a 1 GB scandisk card. I had just used this card without any problems on my Nikon D100.

 

But after a few shots, the 1GB card also became corrupted. I am beginning to think that it is the camera that is faulty, not the cards.

 

But I don't know how to fix this problem. It may be intermitten.

Formatting the card in-camera is the best way to ensure smooth functioning between camera and card. It takes only a few seconds and is the best way to empty a card after you've downloaded the contents to a computer.

 

If formatting in-camera doesn't stop the problem from happening, your card may be faulty and would need to be returned to Sandisk. I've never heard of any reason to suspect a problem between Sandisk and Canon cameras.

I settled on a Kingston 1GB CF card, and had no problems filling it up (over 600 pictures at

full quality and size settings).

I've experimented some more with the Sandisk card and the problem appears to be a

hardware error. When trying to fill the card with files using my computer and a CF card

reader, the process abruptly stops with an error report somewhere in the 380 MB range,

which is about the same point as the camera halts.

Thanks for all the replies.

Well this sound familiar.

I have frequently (roughly every 500 pictures) have card errors or corrupted files.

CF1 Canon 32MB, rarely use it, not noticed any errors

CF2 Apacer 128MB frequent errors

CF3 DaneElec 256MB frequent errors.

 

Since I have extended the warrenty I'm still struggling to get the camera rigt. It's been send three times to Canon repaircenter the last year. And every time it's away for 4 weeks and the problem still is there. No messages from Canon they found a problem or anything. If I didn't have this warrenty I would have thrown away the cam last year. The problem is it's working fine when you're in the shop, but not when I'm using it in the field.\

 

Usually I get a warning 'Card error' and can't make pictures. If I take the card in/out it works again, but 50% chance I get a 'Corrupt file' error after that. Yesterday I noticed I couldn't find some images on the card. No error messages, but I can recover the files easily using PC Inspectors Smart Recovery. The files are not seen with explorer when viewed using a cardreader.

 

I would say, it's not the CF card since I have problems with two cards of different vendors. This leaves the cam.

 

I shall return the camera again to the shop. If they can't get it fixed...

thanks

i got it now .i will work more with Photo shop from now on.on the sdie line i try to learn more about technical items .

again thanks