Compact Flash: Beginners+

[SoCal Steve]

These are tips from Bruce Fraser in his book "Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop". I felt that they were definitely good enough to post for beginners.

Senior Members please feel free to expand.

Tips for Everyone Using Flash Memory Cards

**** Don't Use your Camera as a Card Reader
3 Reasons; It's slow. It drains the camera's battery very quickly. It ties up the camera and makes it unavailable for additional shooting. Use a separate Card Reader instead.

**** Never Open Your Images Directly From the Camera Media (CF Card) - Make a copy to your Hard Drive or burn a CD first thing and use that copy for your viewing and editing.

**** Don't rely on just one copy of your images. Always copy your images to two separate drives before you start working on them.

**** Verify your copies of the images BEFORE you erase the images from the camera flash card.

**** Always format the CF cards in the camera you're going to use them in, never in your computer. It is possible to do it correctly on a PC, but there is too much chance for error. Formatting Flash Memory for your camera on any version of Mac OS is a recipe for disaster. Just format in the camera you will be using and you are guaranteed of success.

**** If disaster strikes and you can't read your images off of the card, DO NOT RE-FORMAT. That will only make matters worse. Try recovery software available from flash memory companies like SanDisk and Lexar. They can often rescue your images from otherwise unreadable flash cards.

[Nnnnsic]

**** Don't Use your Camera as a Card Reader
3 Reasons; It's slow. It drains the camera's battery very quickly. It ties up the camera and makes it unavailable for additional shooting. Use a separate Card Reader instead.

Not to mention how you could be damaging the USB port on the camera which will make it a pain in the ass if Nikon ever brings out the grip for the D70 with vertical shutter being wired through USB.

[stubbsy]

**** Don't rely on just one copy of your images. Always copy your images to two separate drives before you start working on them.

And after you're finished work make sure you have 2 copies of that too. Wouldn't one to start over if the HD holding your final work cratered

[leek]

**** Don't Use your Camera as a Card Reader
3 Reasons; It's slow. It drains the camera's battery very quickly. It ties up the camera and makes it unavailable for additional shooting. Use a separate Card Reader instead.

Not to mention how you could be damaging the USB port on the camera.

I've seen that argument before, but I wonder whether the USB socket is any more fragile than the Compact Flash socket???

[Onyx]

I'll add one: Don't format cards after transfer. Format it just before your next use it.

Just over the weekend, I transferred some shots from CF to puter. Attempted to rotate a NEF in Capture and resave. The resulting filesize bloomed +0.4Mb just by the rotation. I did a Paul Hanson and didn't like it... Retrieved the file from the CF again, and rotated in NView. The same file lost 100kb, which was closer to the original out of camera and I was more happy with.

[SoCal Steve]

Leek -

IMO the camera socket from the USB cable is much more fragile. The guides on the camera keep the CF card nice and firm. The other cable wiggles and can, if your not careful, also get damaged from trying to plug it in wrong. Same reason I don't like S-Video connectors.