So I take hundreds of photos a day, 5 days a week for work and have never had this happen to me before. I was copying my work onto my computer after working all day and 3/4 of the way, my sd card got corrupted and lost the ability to view/download my photos. On my computer and even on the camera. It’s like the information was there, but my camera said “Can’t play back” or something when trying to view, and my computer just showed it empty.
Luckily it was my biggest client, so it was not an issue to go back to reshoot my shots needed. But I’m very worried it will happen again. I have a big shoot today, with a potential big new client, and can’t have this happen again. Do I need a new sd card? I only have another micro sd with the adapter, so I’m just debating going to get a new one right before my shoot.
Has this happened to anyone before? And how do I prevent this in the future?
Thank You
Every couple years I buy 4-6 new cards around Black Friday/Cyber Monday time. Usually spend $150-200 for the piece of mind since I usually shoot about 10k photos a month.
it is expensive but said to be tough.
Everything goes bad. SD cards are no exception.
I was once told this quote and I’ve applied it ever since: “All of the world’s storage Media exists in two states: dead and dying. Plan accordingly”
Are you not using a camera with two card slots? Are you saying you do paid work and only own ONE memory card? Yes, you need to trash that card and buy new ones. Don’t shoot on it again and expect it to work. You also need a camera that isn’t dependent on one card slot.
Depending on the type of shoot, there are two tips:
Smaller size SDs so that even if one corrupts, itself not 500GB of images lost, but 64. Rather have your shoot divided into several 64GB lots.
Shoot tethered to a laptop/tablet/(and now the new iphone15) using capture one so it goes into your catalog as well as on your card if your camera does mixed output.
To the best of my knowledge all non-volatile flash memory goes bad eventually. It cannot be prevented and can happen without warning. I suggest marking them with the date they were first used and just get rid of the old ones after a year or two if you use them heavily. It’s a bit of a waste to throw out stuff before you know it’s gone bad but it’s pretty minor if this is how you make a living.
Also, a camera with multiple SD card slots can help. If you don’t have one of those, buy multiple SD cards and just swap them out during the day. If one fails, you only loose so much.
