Working with digital images

[jcf]

After spending more than a month trying to solve this problem, I thought I should share it with you

I bought a new xD card and took about 100 pictures with it. Inspecting the pictures on the camera LCD, even zooming in to the maximum (to check for fuzzyness or out-of-focus) showed all pictures to be OK.

When I tried to get the pictures to my PC I first used a All-in-One 1350 by HP which has a built-in card reader and got the message wrong card format!

I then tried my portable (Fujitsu's LifeBook P7120) which also has a built-in card reader and I managed to transfer almost all the files, but all of them had some sort of problem: a few were not readable and the majority that were readable had missing blocks on the picture, colour/color bands all over, truncated parts, a  whole mess.

I tryed about 10 different tools I found on the net by googling "repair" "photo" "corrupt" "file" and none corrected the problem.

What puzzled me was the fact that when reinserting the card and using the camera LCD I could see a perfect image for all saved pictures!

I reasoned that perhaps the files were written on a wrong format which would explain why the camera could read it (since it was using the same ROM software). If this was the case then extracting the pictures using the camera's processor and inner software on the cameras ROM, by connecting to the camera with the USB would perhaps solve it, since I was using whatever camera inner software that was allowing me to see  the pictures correctly on the LCD.

And I was lucky - using the USB cable and downloading the pictures to the PC I got all of them perfect, no corrupt files, no messy images! At last, 45 days after I have shot them ;-)

Can't really explain why, it all seems a bit strange: either the xD card or the camera must be the culprits...

Could it be a faulty CPU? While searching the web to solve this I read  that a number of sony produced digital camera's CPUs were faulty and could be present on a number of major brands.

Could it be a corrupt xD card? Again, a number of sites, tools and discussion groups/foruns mentioned similar colour/color bands, truncated blocks, etc...

I don't know. I think the only conclusion is that whatever error was made on writing the files to the card was exactly the same one done reading them - so I would incline myself to a faulty software on the camera ROM or a faulty CPU. Otherwise how would you explain that the wrong file format only manifests when presenting the xD card to an exterior card reader?! If it was a bad xD card, wouldn't you expect that the camera iteself experienced the same problem when reading back the pictures to present them on the LCD? (note: I am not an expert on digital cameras, I am a fairly proficient computer user, and on this analysis I assume the only writable memory on the camera is the xD card)

Lessons learned? As what regards file quality do _not_ trust what you see on the camera LCD: it seems they can show up OK even when the pictures are wrongly written on the card! Take a couple of test pictures and try to read them on whatever card reader you have access to and see all is well. For myself I will surely be more carefull from now on and never take for granted that all is well.

Hope this helps you and you get as lucky as me.

Cheers,
Joao
PS since I checked several discussion groups to get help I'll post this same text on a couple more sites - apologies for repetitions

[hw: Olympus CAMEDIA C-5500 ZOOM xD 512 Mb HS by Olympus, pictures taken at 2592x1944 res]

[Mike54]

Welcome to the Digicamhelp Q&A Board  Joao and thank you for your information. It seems that a number of people have had some issues with the xD cards (among others) and many have not been so lucky as you to retrieve their images. From your experience I might have to agree on there being a problem with the image format being such that only the camera can read it correctly. I myself haven't had any problems with my xD cards but then I always transfer from the camera using USB rather than a reader.

[ShutterbugGail]

This is very helpful information, Joao.

As Mike said, thank you for sharing it here. We've had large numbers of individuals saying they've experienced problems with xD picture cards. I'm sure your comprehensive and thoughtful findings will prove helpful to many others.

Thanks again for sharing!