Memory Cards

[LadyJaine]

Did you know that if you delete photos in the camera, you risk corrupting your cards? Every source I've ever read that I trust says do NOT edit in camera. It does not matter how fancy your in-camera editing is. If you have a choice, don't even delete bad shots while the card is in your camera. Take the card out of the camera, put it into a card reader and attach that to your computer. Download the photos to your computer from the card reader. You can delete photos from the card while it is attached to your computer if you want to, but you don't have to. Then put the card back into your camera and format it. You will have less wear and tear on your camera and you will have fewer corrupted cards. Do NOT use your memory cards as storage for photos. They are best used as a way to move photos from your camera to your computer. Move them frequently and regularly. A happy memory card is an empty memory card.

How many times have you seen someone looking through the photos on the card in their camera and flipping through Christmas last year, a son's birthday, a trip to the zoo, and the pictures from the birthday party last week? That is a great way to lose the photos to a card corruption issue. It's a great way to delete photos that you haven't had a chance to look at or print out because you think you want photos from today more than you want those pictures from last Christmas, so you delete them to make room on the card.

The convention that has been created by camera storage bag makers and is frequently used is; if a card is inside a card storage pocket and the red ribbon flap is tucked inside the pocket, the card is blank and formatted and is OK to use. If the red ribbon flap has been pulled out, the card has photos on it and it may not be used in the camera. This convention has become very popular. It works, it is easy to use and remember and it is built into the storage pockets of camera bags already and requires minimal effort. While Molly-Sue Whooserface's quilted fabric camera bag (on sale at her etsy shop!) might be cute as all get out, it probably doesn't have the red ribbon tabs on the memory card storage pockets, if it has card storage pockets at all.

Last, but not least, the rule of thumb that I try to use is to have the photos copied to two different places before I delete them from the memory card. I'll copy them to my computer and wait for my automatic backup to grab a back up copy before I throw the card in the camera and format it.

If you have a card that is storing last year's Christmas and so on, chances are that you are using a really big card. That's also not a good idea. The pros, who are constantly seeking ways to reduce the chance of losing that perfect shot, don't use really big memory cards. If they have all their pictures on one card at the end of the day, the last thing they want is for that card to go bad and to lose an entire day's work. They want to spread those pictures out over three or four cards, so if a card goes bad (and they will, even if you don't ever edit in camera) they have only lost part of the day's work. It is cheaper and safer in the long run to have multiple smaller cards than it is to have one gigunda memory card. Even if you have to get some ugly camera bag to store your cards, instead of that uber cute one from Molly-Sue.

[Paula]

nice info--thanks for sharing!

[mpizzazz]

Ok, so let me ask you this, I never take my memory card out of the camera. I don't even think I have a card reader. I plug the camera into the computer with a cord to get the photos onto the computer. Then I delete the photos off the camera. So, this is bad?

[ChristyB]

I do like Marianne.
Wondering the same thing.


(and also passing info on to my mom who has pics from the last 2 years still in her camera)

[LadyJaine]

Ok, so let me ask you this, I never take my memory card out of the camera. I don't even think I have a card reader. I plug the camera into the computer with a cord to get the photos onto the computer. Then I delete the photos off the camera. So, this is bad?

It is harder on the camera than taking the card out and reading it through a card reader. The camera has to work twice. Once to get the photo onto the card and then a second time to move the photo off the card. Cameras are not computers, created to work with files, moving them, editing, and saving them. Cameras are built to do one thing well and that's take the picture. One card reader can be used with many different cameras and memory cards.

In reality, most folks use the cord that came with the camera. They also don't take as many pictures as a professional photographer, so the increased wear and tear isn't that big a deal. A single wedding shoot produces more pictures than the mamarazzi photographer probably takes all year. I took over 300 pictures on March 30 for a golf tournament. That would be 600 photos to move, because I shoot in both .jpg and raw. For a wedding, I'd expect to take well over a thousand shots. Easily. You don't get do-overs for a wedding.

And two years worth of photos still on the camera? YIKES!!! The chances of a camera getting dropped, rained on, or otherwise damaged are phenomenal compared to the chances of a computer that sits quietly in the house, plugged into a surge protector. Nobody tries to put a mid-tower into a pocket or purse or sets it down on a table next to the punch bowl...

[LadyJaine]

I do like Marianne.
Wondering the same thing.


(and also passing info on to my mom who has pics from the last 2 years still in her camera)

Get your mom a digital photo frame. Get her a digital photo key chain, get her some way to flip through and display those photos that is not the screen on the back of her camera. That's one of the reasons that folks keep them on the camera. They can flip through them and see them without needing to sit down at that big, complicated, heavy, inconvenient computer machine thingy. They know where they are and can carry them around in something small that they know how to operate.

Because if you just scare her to death that she's going to lose her photos, it isn't very useful. Instead of telling her to put the photos onto the computer, which she probably already knows she should do, but does not want to struggle with the transfer process she never learned, motivate her and give her a fun way to display the photos. Encourage her to keep all her pictures safely on her computer and then COPY a few to the digital keychain, or the digital frame. She can swap them when she wants to look at different pictures or gets new ones. You may find that you have to do the transfers for her and suddenly become her camera guru. That's OK, too. I had some wonderful times being a guru for my mom. We'd look through photos and she'd comment about the ones that she loved the most, and why.

Technology is only as good as the user experience. If you understand what is going on and why you are doing things, your experience improves.

[jfugina]

Thanks Jean - I didn't know that deleting bad shots on the camera could damage a card. I do typically use a card reader, or the slot that's directly in my laptop, to move photos off the card, but occasionally when a shot clearly bad, I just delete right away to save space. But I'll try to refrain from doing that in the future.

I usually don't have the issue of having more than a couple of months worth of photos on the card before I'm wanting to off-load them. But my mother has at least a year's worth of stuff. I think she's one of those people who really should have just stuck with film. She at least stayed on top of getting photos processed when she used film. I do worry that someday she's going to lose an entire year's worth of stuff, and just wind up throwing her camera in the trash because she will blame it on the technology.

Thanks for the tips Jean!

[troublesmom]

I also think this is interesting. I will have to quit deleting bad photos and clear my memory cards. I take the card out of the camera and put it in my printer/copier/scanner but I don't always delete them. I really want to get CD's of them and then delete them. I need to get to Target.

[bethrich]

Well I'm in pretty good shape. The one thing I don't do is format the cards very often. I put the photos on my computer fairly often, then put the card back in the camera and do a delete all.