Image corruption after modification

[chuck_reed1]

<p>Hi,<br>

Im a new and very proud owner of a D300s. Im also new to this forum. Im just getting into digital after working with 35mm as semi professional photojournalist ten years ao. It would seem Ive got TONS to learn. Im going to be hitting you guys up for answers quite a bit (and maybe field a question or two myself...) but today Im asking about image modification. <br>

When Im done with a shoot, Ill throw the SD card into my netbook, and copy the pics I want onto the desktop. In the process Ill rotate the images or crop them. These minor changes are then saved back to the SD card. My Nikon, however, will no longer read any image Ive manipulated that way! When Im scrolling through them on the cameras lcd screen, any image that was resaved post modification, doesnt show. Instead the camera reads "file containes no data."<br>

I know I could pull all the images off, and manipulate them after theyre on the hardrive, but that would be wasteful of space. Is this a malfunction? Is there a way to avoid it? Have you guys seen this before?<br>

Thanks a lot... Im eagerly awaiting some great answers!<br>

Chuck </p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Chuck, your Nikon camera can only display image files it captures. In fact, if you have image files from another camera model on the memory card, it probably cannot display it.</p>

<p>Hard drives are dirt cheap in these days. I wonder why you don't copy your images onto hard drive. I routinely copy my images onto 4 hard drives and store them at different locations.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>This might be a silly question, but why would you want to put modified photos back into the camera? How is putting them back onto the card saving space? What you're doing is a rather uncommon workflow.</p>

[chuck_reed1]

<p>Im not sure how to rspond to those questions/suggestions. Shun: Ill probably end up buying small hardrives some time, but Im just starting out. Half of the images I take are for practice. I could format my SD card right now and only cry over a few lost images. Furthermore, that simply seems wasteful... why save images perminantly that you only need temporarily? That just makes the coveted images harder to locate in 6 mothes when youve got a million pics.<br>

Mark: I covered an event for a friend the other day, and I had to email him a few of the pics. Thats why I loaded the SD card into the computer and modified them in the first place. Now if I see the guy in a few days and he wants to use my camera to see a few of the shots, it looks like theyve all been corrupted, when all I really did was rotate, crop... etc. Its scary loading an sd card in your nikon and seeing a bunch of red X's where your pics used to be.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>The conventional way to address that need would be to copy the files to your computer, rotate and crop, and send those *copies* to your friend. Then if he wants to see them in a few days, use the netbook, not the camera.</p>

<p>Generally speaking, you want to consider the camera a write-only, write-once device. After a shoot you copy the files off the card to two or more disks, then reformat the card in the camera.</p>

[peterafle]

<p>Chuck -- Welcome to the wild world of digital photography. I have to second (third?) what Shun and Mark have already said. </p>

<p>I think you would be hard pressed to find many other photographers who save modified images back to their SD cards. A more common workflow would be to download all the images on the card to a hard drive (better yet, to two or even more locations as backup), and save any modified versions on your computer as well. The card then returns to the camera to be formatted, which erases all the images and prepares it to be used again (and again, and again). Programs like Lightroom and the Nikon software (CaptureNX2, Transfer and Viewer) are designed to help you manage, organize and optimize the images from the time you take them off the camera through processing to end use (printing, web display, etc).</p>

<p>The SD card is your re-useable digital "film." You should consider it temporary storage of your undeveloped images. Long term storage -- your "negative files" and "albums" -- all resides on your computer's hard drives. There are lots of excellent articles on digital photography workflow here on photo.net (<a href="../learn/digital-post-processing/">http://www.photo.net/learn/digital-post-processing/</a>) and elsewhere on the web. It will take some time and trial-and-error to decide what software and processing steps work best for you, but you'll find it all makes sense once you've spent some time exploring the options.</p>

<p>Again, welcome!<br>

Pete</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Check, it is not a good idea to:</p>

<ol>

<li>Directly modify an image file the camera produces and then overwrite it. I would always keep a copy of the original around.</li>

<li>Use your computer to write any files onto the memory card, especially into the folder where the camera writes its image files. That will easily lead to confusion.</li>

</ol>

[peterafle]

<p>Chuck -- looks like your second post went up while I was typing mine. A couple of additional thoughts -- </p>

<p>First, even though you're just starting out, it's inevitable that you will end up with a sizeable collection of digital images in no time at all. My feeling is that now is the time to invest in enough hard drive space so that you are making decisions about your images based on the quality of the pictures and what you'd like to do with them, rather than on whether you have room on your computer to store them. On that score, there is no rule that says you have to save all your images permanently. I usually delete (permanently) a fair number of images after I've downloaded them onto my computer. Often they are pictures that looked sharp on the LCD on the camera, but on closer inspection, weren't worth keeping. </p>

<p>As for finding images 6 months (or 6 years) later? That's a whole conversation unto itself, but if you start now with a filing system that makes sense to you, it need not be a problem. I have tens of thousands of images, but they are all filed in chronological folders, labeled by day and event. I also use Nikon Transfer to rename the files as I transfer them, so instead of innumerable files with names like "DSC_9887.jpg," they have names like "2010-08-13_Chuck's_Birthday_DSC_9887.jpg". </p>

<p>Also, if you need to transport a few edited images to a client, and email won't do the trick, try a small USB flash drive. Even a 4gb thumb drive can be had for $20-30 these days. If he needs to see the images on site, your laptop screen is going to display them in a far more attractive fashion than even the 3" screen on your D300s.</p>

 

[chuck_reed1]

<p>Well, youre probably all correct. Ultimately, I do need to find a method of transfer, modification & organization that works for me. I'm surprised, though, that the D300s doesnt recognize an image that has been rotated or cropped. The images are still on the SD card and can be read in any other format than the Nikon.<br>

Ill get into it. What do you guys shoot with? Anyone else with a 300 or 300s? </p>

[chrisnielsen]

<p>This is where a DAM program comes in, like iView, Lightroom, etc, where you import your images then do whatever alterations you want while tagging / keywording them for later retrieval</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>"<em>Ultimately, I do need to find a method of transfer"</em> - no need to search, read you camera manual how to do it.</p>

<p>The camera memory is not a computer memory, your camera is not a computer or a computer memory device, and the memory in camera should only be written by the camera. Exception to this is Nikon's firmware upgrade process. Anything else will lead to loss of pictures.</p>

[chuck_reed1]

<p>You guys are right of course. I dont know if I find the digital darkroom such an alluring proposition though. To me, post production is really important work... and it should be studied and honed to at least a basic skill of photo modification. I, however, can't quite focus on that cause I'm still plying with the camera. That's part of the reason I use the photo display screen so much. I'm trying to learn to see what the sensor sees, and it's difficult because my level of skill doesn't quite allow me to know whether or not the camera is shooting in a consistant manner despite fluid circumtances.<br>

All that being said, I'll simply have to start looking into a DAM program, and begin devising methods of organization. Changing the file name is a helpful suggestion. I also can't figure out how to tag a pic with a comment... anybody know how to do that for the D300s?</p>

<p> </p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>You can set an image comment through the D300's menus, which will be included in the metadata of the files. This isn't the same thing as a caption. It's not the sort of thing you'd change for every shot. I have mine set to "Copyright 2010 Mark Sirota".</p>

<p>Otherwise, "tagging a pic with a comment" is the sort of thing you do in your DAM software.</p>

[fortunato_uno]

<p>Ok I'm the odd-ball here. There are times I will just use the memory card (sd) in my camera. I'll create a different folder. The camera doesn't notice it, nor will it show them.<br>

I loose some space but, with 8 gigs' it's not much of a problem. It does come in handy on occasions.<br>

Hope that helps ya.</p>

[Jerry_]

<p>A suggestion: buy a USB thumb drive for $10 or $12, and put your saved - edited - images on it.</p>

<p>Putting images back on your camera's SD card may work really well, but if you manage to tork the SD card directory area, you may not like the result....your SD card may become error-like to the camera and not work at all.</p>

<p> </p>

[jim_persons]

<p>Hi Chuck,<br>

You have gotten some very good responses here, but they don't address your original question of loss of pictures. The SD card has its own master file, very similar to a computer's Master boot record. When you change a picture by cropping it or photo shopping it, you in effect change the amount of the original data that was written to the card when the picture was taken. When this happens, the camera reads the original amount of data that was recorded,but won't find a match because the master record was not modified. The data does not match, so as far as the camera is concerned there is no file. It is not a camera malfunction. Hope this helps.<br>

Jim</p>

[adamczyk]

<p>Hi Chuck,<br>

Welcome. For the price of 2 or 3 SD cards you can get a terabyte external hard drive the size of a deck of cards. You can plug it in anywhere you want. You should be able to store 200,000 + images there and manipulate them as much or as little as you want. Using your card to store photos processed on your computer and trying to view them on the small display on your camera, seem counterintuitive to the digital work flow. Most people have hard time seeing any details on that little screen, so I don't see why you would want to do that anyway. Plus if you catch a virus from your computer there is a small chance it can affect your cameras' OS. As far not being able to see photos after they have been altered outside of your camera? I had the same issue few times before (before I tweeked my digital flow). Now I get the photos of the card ASAP to avoid any corruption issues.<br>

Tom</p>

[robert_posey]

<p><em>..... post production is really important work... and it should be studied and honed to at least a basic skill of photo modification.</em><br /><br />Chuck,<br />This is no doubt true where film and chemicals are involved in processing photos. But one of the best ways to learn to use software programs, including ones for photography, is to do just that - use them. Generally speaking, if you do not 'Save' any changes made to the file being worked, you will retain the original.<br>

BUT - for safety sake, here's a good rule of thumb: save two copies of your photos to two different folders <em>(preferably, two different hard drives)</em> when you download them from your camera's SD card.<br>

For example, you might name one folder something like; 'Vacation 2010_raw (or originals)' and the other one, 'Vacation 2010_Work'. Use the files in the Work folder to practice on and leave the originals as an archive for future use. <br /><br />If you don't already have a program to tweak and/or modify you photos, here's one you can download. It's totally free. Adobe's Lightroom, it's not. But it is a very good program to get you started with the basics of photography work flow.<br />http://www.irfanview.com/<br /><br />This is pretty basic advice, but I hope it helps. Oh! - and welcome!!<br /><br /></p>