mcara

Your questions are not boring at all! But I do not understand something: how can you ask question #2 if you had a point and shoot camera before getting a DSLR as you mention in question #4? That is, did you ever observe any kind of picture deterioration simply because of looking at the pictures from your point and shoot camera? Maybe you should start with an introductory book into digital photography.

Wouldn't 180 degrees away from the sun be below the horizon (unless the observer is standing on Everest)?

<p>Ok. Now, at least, I know where did I get this bad info from. It was from this website: <a href="http://photonotes.org/articles/beginner-faq/lenses.html#infinitymark">

photonotes.org</a>.</p>

Last time I have used a manual focus lens was more than 8 years ago and as I remember it did go past infinity (but it was a russian lens). If your manual focus lenses do not focus past infinity then I wish I could take back my previous post. I was obviously wrong.

It may be as Evan said to allow "hunting for focus in difficult scenes". But I think that this was done because lenses change their geometrical (and therefore optical) configuration with temperature. Therefore, at different temperatures the focus will be achieved at a different position of the focus ring. So, the focus past infinity was designed to allow focusing at infinity at various temperatures.

<p>Quoting Marika Buchberger:<i>"What did Sandisk have to say about the fact that two cards have the same serial number?"</i></p>

<p>On the phone, Clay H. from Sandisk said that it is "normal" for some cards to have identical serial numbers, especially if they are from the same batch. I would believe that the batch numbers should be the same - not the serial ones! What is the meaning of the serial number then?</p>

<p>I fully understand your concerns about Adorama's reputation, though I am inclined to believe that in the end it may be more about the Sandisk's reputation that that of the Adorama because:</p><p>1) their "experts" arrive at 2 different conclusions;</p><p>2) the "new" information pops-up unexpetedly...</p><p>3) the product photos on their website do not reflect the "new" information that they have - they should post pictures of their Extreme series with silver letters (in that case I wouldn't have suspected anything to begin with);</p><p>4) Sandisk should provide some effective means to the customers to distinguish between geniune and fake cards (maybe some kind of serial number that could be extracted using software...).</p><p>While it is true that the thread is somewhat long for a phono.net forum (compared, for example, with a dpreview typical thread) hopefully people who do searches on google will have enough patience to read the whole thread if interested in the subject.</p>

<p>The second conclusion of the Sandisk "experts" is based on the same old picture as I did not want to unpack the "blister packed" replacement card to send them another picture of the card (Sandisk knows this).</p>

<p>The original post was based on the opinion of the "experts" from Sandisk. It is not my fault that one has to bombard Sandisk with the same question to get the "right" answer (for you). To me the first answer from them was good enough. For the second answer the Sansisk's "expert" found some "new" information (which, for unknown reasons, was not available to the first "expert").</p>

<p>Again, I believe that at the time of the original post the asnwer from Sandisk "expert" seemed reasonably convincing especially because the card did look different to me from everything I saw before and even the 4GB cards that sell at from Best Buy right now. Therefore, I do not believe that the title of my post was unfounded, but I will let others to judge this.</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

<p>Dear Mr. Emre Safak,</p>

<p>What do you mean by "all the facts"? I based the title of the thread on the response that I have received from Sandisk customer service: "Unfortunately the card in the photo is not an authentic Sandisk card." - please read my original post. I believe that, at the time of the original post, I had enough information to believe that I have got a fake card from adorama.</p>

<p>If the information from the Sandisk is not "all the facts" then what would be "all the facts"?</p>

<p>I've got a replacement card from Adorama that looks exactly the same as the first card received from Adorama. Moreover, it has the same serial number!</p>

<p>I have called Sandisk customer support again and told them about this. I told them that the letters on the card that I have received have a color similar to the letters on an Ultra II card and are not golden as on my old 1GB Extreme III card. Their answer:</p>

<p> "Hello Mihai, <br>

<br>

Actually I did find out some new information for you. Basically

the newer product codes and newer cards has this "newer"

silverish look to them. The place you bought the cards from do

sell original sandisk cards. You have nothing to worry about.

<br>

<br>

Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.<br>

<br>

Sincerely,<br>

Clay H. <br>

SanDisk Technical Support"<br>

</p>

<p>For some reason this thread was removed from the list of topics on this forum and I had to google it to get back here. Maybe the moderator could fix this.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if fake and geniune cards are produced at the same facility, why would they use different tipographic quality. They could really make <i>perfectly</i> identical to geniune cards with some bad quality chips inside or maybe fill them with malanine.</p>

<p>Somebody above wrote that I should be comparing 4GB (fake) with 4GB (geniune) cards and not with a 1GB geniune. True, but ... Unfortunately, I do not have a geniune 4GB card and cannot afford buying a second card. Ask Sandisk to put a page on their website about fake cards. Even though the web is full with news about fake cards - no mention about this on the Sandisk's website.</p>

<p>I think Sandisk should act somehow on this counterfeiting matter. And they should also have some info about this on their website.</p>

A zoom of the serial numbers of the cards. See how sloppy is the writting on the upper (fake) card. Pay attention to color as well.

The package and goodies:

<p>I talked to Adorama. Whithout any question/doubt etc. they send me a shipping label. They will replace it with another card (hopefully a geniune one). When asked how can this happen they replied that all they do is to get the stuff from distributors. (The question remains: "what distributors")</p>

<p>I was able to install both RescuePro as well as Phase One LE and activate it using supplied SN/activation codes which means that this is costing the Phase One as well. I am attaching a picture showing the success of the activation. Interesting is that on the card from Phase1 it says that the offer expires in March so it should not have activated anyway...</p>

<p>This possibly means that SanDisk lost complete control over their production process in China.</p><div></div>

If the letters on the card are not as gold as the letters on the box or what you see on the sandisk's website (they have product pictures there) then you may want to consider sending pictures of your cards to sandisk for evaluation. If you do, please post back here so that we could learn something from this.

And I absolutely agree with your last post.

<p>Sandisk transcript: I am working on that. Most probably I will have to post somewhere a XPS document. Where can I post it. You will need .NET v3 to read it.</p>

<p>Edge pictures: Indeed it is hard to see any difference. Maybe I will post a zoomed picture of the SN on the edge. I see 2 things: 1) letters are less clear in the fake copy (but I will need to post a zoomed version for you to see it) and 2) the letters on the fake card have a gray with a blue tint while the SN on the geniune card are white (maybe I will leave 1 letter/digit in the geniune card for comparison purposes).</p>

<p>About what make it counterfeit: Who knows... Probably they do not want to reveal this because then we will see "perfect" copies. So I understand this.</p>

<p>Software SN: I do not know what to do... Downloading software from Capture One when I know that the card is fake... I just do not feel good about it. Who knows if it is legal too.</p>

<p>I will update tomorrow (sorry, no time today) with pictures of the goodies...</p>

<p>Jeff Spirer wrote: <i>"The way you are writing here makes it sound like you are a competitor and not a customer."</i> Particularly, what did I say to make you believe that? Also, trust me, I cannot be a competitor to anyone in the USA. Immigrations laws here forbid me this.</p>

<p>Jeff Spirer wrote: <i>""Duped" means something was done intentionally."</i> I am not a native English speaker, so please forgive me for not knowing these kind of nuances.</p>

<p>Daniel Smith wrote:<i>Could have given Adorama a chance to take care of it first, just the nice thing to do.</i> Maybe. Regardless of wether or not they will fix this issue, the main purpose of this posting was to let people know that even when buying from "reputable dealers" they can get fake memory cards. Also, people deserve to know that something fishy is going on at Adorama. That is why we use sites like www.resellerratings.com before we are buying online.</p>

<p>I searched the web to see if this happened before to anyone else. I could not find any precedent. Am I the <b>only one</b> Adorama customer who got duped or there are more? If I am the only one than that means that some bad guy got a job at Adorama and, let's say, he shipped to me a fake card and he kept the original one. If not, it means that they get their stuff from wrong suppliers and that they keep quiet about this. Buy posting here I learned that similar things happened before (see Alan Chan's post) though with different merchants.</p>

<p>Daniel Smith wrote:<i>Over 30 years photographing and I never got a fake roll or box of Kodak, Ilford or Fuji film.</i> How would you know that? Did you try to register those rolls on the Kodak/Ilford/Fuji's websites? And, where did you buy those rolls from? (local shops, Adorama, ...?)</p>

<p>Les Lammers wrote: <i>"It is quite possible that Adorama was duped too."</i></p>

<p>I would like to believe this too. That is, I hope that Adorama did not <b>knowingly</b> sold me a fake card. One thing remains to be answered though: do they get their cards from "Sandisk USA" or they get gray market cards (that turned out to be fake) from some 3rd world supplier. If they get gray market cards then they should sell them as such. That is, they should anounce on their website when an item is a gray market (or "imported") item.</p>

<p>Had I known that they do not get their cards from a USA official distributor (I would guess that would be Sandisk USA), I would not have bought from them.</p>

Actually I have asked Sandisk (trhough their e-Box) how can a retailer (especially one listed on their website) like Adorama sell fakes and who should we trust then? No answer so far from Sandisk. Probably the safest thing would be to buy directly from Sandisk but that is quite expensive. I am sure they could afford selling at the Adorama price. When they will do this I will start buying from directly them.

<p>Marika Buchberger wrote: <i>"I'll bet the fakes and the real cards are even made in the same factory...LOL!"</i></p>

<p>I also thought about this. Or maybe, anothe factory producing for Lexar... It is hard to believe that the chinese equivalent of the "Joe" could make the fake cards in his garage. But who knows... in China anything is possible.</p>

<p>I forgot to add: pictures taken with custom white ballance using Kodak gray card. By the time I was taking the back side of the cards, the light may have changed slightly. Also, when assembling the composite pictures I forgot to convert from Canon RGB to IEEE... SRGB (hopefully not a big deal).</p>

<p>To Craig Gillette: the condition and appearance of the other insert goodies was good. The travel pouch <b>feels</b> slightly different from the original one but I will have to look at that more carefully to say something for sure. I will post a picture of the "goodies" tomorrow.</p>

<p>To Marika: I know. This tutorial helped me identify the fake card but, unfortunately, the fake serial number is good to SanDisk... As you can see from the first picture, I was able to register it with SanDisk.</p>

Unfortunately, I do not have a card reader to check the card's speed.

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