Working with digital images

[David Berliner]

Any idea whats wrong with my camera. I have a Olympus 5050Z using a fujifilm 128MB xD card. A few of my pictures just recently are saved on the media card with either vertical lines or horizontal lines, as if looking thru a blind. I can email image for further inpection.

[ShutterbugGail]

Hi David, and welcome to the Q&A Board!

Yes, you can email me one at gail@digicamhelp.com. If you can, please resize it because I currently only have access to a dialup connection.

I'm wondering if your batteries are fully charged? After you transfer your images to your computer, format the card IN THE CAMERA (rather than just erase it) and see if that improves things.

Let us know.

[Deb]

Hi, are you letting the images fully write to the card BEFORE turning the camera off? Turning the camera off before they are fully written can result in damaged image files depending on your camera model.

[David Berliner]

Yes,I am waiting until transfer is complete. I have been using the camera for two years without any issues. Issues just started. See photo embedded in this message.




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[Deb]

Wow, those lines are nasty indeed. It looks like the image isn't being written smoothly. I don't know if that's a problem with your camera or with your media. (Do you have the same thing happen when using another card?) Have you had a chance to format the card in the camera as ShutterbugGail advised? If so and you are still having this problem, I'd suggest contacting Olympus support.

[Deb]

By the way, does the image appear this way on the LCD of your camera? Or does it only appear this way after transferring the file to your computer?

[David Berliner]

I usually do not take pictures with the LCD on. After the picture is taken I rarely look at the image that flashes on the screen, but I would venture to say that it would look as if the picture was taken with blinds obscuring the view. I have reformated the xD media disk and will see if that changes anything. I will also try my OEM 32MB card as well. The second issue is my computer crashing. When I take the path of safely remove hardware from the system tray of my computer after pictures have been transfered, it crashes my machine. If I just turn off camera as the other way of exiting after the transfer it will also crash.

[Deb]

The reason why I asked was because if the image looks fine when viewed on your camera but not after transferring to your computer, then we could possibly eliminate the camera as a suspect.

The crashing you are experiencing could easily be due to software conflicts and/or allocation conflicts. Try this. Using a card reader instead of your direct camera connection, view an image or two using "my computer".  DO NOT transfer the image and, if transferring software automatically loads, exit it. You want to be using "my computer", not camera or imaging software to view the image(s). How do they look?

[David Berliner]

Not sure if we are on the same page. It seems that as the image is saved on the media card it gets saved on occasinon with the lines. Once stored on the media card and read by the reader, it still shows lines. The processs by which the image stores the image to the media card seems to be failing and hence the lines. One theory is that it is a bad section on the card itself. I have reformatted and am attempting to take lots of pictures to see if reformatting solved the issue. I had about 311  pics before I started seeing the issue,
but only about 8 pictures are messed up. Not every picture has the issues. It is random. Of course it has to be a really good picture that get's messed up.

[Deb]

Hi David, yes, that's what I was wanting to verify. That the images are being written (as they are shot) to the media card and that at that point is when the lines first appear. In that case, I would assume the problem lies with your card. If, on the other hand, after the images were written to your card, they looked fine on the camera's LCD, then I would consider that the problem resides in the transferring process (from card to the computer). In other words, the stage of the shooting/recording/transferring process at which the lines do first appear would provide an indication of where the problem lies. Let me know how it goes.

I know how frustrating this can be. In particular, when the best images are the ones that get messed up. Along similar lines, I once had an entire harddrive (with an entire set of Alaska photos) fail on me. I took it in to a computer service which dealt with retrieving data. All the data was toast. Nothing could be salvaged. I was extremely bummed to say the least. Bottom line, maybe get yourself another card you can depend on in case formatting this one doesn't solve the problem. Let me know how it goes.