Card Error...Help

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Anna Elise

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Hi All

I wander if any of you good folk will be able to help with a little predicament I have??

Yesterday I decided to pick up my camera, an Olympus E300, for the first time in a long while and having lost my 'mojo' of late I took lots of different sorts of pictures, a castle in stormy weather, the family springer spaniel (no mean feat with this 4 legged bundle of fur, believe me!), birds feeding on our patio and wier in partial flood - mainly chose such different subjects so that I could experiment with shutter speeds, been very much a beginner. I managed to get some good shots and was rather pleased with myself.

Here starts my problem! I removed the CF card from the camera and plugged it straight into the card reader on my father's Dell PC to view the pictures (didn't have my laptop with me and was too inpatient to wait till I returned home), had a play around with some of the images in terms of rotating pictures and deleting the crapier ones. I then put the card back into the camera and now I keep getting a 'Card Error' message?? I tried a different card and sometimes get the same message and other times I don't can take a picture but when I try to review it, I get a 'Picture Error' message. I have formatted both cards but it makes no difference?!

Anyone got any ideas what on earth I have done or what the problem might be?? I have checked out the manual and it wasn't particularly enlightening except to say that the card may be corrupted but find it strange that I have the same problem with the second card?? I'm just hoping I haven't damaged the camera in some way!!

Thanks for your anticipated help.

Anna Elise
 
get a torch and check the pins out on the card socket on the camera. make sure they look intact
 
possible that the card is formatted wrongly, fat, fat32 or ntfs. Does it work ok when connected to pc or not?
 
Were the cards formatted in the camera or with the PC?
Maybe try rebooting the camera? :thinking:
 
Hi

Thanks for the replies and help.

wrx_dazza said:
get a torch and check the pins out on the card socket on the camera. make sure they look intact
Click to expand...
Donned my head torch and had a good look around, now excuse me if I sound a bit 'thick' but I've never peered into the socket before! There are 4 rows of pins, 2 each side of the socket and look absolutely fine, but there do appear to be 2 pins 'missing' both in the exactly the same place on each side of the socket - so not sure if that is normal or indeed damage? What would be the best way of establishing that?

madmackem said:
possible that the card is formatted wrongly, fat, fat32 or ntfs. Does it work ok when connected to pc or not?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion but been a total novice I have no idea what you are talking about :thinking: but I haven't tried connecting to the PC via USB cable as I can't even take any pics to check at the moment.


Shabby said:
Were the cards formatted in the camera or with the PC?
Maybe try rebooting the camera? :thinking:
Click to expand...
I formatted both on the camera. I'll have a look through the manual on rebooting the camera. I'm guessing that would be some sort of 'reset factory settings' option??

Thanks again guys, much appreciated.

Anna Elise
 
The problem may be with the card. It's possible that the controller in the card has failed and the data can't be read. Had this problem myself, but managed to get some images off.

Personally I wouldn't trust the card, I'd get a new one, much safer
 
When you were looking at the photos on your Dad's PC, did you copy them to the computer's hard-drive, or were you opening them from the card itself?

If you were playing with them on the card, the file structure of the card may be compromised.
A full format should have sorted it though.
 
Anna Elise said:
I removed the CF card from the camera and plugged it straight into the card reader on my father's Dell PC ......., had a play around with some of the images in terms of rotating pictures and deleting the crapier ones.
Click to expand...

Hi Anna

I agree with Arkady, esp reading the quote from your initial post - did you save them to the PC and then play around, or were you doing directly from the card
 
Arkady said:
When you were looking at the photos on your Dad's PC, did you copy them to the computer's hard-drive, or were you opening them from the card itself?

If you were playing with them on the card, the file structure of the card may be compromised.
A full format should have sorted it though.
Click to expand...

Hi Both,

No, I didn't copy import them onto the PC, was opening them directly from the card itself - doh!!:bonk: So I guess that card is buggered!

The problem is, I thought this might be the case so tried another card (one I hadn't done anything with) and I'm getting the same error messages with this one, so I'm thinking I may have damaged the pins in the CF socket - read somewhere that they can become damaged when the camera tries to read the data on the card that contains edited data?

I'm going to take the camera and cards to my local camera shop today and see if they can help me solve the problem?

Thanks for all your help :)

Anna Elise
 
There'll be no physical damage to the pins just from reading 'the wrong data' as you put it.
Try re-formatting that card with your PC, then re-fprmat it again in your camera it does a clean-sweep as it were.
I've successfully revived 'dead' cards this way in the past. Might not work, but there's no harm trying everything before you fork out on new cards.

And get a decent card-reader while you're at it. Faster and less risky than transferring directly from the camera.
 
oh dear, the prognosis from CameraLand in Cardiff is that 2 of the pins are bent and it needs to be sent away for repair - probably replacement of the card socket!!! That was a right royal cock up on my part - lesson learnt and an expensive one at that!!:'(

Thanks for all your help.

Anna
 
Yes, sorry to hear about the damaged card socket. When you get the camera back just be really careful when sliding cards in. Make sure they are the right way round and slide them in gently. It is all too easy to break pins. Hopefully it will not be an expensive repair.
 
mattyh said:
You ignored post 5 then?

Sorry to hear your camera's knackered :(
Click to expand...

cowasaki said:
Yes, sorry to hear about the damaged card socket. When you get the camera back just be really careful when sliding cards in. Make sure they are the right way round and slide them in gently. It is all too easy to break pins. Hopefully it will not be an expensive repair.
Click to expand...

Thanks both for the sympathy:'( sadly it's likely to be approx £200 according to the guys in the shop (and they didn't seem like the sort to rip people off, in fact very helpful considering I've never set foot in there and was only after advice), so I shall contact Olympus and ask their advice before deciding on what to do.

Thanks again

Anna
 
£200 for a card socket?!
Sounds excessive to me;I'd be tempted to try a local TV repair shop instead.(if any still exist).
Let's hope Olympus can find you a cheaper option!
 
Nope - sounds about right if Nikon prices are anything to go by.
Cost of the item - about £30.
Time to do the work - probably a half-day.
Cost of that? Well I pay my car-mechanic £80 per hour and this is a bit more fiddly than changing a spark-plug...
 
There is an Olympus E300 which is faulty on ebay for £30 buy it now. It has a fault unrelated to the card slot. I would suggest that that might be the best course of action. I am sure someone can swap the memory card board over, I know I would have a go. £200 to repair it means it isn't worth fixing anyway.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OLYMPUS-E300-...Cameras_JN?hash=item439ea110dd#ht_1174wt_1070

So long as they are the same model which it appears they are it should not be too difficult a job!
 
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