Renamed NEF..now cant open it.

[Ed Hopper]

Hi Folks
I`m trying to get back into SLR photography after a 25 year lay off. I`m snapping away with my D70 in NEF and treating them like negs as most in the know advise.
I`ve encountered a problem with a batch of NEFs that I`ve renamed (whilst keeping the .NEF extension) to reflect the picture subjects prior to filing them away. Now I`ve renamed them I cant open them either in Capture or PS. I`ve even tried Picture project and Nikon View without success.
The thumbnail appears in explorer.

Any help muchpreciated

[gstark]

Hi and welcome.

I just tried this ...

Went to one of my image folders.

Grabbed an image file and copied it, using the default Windows name (Copy of DSC_xxxx.NEF)

Double-clicked on the file. NV opened it no worries.

Closed NV.

Renamed the image to Sunset.NEF

Double-clicked on the file. NV opened it no worries.

I'm not sure what the problem you're experiencing is; this doesn't seem to be an issue for me.

[leek]

Hi Ed,

Sorry to hear about your problem... let's see if we can collectively fix it...

Firstly, could you right click on one of the offending NEF files, select Properties and let us know what appears in the file name box (cut & paste the info into your reply), what it says for "Opens with:" and what is the size of the file... that may give us some info to work with...

[Ed Hopper]

Thanks Leek

I`ve double checked by looking at the files in DOS and they all have the .NEF extension.
They open with NEF Launcher.
They are typically 5meg in size.
One curious thing I just discovered....if I open NV I can see the thumbnails but when I click on them I get a blank page.
If I right click in explorer and select open with..NV then NV will display the full file (not the thumbnail) but the shooting data is missing except for the camera make & model, the date & time and the image size.
If I select the option to edit in PS then after PS opens I get the familiar "could not open file" message.

Frustrating eh!

[digitor]

Hello Ed,

What happens if you open Nikon Capture, then try to open one of your problem nefs from the file menu?

Cheers

[stubbsy]

Ed

Can you please do what Leek suggested so we can see the full file name including all enclosing folder names. Also tell us what the file size and type show as.

In the interim please copy one of the files to your C: drive (top level) and try opening it from there.

[MattC]

Gidday Ed,


Welcome to the forum. Your problem sounds like simple file corruption. Nikon Capture could be the culprit or it could be another piece of software. My first suggestion would be to uninstall, run regsweeper.exe in the utilities folder in NC install directory, reinstall, (do the same for any other Nikon software) then see if you can duplicate the problem using copies of the originals (of course).

I have only ever had two files corrupted in NC (can't remember the circumstances) and the above sorted the problem. Of course, this did not help to recover the corrupted files.

Cheers

Matt

[Ed Hopper]

Digitor....I`ve tried to open these files with NV, NC PS and Picture project these being the only programs I have that support NEF. I`ve even tried to batch convert to TIFF using Thumbs plus but they still wont open as TIFFs.


MattC...I`ll try that tonight but, fingers crossed, I have`nt had a repeat of this problem...I copied some NEFs and renamed the life out of them but they still opened. I think the metadata got corrupted somehow and this may be affecting them.

Stubbsy...I copied one to the route directory and got the same result. The properties box reads:
Kiln
Type of file:Nikon Electronic Image Format
opens with:NEFLauncher
Location:D:\My Pictures\NEF
Size:4.99 MB (5,236,751 bytes)
Size on disk:4.99 MB (5,238,784 bytes)

I made a screenshot of the properties box and I`ve put it on webshots: http://community.webshots.com/photo/278 ... 3099bZyuBs if thats any help

Cheers

[stubbsy]

Ed

Looking at the screen shot & the extra info in your most recent post I'm inclined to agree with MattC. I think the NEFs may be corrupted - especially given this has happened since. Have you run chkdsk recently on this drive?

[Ed Hopper]

Have you run chkdsk recently on this drive?

I wondered about that....to my recollection I have`nt performed any disk operations between being able to view the pics and the problems starting.

This problem has only occured with one batch of about 15 files which were taken over 3 shoot days. So I reckon I`ve done something to them other than renaming.
I made copies of some good files and subjected them to processing by different applications and so far only 1 file has shown the same problem and I think it was when I edited the IPTC info in Thumbs +.
Not sure what I did but I`m going to be a bit scientific and see if I can reproduce this problem.

Thanks for the advice folks...great site...I`ll post any conclusions I come to soon.