memory card

[nblackledge]

Just had a conversation with a friend and he said he only ever uses the one memory card. Now, as he has two cameras on the go, and uses the same memory card on both cameras, is he risking trouble doing this. I always format my memory cards before use - I have a compact and slr camera. My friends memory card is large, he is proud to show you any photo taken from when he first got his cameras. The pics are still on the card from way back - he has over 1000 pics on it. I would appreciate an opinion on this.

[silversnapper1]

Firstly, has he got them backed up because if he hasn't, anything goes wrong and he's lost the lot.

Secondly, one card will only hold a finite number of shots, so he will have to buy another in due course anyway.

Thirdly, I assume that he doesn't shoot in RAW as my 4Gb card will only hold 300 odd RAW files.

Personally, I upload all of my shots to the PC and then wipe the card clean. I do have spare cards in case of emergency though.

[GeoffWessex]

And one day, when he's out with his camera, just as the 'shot of a lifetime' comes into view, he'll try to take a picture and get "Memory Card Full" on his LCD. It's bad enough when you've got a couple of spares ready - if you haven't, you have to start deleting stuff quickly and when you're ready - the opportunity for that great shot will have gone.

[donoreo]

It will give an error at some point. Sounds like your friend is just cheap. Just yesterday I was involved in a similar discussion. My father in law does not copy his photos to the computer. That is not even a thought to him. Camera's have nothing to do with computers, why would be think of doing that? He just takes the memory card in and selects the photos he wants printed and is done. When he needs more space he deletes some in camera. To him it is all about the hard copy.

Just a few weeks ago he wanted to get a couple of pictures enlarged. His first thought was to take in a print and get them to scan it to enlarge it. It never occurred to him, until we mentioned it, to take in the original digital copy and have them use that. He did that, but never gave it to me to tweak first (one of them is crooked and the other has red eye).

We told him that if he does not keep a copy it is the same as not having the negative. He said he could never find those either

To top it all off, it would not be hard to copy. His computer has a build in card reader!

[rbarry]

Allowing two different cameras to use the same card could lead to file indexing problems. As has already been advised, try to use the same card in the same camera and if you can, get a spare back up one too. Then get in the habit of copying your images over regularly and try to keep the image files in an orderly fashion so you can access any particular image when you want without too much searching.

[chris-p]

I agree with all thats been said above. The indexing issues mentioned by Rbarry are a real concern, especially if the cameras are different makes.

I think he sounds like an idiot!

[OldBoy]

Not sure that's true, as long as each camera writes to it's own folder. You don't get index problems on you hard disk by storing images from different cameras, and as a card is only a disk storage medium, you shouldn't have a problem with it either. I use my 8gb compactflash card in both my D3 and D200, and it has a folder on there for each.

I should just add, that I use cut and paste to copy my images from the card to the PC thereby, leaving the folders still on the card. The folder will only change when I go over 9,999 and a new one is created.

[SieSmith]

The thing is, just to copy them to the computer hard drive and delete them off the memory card is also asking for trouble. Hard drives fail as well, you know.

Have them on the computer hard drive by all means, but have a backed up copy on an external hard drive, dvd, or whatever other means you can. At least 2 copies of originals and edits. Hard drives are so cheap these days, it's criminal not to!

Cheers, Sie

[cosmicma]

it's a recipe for disaster as we all know at least you can say i told you so when it happens

i would back the card up for him so at least someone has a copy when the card decides to go belly up