Problem downloading photos...any help appreciated

[jugenjury]

<p>OK. This may be a unique problem. I'll lay it out and show some examples of what I'm talking about.</p>

 

<p>I have a Canon Rebel XTi. When I first got the camera, everything was fine. Over time, some photos would

download to my computer and look messed up as in the examples below. Gradually, more and more photos would

download this way. I contacted Canon support and we eventually came to the conclusion it was my computer. I

plugged the camera into my laptop and all the photos downloaded with no problems and looked fine. If I download

my photos a few times, I get different photos that are messed up each time. Some that were messed up the first

time are fine after and vice versa. I've downloaded them using the supplied Canon software and plugging the

camera into the USB, using Adobe's bridge software through USB, using a USB card reader with Adobe bridge or

windows explorer file copy, using the internal card reader on the computer the same way and no matter which way I

do it, the same thing happens. Sometimes it works fine, but now it's becoming a major problem for me and very

frustrating. If I boot into safe mode, I can transfer the images fine which leads me to believe it's a software

problem on my computer, I just don't know what software can cause this. I've turned off all anti-virus type

programs when trying this and that didn't help. This isn't just the way the images display on my computer, this

is how they are saved to my hard drive since when I copy the images elsewhere....website, cd, etc....they come

out the same way. I have noticed that the problems are always related to the direction of shutter travel in the

camera, but since I can download the same photo with no problems I think I can rule out the camera as the

problem. So, anyway, here are some examples along with the good versions of the same photos:</p>

 

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/BPIMG_4895.jpg'>

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/GPIMG_4895.jpg'><br><br>

 

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/BPIMG_4897.jpg'>

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/GPIMG_4897.jpg'><br><br>

 

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/BPIMG_4901.jpg'>

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/GPIMG_4901.jpg'><br><br>

 

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/BPIMG_4906.jpg'>

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/GPIMG_4906.jpg'><br><br>

 

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/BPIMG_4915.jpg'>

<img src='http://www.nunuvyer.biz/images/GPIMG_4915.jpg'><br><br>

[beauh44]

Hi Mike, That's weird! The only thing I can think of is there's data corruption happening on your PC's USB bus. If the

photos download fine to your laptop, then they're being recorded properly on the card - and your camera's ok.

 

Since you've used a card-reader and still have problems, the only thing I can think of is a USB problem with your PC. I'm

not sure how you can test that except perhaps to contact the manufacturer of your PC to see if some diagnostics exist

to test out your PC's USB ports.

 

One thing you might try: If you have a friend with a different camera, card and card reader, try downloading some photos

from his or her card using his/her card-reader and your PC. (I'd avoid using the camera - it just introduces more

complexity with drivers, etc.) If no image - including yours and your friend's - will copy properly via any USB card reader,

I'd have to conclude something's messed up in your PC's USB bus and you'd want to contact your PC's manufacturer.

Good luck!

[jugenjury]

Thanks Beau! I really hadn't thought it could be a USB bus problem. That does make sense though now that I think

of it since all the components to download the pics go through the USB bus. It may be a problem with the windows

vista drivers for the bus since when I boot into safe mode, it works fine but probably loads generic USB bus

drivers and not the windows vista specific drivers.

 

Thanks a lot. This just might be the cause.

[JAPster]

Hi there.

 

Here are some suggestions that might help your situation.

 

I. To prevent corruption of files while card is IN THE CAMERA.

 

1. Always operate the camera with fully charged batteries.

 

2. Always FORMAT the picture card right before each new picture taking session.

 

3. Do 3 sequential FORMATS to confirm (as best you can) the integrity of picture card structures.

 

4. Set up your camera correctly.

 

5. Get into the habit of observing the picture card activity light. And, then, NEVER turn the camera OFF while the picture card activity light is active. Wait for it to go out, and give it a few seconds, before changing the camera's state.

 

6. Always keep the camera (and its loaded picture card) from ANY types of electrical sources that might corrupt the data stored in memory.

 

II. When Transferring Pics to the Computer

 

1. Turn camera OFF before removing the picture card.

 

2. Keep your fingers away from the electrical contact points on the picture card.

 

3. Keep the picture card away from any electrical sources that might erase data from the card.

 

4. Try using a different picture card reader, preferably one made by a name brand company.

 

5. Insert the picture card into the reader all the way.

 

6. On the computer, DO NOT use any kind of external USB HUB, those little gadgets that let you plug 18,000,000 USB devices into one port. If you are using an external USB HUB, pls remove it.

 

7. Also, remove any external USB device that might be considered "optional, but not necessary". For example, if using a laptop, you could remove the USB mouse, and just use the Touchpad. It should be OK to leave external Hard Drives plugged into the USB. Probably should remove any USB type "thumb drives" or "memory sticks". The objective here is to simply disconnect any non-essential USB devices that *might* be a source of signal interference on the USB interface. ** Important: If your system is up ad running the OS, and you already have USB devices attached, you DO NOT want to just yank them off w/o doing a proper shutdown on the device. That might damage the device because the O/S will still have open "read" and "write" streams pointing to that device. Be sure to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" widget, located down in the System Tray, in the bottom, right hand corner of the workspace. Click on it, and select the Drive Letter for the USB device to remove, and then select the option to shut it down. When you see the msg "Now Safe to Remove Hardware", then its OK to physically detach it from the computer.

 

8. On your screen, save your work, then shutdown any actively running programs, and then close out their windows. You just want the empty workspace to be sitting there before you. But no other apps running. No Photoshop. No Lightroom. No Aperture. No email. No nothing. Just you and the workspace. The reason for this, is that we want your computer to give FULL and UNDISTRACTED microprocessor attention to your picture card device, as soon as you plug it in.

 

9.Now, plug in the picture card reader. On a plug-n-play system like XP, the o/s should recognize your picture card as a "drive", and should automatically mount it. This might take a few seconds or longer, depending on the speed and power of your PC or laptop.

 

10. If your system is set up to have some camera software automatically see that card, and automatically begin "fetching" the picturs off the card, I would suggest that you "Cancel" out that program. You may have to wait till it gets to a good stopping point. But at some point, you want to CANCEL that auto-fetch program, so that you can take over the process manually.

 

11. Now use MyComputer to navigate down and see your list of local drive letters. By this point, the picture card reader should be listed as one of the drives. Double-click on that Drive Letter to drill down into it and see the picture files folder. You might have to drill down one or two levels.

 

12. Now, RIGHT CLICK on the picture file folder, and select COPY.

 

13. Now, use mouse or touchpad to move pointer back out to your workspace, and do another RIGHT CLICK and select PASTE. This will begin to "manually" copy all the picture files from the card to the desktop, using the o/s copy functions.

 

Now, we want this process to run as "cleanly" and "un-distractedly" as we can. That means, we do NOT want to try doing anything else on the computer while this copy is running. So, just sit there, and watch the files copy down. It might take anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes, depending on how many files you have and how big they are.

 

Also, we want to copy the files to the DESKTOP, so that the files are initially saved to the C drive or Boot Drive, which is usually NOT a USB drive. We want the USB interface to ONLY be handling the traffic of pulling files off the card reader. We do not want to add new traffic to the USB bus, by copying the files to an external. We will do that next, after we confirm the integrity of the pictures files.

 

But, the point is, at this point, we do not want to try to make the computer do anything else, other than fetch your picture files using the manual copy method.

 

14. When all the files finish copying to your Desktop folder, THEN run a simple program like IRFANVIEW (free program available from www.irfanview.com ) to do a quick inspection on each picture file. Launch Irfanview, navigate to the Desktop folder, under My Documents, and find the picture file folder thats sitting on the Desktop. Thats the one you just copied down from the card reader. Open that folder in Irfanview, and browse through your images. See if any one them look corrupt, with the corruption problem you saw earlier. Hopefully, you won't see any bad images.

 

15. If ALL the images look OK, and acceptable, THEN copy them to the external USB hard drive so that you will have an online backup copy of the pictures. At the earliest convenience, you may want to use IrfanView again, to quikly scroll through all the pictures, from the external hard drive copy.

 

I think I agree with the other commentators who feel the problem is somehow with the USB connection. Looks like the system is handling these graphics files, but all of a sudden something else is "going active" on the USB bus, which temporarily messes up the data transmission "sync" and "timing" of the bitmap data coming from the picture files. And thats probably the source of the corruption. But, stating this, we are making the ASSUMPTION that the images are OK in the camera, before we pull them out. And thats an assumptions thats untested. You would have to inspect each and every image file while the picture card is in the camera, by using the LCD preview screen to inspect each image, to confirm that none of the images are getting corrupted in the camera.

 

 

 

So, try implementing these suggestions into your workflow, and see if things get better, get worse, or stay the same.

 

AP

[beauh44]

I'm not sure I follow this:<P>

 

<I>ASSUMPTION that the images are OK in the camera, before we pull them out. And thats an assumptions thats untested</i><P>

 

He's posted the "good" versions along with the "bad". If the problem was in-camera, or even the card, how could there ever have been a "good" version at all?<P>

 

Conversely, I've also encountered (fortunately on rare occasions) a situation where an image looks just fine, in-camera, on the LCD screen, but once I copied it and/or looked at it elsewhere, there was obviously data-corruption.<P>

 

I still think using the good old "swaptronics" methodology - i.e. using someone else's camera, card and another card-reader, with the suspect PC, will go a long way towards isolating the problem.

[jugenjury]

Thanks Alan,

 

Those are good suggestions. As Beau mentioned, though, I'm almost positive the problem is not in the camera or the card since I can download the photos on other computers just fine or reboot into safe mode with mine and download them fine also. The other thing that leads me to that is if I download the photos multiple times, the good photos and bad photos are not always the same. It's completely random which photos get messed up during transfer.

 

I'm really starting to think Beau is onto something with the USB bus and your suggestions on unplugging everything is definitely something to try. It could just be a peripheral I have plugged in that's causing the data corruption so I will unplug everything except the camera, mouse, and keyboard and try that. If that doesn't solve it, then it's either the USB drivers or actual hardware.

 

Thanks for the help guys. You've led me in some directions that I hadn't thought of. I would have been pulling my hair out if I had any left.

[raddatzphoto]

Geeze Al, film was so much simpler! I know your advice is correct, and I suppose I might be jinxing myself, but I have

never ever experienced a single problem, although I seem to have broken every rule you mention over the years.

[jugenjury]

OK. Here's where it stands. I tried plugging the camera directly into an empty USB slot on the computer itself instead of through a USB hub. The photos downloaded without any problems and I was able to view them in Irfan view. Now, here is where I'm thinking it may be more software related. When I open them in Adobe Bridge, the icons look fine no matter how large I make them. When I open from Bridge into camera raw (I shoot raw format) 3 out of about 70 come up splotched. Not as bad as the examples above, but still unusable even though they look fine at 100% in Irfanview. This is starting to make me think I need to uninstall and reinstall my CS3.

 

Michael, I'm the same way. I've never had a problem with anything up until now. The thing that kept bothering me also was any other data transfer through my USB bus no matter how much always came out fine. The only corruption was with image files from the card/camera to the hard drive, either raw or jpg format. This is why I decided to ask the question here in a photographer's forum in case anyone else experienced the same or similar problem.

 

Thanks again everyone.